Conference of Wargamers 2010 - Preparations

As we are now entering the 'home straight' in the lead-up to COW (it's this Friday!) I am pleased to report that preparations continue apace.

I am now involved in the presenting and running of four sessions, and progress is as follows:

The End - this, you may recall is the game first presented at Triples in April.  his game will be run several times with a single player for each game.  Most of the bits are in a bag, with the map in a tube - both in my garage ready to be packed into the car on Friday morning.

Tank Terror - Playtested and ready to go in the car.  This game involves players cast as US Infantry attempting to fend off a determined assault by 10 motorised 20mm scale tanks.  AT weapons include bazookas (dropping ballpoint pens on tank photos) and AT grenades (hurling empty Coke cans into a plastic crate).  The dodgy AT mechanisms were inflicted on COW some years ago by Ian Drury, while the motorised tanks add pace and panic!  This ideally involves around 6 US players plus 1 or 2 Panzer 'drivers'.

Spock's Shameful Secret - despite the name this is in fact a recreation of the 'Black Buck' raid on Port Stanley airfield during the Falklands War.  The name, and indeed the game were inspired by the acquisition of an inflatable Vulcan bomber in the shop at RAF Cosford ( http://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/cosford/)  last year.  The main problem about bombing such a distant target was fuelling, and the game will involve a Vulcan

with a crew of 3 having it's fuel tanks (a water-filled plastic beaker with a hole in the bottom) progressively topped up by a fleet if Victor tankers (more players with similar fuel tanks).  The tricky bit for players will be devising a refuelling plan...   Assuming fuel holds out the bomb run over Stanley will be simulated using an automatic airsoft pistol.  As you can see, the Vulcan is inflated.  I have also 'built' the runway and begun making 'fuel tanks'.  I'll carry on with the work this evening.

Completely Over The Top - This is the new 'emergency' plenary game.  Players will form a British division (and a few Germans) making a series of attacks during WW1.  Therfore pretty well everyone (there are 50+ attendees expected) will require a rifle.  Hopefully some people are making their own rifles (I know Graham Evans is planning a particularly luxurious version) but I appreciate that not everyone will be able to.  Jerry  Elsmore and I have therefore built 20-odd cardboard rifles.  I designed the rifle template by tracing round my M-14 and then adding a bayonet.  Sorry, baynot (not real, you see!).  I still need to build a 'tank' from a large printer box.  The tricky bit will be explaining to the client I am visiting on Friday morning why I have a cardboard tank on the back seat of my car...

For those of you intending to make your own rifles (please do!), mine are 37 inches long, plus another 7 or so for the baynot.  The photo shows one next to a very scruffy AK.  I'll let you figure out which is which.