CAMERONE 160th Anniversary game Sat 5/21 @ Sand Wars 2023 in Mesa, AZ

Hard to believe it's been more than a year since the last time I posted here.  I'm pretty sure that's the longest stretch since I started this blog back in the Spring of 2010.  The past year was surprisingly hectic for me, mostly in good ways. 

High points included my older daughter/middle child's graduation from West Point and commissioning as a 2LT in the Army of the United States -- that's still how they write it on her paperwork!

At the other end of the spectrum our family dog, Sam, passed away this past July, a couple of months short of turning 13.  Sam was a Canaan Dog, a breed native to Israel, as well as Jordan & Lebanon, but we got him down in Yucca Valley, California.  He was 6 weeks old at the time and he was the dog our kids grew up with and pretty much the greatest dog who ever lived -- well, at least to my mind!He was a working dog with strong instincts for herding and protecting.  When he was 5 or 6 years we took him a couple of times to herd sheep and -- despite having never seen or heard a sheep before in his life -- he proved to be a master at the task.  Part of me wishes we'd taken him to do that more often, because it was so much fun to watch him in action, and also for me to participate in when I got to play shepherd... but the truth is to Sam it seemed more like work than joyful recreation.  He did a great job, but watching him you didn't get the idea he preferred getting covered in dust while wrangling flighty sheep in the hot sun to dozing on the couch at home or sitting in the shade on the front step keeping watch over things.

One day when Sam was 3 or 4 years old, he was the only one in the house when our son came home from school and a short time later a felon broke into an empty bedroom in our house.  Lounging in the family room with our son at the time and going by nothing but the sound, Sam instantly charged the closed bedroom door, snarling and barking as only a guard dog whose territory has been violated can.  This rapidly convinced the intruder to jump out the window he'd broke in through and scramble back to the van where his girlfriend was waiting at wheel.  They sped off, having stolen some cash and my son's iPhone from his nightstand.  But...

Unfortunately for them my young tech-savvy son had previously set-up the "Find my iPhone" feature on his computer, which he proceeded to activate.  When I got home a little later I called a cop friend at the local stationhouse who instantly put my son on the phone with a detective, and then the LAPD went and caught the guy.  He was a gang-member and three-time loser who if convicted on these new breaking & entering and burglary charges would face a long mandatory sentence (though this happened in Los Angeles, California, it was years ago).   The police recovered the phone but we never got it back.

Months later, on the day before the start of the trial, knowing my son intended to take the stand the next day, the culprit pled out rather than face a jury.  I loved Sam long before this happened, but after it happened I felt very lucky and very thankful he was part of our family.

Well... not sure where that came from, other than the heartfelt past!  Apologies that it has nothing to do with wargaming -- but years ago I did get myself a 28mm version of Sam, who accompanied various armies across my tabletop, sometimes at the heel of an officer, other times doing his due diligence with those dang sheep...

And the real thing...

Now on to the miniature matter at hand as mentioned in the title of this post...

To commemorate the upcoming 160th Anniversary of the iconic battle, together with my buddies Dan Gurule and Shawn Hutson, I'm bringing a Camerone game to the HMGS Pacific South-West "SAND WARS" con at the Mesa Convention Center in Mesa, Arizona on Saturday May 20th.  The convention lasts through Saturday and Sunday and here's a LINK to its website:

https://tabletop.events/conventions/sand-wars-2023

...here's a LINK directly to the Event Page where you can sign up for our particular game:

https://tabletop.events/conventions/sand-wars-2023/schedule/8

...and here's the write-up for the game (which I already posted over on the even more out-of-commission Camerone Day blog that I created for the 150th Anniversary game I ran back in 2013 & where you can also read a lot more about Camerone & see a ton of pics from that game played 10 years ago):

On the morning of April 30, 1863, 49 officers and men of the 3^rd Co., 1^st Batt. Foreign Regt. (AKA: the French Foreign Legion) led by Captain Jean Danjou occupied a decrepit hacienda compound in the abandoned village of Camarón (“Camerone” in English) and fought a 10-hour battle against 2,000 Mexican regulars and guerillas under the command of Colonel Francisco Milan. The compound sat along the “Royal Road” leading from the port of Vera Cruz on the Gulf coast inland to Puebla and Mexico City. When they first encountered the enemy, Danjou and the 3^rd Co. were en route to escort a convoy carrying siege guns, ammunition, and 3,000,000 Francs in gold (approx. $57 Million in 2023 USD). Ten hours later when the fighting stopped, all but one of the Legionnaires had been captured or killed. But though the 3^rd Co. no longer existed, it had accomplished its mission: the gold convoy had heard the sound of the ferocious battle up the road, turned around and headed back to safety. After the battle ended and Colonel Milan learned how enemy soldiers his men had actually faced, he declared: “These are not men, they’re demons!”

Join us to commemorate the 160^th Anniversary of the battle by honoring the men of Company Danjou fighting for the glory of the Legion, and their Mexican opponents fighting to defeat the French Intervention (1862-67).

 

As Captain Danjou or one of his lieutenants, can you lead your handful of men to hold out long enough to keep the Mexicans from hitting the convoy…?

 

As Colonel Milan or one of his deputy commanders, can you coordinate your array of disparate units to overcome the ferocious enemy behind the walls of the Hacienda de la Trinidad fast enough to still be able to ambush the unescorted convoy and score a major victory for your cause…?

 

This will be a 6-Hour Epic Struggle: 3-hr session I from 9am to 12 Noon--lunch break--3-hr session II from 1pm to 4pm, played with finely painted figures over award-winning terrain, using Osprey’s popular “The Men Who Would Be Kings” colonial rules, with mods for the scenario and to speed up convention play.

 

Room for up to 3 French & up to 5 Mexican players (combined maximum 8 players).

DESERT WARS 2022: "GOOD STUFF"

This past weekend, Friday March 18th to Sunday March 20th, I packed up the "Bloody Elephant's Paw" game, left Los Angeles, CA and drove 400 miles East to Mesa, AZ -- where I met up with my friend Shawn, who drove 400 miles West from El Paso, TX.  The plan was to team-up and run the same scenario we'd fought in the "Never Trust Anyone on the Frontier" NWF campaign at HMGS-PSW's first-ever "DESERT WARS" convention, held at the Mesa, Convention Center...

When I reached Chiriaco Summit I stopped to say hi to the Patton statue at the Tank Museum...

Then proceeded on to Arizona...

Knowing the terrain would take a while to set up, we met when the doors cracked open at 6:30am, as seen in the dimly-lit dawn pic below...

Pic below with Shawn on the left (blue-gray shirt, gray hair) and me on the right (black shirt, dark hair) was taken much later...

The welcome sign for the convention featured a colonial-themed photo, which I took as a good omen...

Unloading and set-up went pretty smooth and we were done in about 90 minutes.  We were assigned a nice prominent spot at the front of the hall, near the main entrance...

My greatest achievement of the day -- managing to properly arrange the insane puzzle that was this set of walled fields (I won't tell you how long it took me)...

The pic below shows Frank Patterson (my roommate for the convention) and Harmon Ward (the convention director for HMGS-PSW) both from Orange County, CA, with Shawn and myself, all wearing the commemorative t-shirts for our game...

Shawn's graphic designer nephew made the design, which IMHO turned out fantastic...

In addition to signing up to help me unload, set up, GM, and pack everything up again, Shawn also made custom game charts, scenario maps, and character bios for all of our players.  Somehow I don't have a single pic of any of them... but I swear they really did exist!

Of course our game would use the classic colonial rule-set THE SWORD AND THE FLAME by Larry Brom... but for some reason Shawn can be seen here smiling as he holds its far younger (and lesser!) rival, from Osprey Publishing, THE MEN WHO WOULD BE KING...

Just before I left home I thought to bring these 3 NWF themed books with me and laid them out on one of the side-tables by our game.  At least a couple of people flipped through them, which was great to see...

Both Shawn and I were amazed to learn that one of the players who signed up for our game is thanked at the end of TSATF 20th Anniversary Edition for having helped Larry Brom with play-testing!  It was like having a real-life celebrity in our game...

The first turn of our game kicked off at around 10:45am and the last turn (I believe it was #11) ended at around 4:15pm, so it lasted about 5-1/2 hours -- which in the history of convention games I've run through the years is the shortest ever!  It went about as well as it possibly could have, largely due to the wonderful group of players who signed up, including but not limited to Sylvain "Frenchie" Durand, pictured above, proving his he wasn't BS'ing us by showing us his name in The Book!

I will post a detailed AAR for the game soon.  The only bad thing about it was that Shawn and I were so busy GM'ing, neither of us were able to take many photos of our own game.  But here are a couple...

This second one shows one of the biggest highlights of the day, when young Connor stopped by with his dad (after winning 5th place in the Bolt Action Tournament, I later learned!) and we recruited him to help out with flipping move and fire cards and then rolling fire and -- most exciting of all -- melee dice...

As is usually the case, the "Kid" had a very hot hand...

Unfortunately one of our 6 players -- Scott Hansen, who served as British C-in-C Brigadier Ruff-Husband -- had to go before the game ended, but luckily I happened to catch his rear-view in this photo of the table, -- that's him in the "VIKING WORLD TOUR" t-shirt on the right in the pic below...

Here's the rest of us, from left to right: Adam Waters (British sub-commander), John Slattery (Lt. Colonel Wincott), the aforementioned VIP Sylvain Durand (Mad Mullah Omar), Thomas "Devil in a Skirt" Fraser (Malik Jamal Shah Baba), myself, Shawn, and last-but-not-least Greg P. (Pathan C-in-C Gul Akbar Khan)

Aside from not managing to take many pics of our own game, the other down-side on Saturday was that I was too busy GM'ing -- and then too fried -- to get any pics of the MANY OTHER VERY COOL LOOKING GAMES that filled the hall.  I was especially bummed I didn't get to check out another Colonial game set on the North-West Frontier involving a "What-If?" Russian invasion force teamed-up with native auxiliaries vs. British and Indian troops.  It sounded very cool!  If anyone reading this has posted pics of that or any of the other Saturday games, please comment below and leave an address to find them at online, and THANKS IN ADVANCE if you do!

S U N D A Y

Sunday was laid-back, and I spent the morning checking out all the games going on.  There were a decent number.  Many were skirmish type games.  Everyone was having fun and all the game looked good to me...

"Walking Dead" ZOMBIE game...

THE SWORD AND THE FLAME in Zululand...

Back to that amazing Zombie table...

TEAM YANKEE...

CONFLIKT '47 (Weird WWII)...

David Letizia -- one of the Conflict '47 players -- was nice enough to tell me about the "FREEBLADES" fantasy skirmish game.  He had brought along 5 factions worth of figures, and the bespoke miniatures were very nice sculpts...

At this point the TSATF action in Zululand was getting hot and heavy...

A view of the hall from the empty table where our game had been the day before...

Back to ZOMBIE TOWN...

Apparently the Taco Truck's alarm had been triggered, which drew more and more of The Walking Dead to that spot...

Around 12:30 on Sunday Shawn and I said our farewells, he headed East and I headed West...

Along the way I thought for a moment that somehow I was driving back to the North-West Frontier... but lucky for me it turned out to just be more of Arizona...

As always I had to stop at Chiriaco Summit and visit -- if only in passing -- the General Patton Memorial Museum...

Heading back into California I was surprised to spot some 1:1 scale US armor -- USMC Strykers heading West on I-10...

I gave them a honk and a wave as I passed...

A while later I arrived safe and sound back home in La-La Land...

I unpacked everything but the boards, which I left safe in the car to deal with the next day...

It was an AWESOME weekend that went as well as it possibly could have, and better than I expected, with the myriad logistical challenges all running like clockwork.  Again, my sincere thanks to all the players in our game, who made the 400 mile trek worthwhile and then some.  Also thanks to Harmon and Frank and also Mark Deliduka, who also came out from SoCal -- in Mark's case to run Battle-Tech games and in Harmon's case to run the convention itself.

Hopefully we can all do it again next year.  6-7 hours is not a short drive, but for me it's not an impossibly-long drive either.  The chance to get together and game and schmooze with miniature wargamers from Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, California, Texas and even a few non-South-Western states was a whole lotta fun, or as my co-GM said: "Good Stuff."

Speaking of my co-GM,  my last and biggest thank you goes to Shawn, whose collaboration made the whole thing possible.  We only found out about the convention on March 9th, but in that six seeks time we managed to pull it off.  If HMGS-PSW holds "Desert Wars 2023" in Mesa, Arizona, I think there's a decent chance we will each drive 400 miles and meet up in the middle again next year.

Hey -- I almost forgot -- we won a prize for best game at the con... actually it may have been "Best Looking Table"... I'm not sure.  But I am sure it was a very cool surprise, as we did not know they were giving out prizes, so thank you to the convention for giving us the award!