COW 2022

 It was blazing sunshine, so once more it was time to sweat the weekend away at the Conference of Wargamers. The usual venue, Knuston Hall in Northamptonshire, was closed for refurbishment, so this year we were off the Defence Academy of the UK https://www.da.mod.uk/ at Shrivenham. I've been there before but not for a few years now, and dress standards in the Officers Mess are a bit higher than those at Knuston.

The Defence Academy provides training for Staff Officers as well as a huge range of other courses for the Army, Navy and Air Force. Thanks to my earlier visit, getting my pass for the base was all very straightforward.

The main Staff College building is very grand indeed with a huge entrance atrium.

We were down at the Technical School however, which has lots of open plan teaching space. Glorious COW weather as usual. The site is much bigger than Knuston, but the interludes walking to and from the accommodation, mess and Tech School were an opportunity to get some fresh air and exercise in the glorious weather. I also managed a run on Saturday morning, surrounded by soldiers doing the same thing, and rather faster than me,

The Academy is also packed with 1:1 scale toys like this one. They all work and we were under strict instruction not to push any buttons, but we were allowed to climb on and into them. I'll do a separate post about my various explorations of the vehicles.

The main business was of course playing games over the weekend. I played a few, observed a few and ran one. Various reports will no doubt appear on peoples blogs and in the Wargames Developments Journal, so here is a snapshot.

Mark running 'Take That Hill'. A variant of Fire & Movement developed in conjunction on the British Army Fight Club. Can your platoon capture the hill in good time with minimal losses?

I played Mike Elliott's Cyber Security game. It was (very) like being at work, but I'm interested in how you can make a game out of something as ephemeral as cybersec. This one worked very well, with most of the players in business type roles while I was in charge of the technical teams and was in a position to run through the ins and outs of the architecture, vulnerabilities, mitigations etc. The whole thing ran as kind of service management/business continuity/disaster recovery/prioritisation exercise and I enjoyed it a lot.

Mark put on his tabletop version of Worthingtons 'Waterloo 1815' with spray painted Warlord armies. Epic pointing as befits such an iconic battle.

Jim Roche running his game on writing 'Yet Another Book about Normandy'. Messrs Salt, Evans and Ager in attendance.

Mike Elliotts starship hijack game.

Toms huge Ukraine 2022 matrix game, 'Bandera II'.

Martin Goddard and Bloody Barons (Wars of the Roses).

I put on Shiloh using my version of Neil Thomas's ACW rules. I'll do a separate report about that, but I was a bit nervous as I've not actually run a f2f game for over 2 years apart from short participation games at shows. In the event it went fine, but I'll do a more detailed write up.

John A ran Don Featherstones old Commando Raid rules on this rather lovely table. 

Nick Riggs did a Cold War version of the old AHGC solo game 'Pattons Best'. This one featured a platoon of M1s facing off against various Warpac baddies. The players ran individual tanks under the watchful eye of Lt Salt, platoon leader. I did manage to brew one BMP and was quite pleased with that!

Russell ran a very well attended game of Petrograd Nights (previously reported on the blog). With player teams for the various factions this one really was riotous and captured the fevered nature of Revolutionary Russia very well. In the end the Mensheviks came out on top with a mildly left of centre programme and the Tsar was allowed to go off on his merry way. 

Martin Goddard also put on a game of Pieces of Eight. Arrrr.

The indefatigable Tom put on one of very popular one off hard Sci Fi trips which bear a vague resemblance to Traveller. This one had some infection based nastiness on a space station.

I got to play another one of Toms RPG games on Ukraine, this one covering a section from 42nd Motor Rifle Regiment hastily mobilised on the approaches to Kyiv. An interesting feature was that we played it using google maps to look at the terrain.

My chap had the good fortune to own a car to ferry some of us around, and possibly misfortune to be the only one trained in how to operate a Javelin. Here is my kit list, you can carry 10 points of gear plus strength (+2 in my case). The Javelin is pretty heavy, as is the the spare round, so no helmet or body armour for me. I've spent too many weekends in the woods in the rain though, so I made sure I had a rain cape, water, food and an entrenching tool, plus the essential mobile phone.

We did manage to shoot up some Russian vehicles and escaped (mostly) intact before the Russians obliterated our village with artillery fire, so not a bad result. Not so great for the villagers though.

Overall it was a fabulous weekend. I was a bit nervous about it being a new venue but we all adjusted to the new environment and differing logistic requirements very quickly. A change is as good as a rest etc. It was great to catch up with familiar faces, but I was also very pleased that so many new attendees came, as the location was further west and south. Many thanks to the organisers for their tireless efforts to make things run smoothly and getting the new venue arranged so quickly, and particular thanks to the MOD for letting us use the base facilities and Toms efforts in securing that.