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GMT Weekend at the Warehouse

One of the wargame conventions that I attend on a regular basis is the Weekend at the Warehouse. It's hosted by GMT Games twice a year, in April and October, at their warehouse (hence the name) in Hanford, California. I've been going regularly since 2010. Unfortunately it shut down during covid like just about everything else. After missing several dates, they reopened last fall. I didn't go because we had a big trip to Bonaire planned in December. Sandy and I were fully vaccinated so I wasn't worried about getting seriously ill. I was worried that we would get a mild case of covid that would force us to cancel our Bonaire trip. So sadly I skipped fall 2021. It was a good tradeoff though, because we had a great trip to Bonaire with Mickey and Allie. This April when our big trip to Bonaire and our later trip to Fiji were done, I was anxious to go back to GMT for the spring event and do some wargaming. I hadn't been to a wargaming convention in over two years.

I usually try to leave early so I can avoid traffic on the way to Hanford. It's especially important to get through Sacramento as early as possible. I must have been anxious to go on this trip because I woke up in the middle of the night and was on the road by 4 am. I did make frequent stops to get out and stretch so it took me twelve hours for the drive. Still, I was at the Sequioia Inn by 3 pm. After checking in, I walked to Round Table Pizza for linner. After that I had the evening free so I watched the Brewers beat the Phillies 1-0.

Usually it's quite hot in the central valley in April and it can be uncomforably warm in the warehouse during the afternoon. Not this time. It was unseasonably cool, with rain forecast for the next few days. On Thursday, the first day of the con, I didn't have a game scheduled until later in the afternoon. I thought that would enable me to get in a nice walk in the morning. About ten minutes after leaving the hotel I felt drops so I turned around and hurried back. I made it to the hotel just in time before it started to rain for real. I guess I was supposed to head right for the warehouse instead of farting around.

The first thing I had to do was check in at the office. People were required to show proof of vaccination to attend the convention. People also had to be willing to wear masks if asked. That seemed to discourage some people from attending. The last few times I had gone there had been well over a hundred people in attendance. I would estimate that this weekend there were only about seventy five. With fewer people and more space (GMT expanded their warehouse a few years ago) everyone could spread out. The doors were all kept open (and they are big, loading dock doors) so most people didn't wear masks. I always made sure to grab the table right next to the doors so that there was plenty of ventilation. Still, it was too bad that so many people were so strongly negative about covid precautions that they wouldn't participate in something that they really enjoyed. Their loss though. I didn't care because I was there!

On Saturday during every Weekend at the Warehouse, attendees can buy games at a substantial discount. It also avoids shipping costs so that is how I buy all my GMT games. Since it had been over two years since I was last here, I spent a lot of time going through the warehouse checking out all the games that had come out during that time. I quickly came up with a wish list that was way too long. For the next three days, until the sale on Saturday, I spent every free moment agonizing, trying to finalize my purchase list. But that was a fun problem to have.

Late on Thursday morning, an old friend from many past wargaming cons, Pat Mulvihil, was organizing a game of C&C Epic Ancients. I'm always up for C&C so I joined in. We played with four on a side, three field commanders and an overall commander. When I organize Epic Ancients I usually do it with only three on a side since being the overall commander can be rather dull. In this game I managed to avoid getting stuck with that role so I didn't care.

The scenario that we played was the Battle of Zama, one that I have played many times. The Romans are definitely favored but it's still a lot of fun. There are a lot of elephants in the center and they are very unpredictable. Since I commanded the Carthaginian center I was right in the middle of all the action.

I sent the elephants forward and they did a lot of damage to the Roman center. That put our side out to an early lead. But the Romans fought hard on both wings and eventually pulled even. Finally we were both down to our last banner with desparate fighting in the center. Our last chance was several ranged shots at a single block unit for the win, and we connected on the last roll for a narrow Carthaginian victory. With all the hooting and hollering going on, it must have been a fun game. It was a great start for the weekend.

Afterwards I had time for linner at Me & Ed's Pizza in Hanford and then was back at the warehouse for my next game. I had arranged online to play with Keith Layton, someone I hadn't met before. He was flying from the east coast so didn't get to GMT till late in the afternoon. We played Colonial Twilight, one of my favorite games. It was Keith's first time so he took the FLN. He played well but a bit too cautiously and I was able to get a win on the third prop card. We resolved to organize a rematch after the weekend doing Play By Email using VASSAL. With two wins on the first day of the con I was off to a good start.

Next day I played a game with Larry Davidson. Larry and I have been playing each other on Friday of every GMT weekend going back many years. It's always an East Front game. This year we played Red Typhoon from Revolution Games. It's an operational level game that covers the Soviet counteroffensive in front of Moscow during the winter of 1941/42. I took the Germans and was under heavy pressure through the whole game. There were so many Russians! The German line bent but never broke and I got a win on points at the end of the game. Larry had made an enlarged copy of the map on vinyl which was great to play on. No problems with crowded stacks of counters. He's done that before for games that we play at GMT. When we were done, he gave me the map in exchange for me buying linner at Black Bear Diner after our game. I hope to use that special map in future plays of the game.

Part of the fun of a wargame convention is cruising around and checking out all the other games that are going on. Especially interesting are the prototypes of unreleased games. One that caught my eye was a modified version of Twilight Struggle. It had been updated for the "new cold war", starting at it's usual end point with the fall of the Soviet Union and going all the way to the present day. It's kind of a mirror image of the original game, since the Russian Federation starts out very weak in the nineties and grows in strength through the game. He didn't have a publisher for the game but I suspect he showed it to GMT sometime during the weekend. Since Twilight Struggle is Sandy's favorite game, we would certainly get it if they published an expansion.

I was there bright and early on Saturday, taking my last circuit through the warehouse to finalize my buying decisions for the sale. Then Gene Billingsley, the head of GMT, gave his "state of GMT" talk. This time it was a little sad. Most wargamers are older males, and that means that sometimes we lose people. This Weekend at the Warehouse was dedicated to Chad Jensen. He was a designer of quite a few GMT games who died of cancer last year. The tshirt for the weekend had some of his sayings on the back. I knew who Chad was - I had seen him at conventions - but had never actually met him. A lot of the GMT crowd knew him well though.

Another casualty in the past year was Mike Lam. I didn't know him well either but had seen him at many conventions. He always ran a tournament for Down in Flames, a card game of WWII aerial combat. He ran the tournament at every GMT weekend and every Consimworld Expo that I have been to over the past twelve years. And that's all he ever did. I never saw him play any other game at a convention. I'm told that he had been doing this at every GMT weekend since the first one in the late nineties. In his honor, they had the DiF tournament set up. He was also known for wearing a Mickey Mouse jacket and a Baltimore Orioles cap all the time. His cap was there, on the wall where his usual spot was. Kind of like the fighter pilot's "missing man" formation, I guess.

After Gene's talk was the sale. I got a half a dozen GMT games, and some Hexasim and Vae Victus folio games. I did a lot of damage but didn't get everything that I could have or wanted to. I'll still have reason to go back to GMT next fall. But I did get some cool games like Salerno 43 (I love Simonitch's 4x series), the Pacific War and Vietnam reprints, and several others.

After that it was time to play games. I played No Retreat: Russian Front with Terry Yoder, another wargamer that I hadn't known beforehand but arranged a game with online. When we went to lunch, it turned out that Terry was an engineer who had worked at HP at Roseville Networks Division. I had worked closely with RND for many years so it was like meeting someone who went to the same high school you did. We spent the afternoon talking about all the people that we both knew and trading gossip about various events that had happened at HP back in those days. Small world indeed.

Oh yeah. In our game I rolled horribly and lost badly as the Germans. I probably didn't play that well either, but I'm sticking to the "bad dice" story. As an example, I failed to take Odessa on five consecutive attacks when I would succeed on anything but a one. Six to the sixth power is over 7700, so I was kind of unlucky. If we were playing ASL I would have been happy though.

That wrapped up the weekend. Sunday was the drive home, and I made good time. It only took me eleven hours, which might be a personal record. I really enjoyed being at a wargame convention after so long. It was good to see old wargaming buddies again, make some new friends, play some wargames, and buy some games at the GMT sale. I am definitely looking forward to Consimworld Expo this summer.