Enfilade 2011

Grown men, playing with toy soldiers

Friday morning I made the two hour drive up to Olympia, WA, to attend the 20th annual Enfilade gaming convention put on by the Northwest Historical Miniature Gaming Society.  Enfilade is a three-day event drawing war-game enthusiasts from all over the Pacific Northwest. 

Attention to detail

Officially there were 280 paying attendees, but including vendors and staff, I estimate there were close to 500 people sitting at the gaming tables in the various event rooms.  Enfilade seems to be a phenomenon born of men of a certain age (from about 35 to 65).  Attendees mostly fit into the white, middle-aged male demographic, although a few women and some younger participants attend the event. 

A Barbarossa battlefield 

The convention runs from Friday through Sunday.  At the height of the activities, one can walk through the game hall and see elaborately-constructed map boards, peopled with miniature soldiers, tanks, and siege engines, in every imaginable military situation.
I saw games simulating everything from Hitler's 1941 invasion of Russia, to the 1812 Battle of Borodino, to chariot races in ancient Rome's Circus Maximus, to a sci-fi depiction of post-apocalypse survivors fighting off flesh-eating zombies with scavenged weapons.

Hobbyists pay enormous attention to detail.  It's a labor of love, obviously, and one really must admire the results when viewing the elaborately constructed battle maps and delicately painted miniatures.

Anti-tank battery

My own event was the Advanced Squad Leader tournament.  ASL is a tactical World War II game system that provides rules for simulating small unit engagements during the defining conflicts that occurred in the middle of the 20th century.  ASL doesn't use miniatures.  Rather, units are represented by cardboard counters that represent tanks, infantry, and ordinance.

This year, the ASL contingent at Enfilade was relatively small.  There were no more than a dozen of us.  In past years, there have been twice that number competing for ASL bragging rights in the Pacific Northwest.  Nationally, there are tournaments in Ohio and Maryland (among other places) where hundreds of players vie to be champions.  But it's been at least a decade since I've attended one of the big national tournaments.

ASL players Lyle (Vancouver, WA) and Brent (Boise, ID) locked in battle

Just as well, too, judging by my poor performance this year.  I lost my first game to the eventual tournament champion, Rich Julanis, early on.  The scenario we played was called Friday the 13th.  I was the Russians in 1944, trying to stem a determined attack by German Fallschirmjaegers.  My poor Russian farm boys got run over by the grim Huns and their murderous Sturmgeschützen.

I then followed up with a loss to Sam Belcher to eliminate myself from contention.  In that game, called Opium Hill, I played the British, defending a village against a Japanese armored-infantry assault.  Sam's Imperial Japanese warriors rushed my troops (most of which were local Malaysians) and vanquished them in hand-to-hand combat.

In my third (and final) game, I played Lyle Fisher in the metaphorically-named Shouting into the Storm.  This was a late-war scenario set on the eastern front.  I was the Germans, attacking across a bridge to seize a village held by the Red Army.  My order of battle included three of the German King Tiger super-tanks and they proved too much even for hardened Red Army troops.  Lyle had been undefeated prior to our game, so I played the sour role of spoiler with my victory, but Lyle took it all in stride.

 ASL players

I've been coming to this convention for about 18 years now.  It used to be that when I attended  tournaments I obsessively invested myself in the effort to win.  But over the years, the competitive part of it has faded.  Now, it's more about having a fun get-away weekend and hanging out with old friends.  (I trust it is unnecessary to point out the obvious correlation between diminution of competitive spirit and the natural drop in testosterone production by middle-aged men.  But, let's not go there.  At least, for now.) 

One of the best parts of these tournaments, believe it or not, is the conversations that spring up between games.  Larry Spangler and I were having a conversation on Saturday evening.  We talked about our respective lives, about our ups and downs, about how we each feel lucky.

"Think about it," says I.  "Here we are, spending an entire weekend at a hotel in Olympia, Washington, playing games."

Larry chortled.  "That right there says we got it pretty good, eh?"

The politics of ASL

Note to readers: This post won't make a lick of sense to anyone who isn't familiar with the Advanced Squad Leader game system. Also note:  This is satire!

This is my story, of course.  So I get to tell it the way I remember it.  Which is the way it happened.  Or maybe this is just the way I wanted it to happen.  You'll have to decide that for yourself.

It's one of those things we never talk about in the world of Advanced Squad Leader.  The real politique of the thing.  The world of ASL, ostensibly a world of middle-aged men play-acting as World War II commanders, is a labyrinth of deal-making, plotting, and back-stabbing.

It's been twenty years or more since any ASL championship was ever decided by the dice.  Most champions, and you'll notice I'm not naming names, are decided in a series of backroom deals between the various factions long before anyone ever lines up at the hotel buffet for opening day breakfast.

Evans versus Greenman, WWF 1997.  The daggers were out for this one.

Factions? you ask.  Oh, yeah.  There's the New York gang, with JR and Dr. Phil and GorGor.  There's the Ginnard Brothers out of Ohio.  There's the Colorado bunch, with Repetti and Snow and Hundsdorfer.  Tim Wilson and Tom Jazbutis kinda run free agent.  And there's a whole bunch of others, besides.  My group was the Berserk Commissars, coming out of Oregon.

The long and short of it is this:  ASL is a world of politics.  Pure and simple.  I'm not going to make any bones about it, and I'm not going to apologize for it.  When large sums of money are at stake (the purse at Enfilade back in the 90s reached $60 one year), there's not a man-jack among us who is content to let the dice have any say.

Skeptical, are ya? That's fine. I'm not asking you to believe me.

I got two stories for ya. 

Playing Jaren Wilson at WWF '97.  Poor kid!  He had no idea that the fix was in.

The first one is the story of my game with Jaren Wilson, which took place in Park City, Utah in 1997.  Jaren was a newbie; an inexperienced player.  We were set up to play a scenario called The Red Wave.  Standard German hedgehog defense against uncoordinated but numerous Russians.  1941.  Well, I "arranged" to win choice of sides through some intense lobbying of the tourney director, Tim Wilson (no relation to poor Jaren).  I chose the Germans.  The word on the street about Red Wave was that the Germans couldn't lose.

Then, we got to the game.  Well, imagine my surprise!  Jaren was under the illusion that, if he played a good game and had a little luck, he might win!  Gotta hand it to the kid.  He showed a lot of skill and imagination in pressing his attack.  At the end of the game, he had me all balled up in one or two stone buildings, just waiting to be overrun by his platoon of tanks. In short, he was about to win... and there were all kinds of reasons that that just couldn't happen.

And, of course, I had my contingency plan.  Before the tourney, I'd worked out an exchange of favors with Tom Jazbutis.  You know?  One of those "You help me; I help you" kind of gigs.  So, I shoot Jazz a signal and he comes and sits nearby all nonchalant.  Then, while poor Jaren is poring over the board, counting Movement Points, or calculating his odds of Bog, or something silly like that, Jazz slips me the "special dice."

From that point on, I never rolled higher than a "4."  It was the most amazing hot streak any of us had ever seen.  Poor old Jaren even laughed about it.  Tell you the truth, I kinda feel bad about it all these years later.

Backroom deal-making, WWF '95

The other story doesn't end so nice for me.   And this one will give you a better idea of just how deep the corruption goes.

This was in 2001, when the 2nd Edition of the rulebook came out.  Let me tell you, it is truly a testament to human persistence that the 2nd Edition ever made it to print.  All the lobbying and deal-making that went into that process brought out the very worst in most of us.  Bitter fights over whether or not immobilized AFV might be held in Melee by armed enemy infantry.  Vicious debates about platoon movement, LOS along cliff hex sides, half-level Height Advantage, Smoke Exponents for half-squads.

But I came away from the whole thing quite satisfied.  I had successfully lobbied Perry Cocke, the rulebook executor, to include language that made infantry crews manning Guns to be considered squad-equivalents.

You see, Dave Hauth and I were scheduled to play Red Barricades soon.  I was to be the Russians.  My plan for success involved buying howitzers and AT guns and artillery pieces and emplacing them in fortified Factory locations.

The deal with Perry would make it so that, in my game with Dave, he would be unable to advance his Germans into close combat with my gun-manning crews.

Months later, after the 2nd Edition was well-out and published, Dave and I had our game.  And sure enough, long about Day 4, the great moment arrived.  Dave had purchased Pioneers and was set to charge against my line of hidden Guns.  The day went back and forth, but as Fate would have it, the culmination came when Dave tried, on the last German player turn, to advance into a fortified building hex with my infantry crew and 76* howitzer.

"You can't!" I said.  "That hex is fortified and occupied by my Gun-manning crew.  That makes them a squad-equivalent!"

Dave calmly opened the Rule Book to page A11, rule 5.5 and read "...if an Infantry crew/HS is manning a Gun, it is considered equal to a squad for stacking purposes." As if to emphasize the extent of his triumph, he added "Stacking purposes only."

For a moment I was bewildered.  There must be some mistake!  Perry and I had a deal!

But then, it hit me.  Somewhere in some backroom of this Byzantium that I helped create, this thing we call ASL, Dave had cut his own deal with someone.  I'd been out-foxed and double-crossed.  He continued speaking:  "So, let's see, I advance in 3 Pioneer squads and a concealed 10-3 leader against your 127 crew.  Ambush roll?"

Numb, I dropped a die.  Dave went on:  "You roll 4.  I roll 2.  Minus 3 for leadership, minus 2 for concealment.  German ambush.  Odds are 25 to one.  I'll declare hand-to-hand." 

He dropped his dice into the tower.  I didn't bother looking at the result.  "Well-played," I said.  It was all I could manage.

I conceded the campaign at the end of the scenario.  No hard feelings.  Business is business, after all.

The politics of ASL, my friends.  The politics of ASL.

ASL: It's ours, guys... it lives and dies with us

Note to readers: This post won't make a lick of sense to anyone who isn't familiar with the Advanced Squad Leader game system.

Not just a game... an identity!

Boy, I'll tell ya, that ol' river just keeps on rollin'.

Just the other night, Friday night, Dave Hauth and I quit --that's right, up and quit --a game of Sowchos 79 just as the scenario was at its crux.  Dave had his Germans halfway into the board 3 village and his armor on the hills drawing a bead on my machine-gun nest, but my big KV tanks were lumbering onto the board to try to salvage the situation. And then, midway into Dave's player turn 5, right after his Prep Fire Phase, we just quit.

To repeat:  we stood down from a contest with the issue still in doubt.  Can you believe it?

Granted it was 2am, and we were both dog tired after each having had a full work day. Still, there was a time, say 15 years ago, when we would have powered on through 'til dawn or beyond 'til one or the other abandoned all hope.

Getting old, I suppose.

Got me to thinkin'.

Jeff DeBraal and Dave Hauth at Wild West Fest '99

Advanced Squad Leader came out, when? Back in '87 or '88? Twenty-odd years, now.

Remember the old Avalon Hill Game Company? There is a certain demographic of men, age range roughly 35 to 65, for which the Avalon Hill Game Company was the fount of boundless hours of entertainment.

That's us. That is we. We're those men. All of us amateur historians who probably lacked the discipline to be really good at chess, but who loved to play games. History geeks who could spend hours speculating about how the entire flow of human events, all its grandeur and squalor, might have been altered into something entirely different if only, say, Napoleon had opted to commit the Old Guard at Borodino, or if Von Paulus had disregarded Hitler's order and pulled the Sixth Army back from the banks of the icy Volga.

Over the years, we've formed a community, an identity.

Tom Repetti awards Andre Danielson the Horse's Ass Trophy for going 0-6 at Wild West Fest '99

When ASL came out I was all over it. I took the rulebook to class with me in college, held it in my lap, beneath the desk, and read while my professor lectured about something not nearly so important. (You know? Sociology or electronic theory or some such.) As I read, I knew that I had found a system that fulfilled all my desires as a complete and comprehensive game. A game that could recreate the mythic historic period that had occurred roughly 20 years before I was born. The great global conflict that we, in the United States, call World War II.

Bob Oppen takes on Tim Hundsdorfer at Wild West Fest '95

In college, my friend Mark Hoyt and I spent --not just hours --days playing the game. Neglecting our studies, ignoring our friends. Mark Hoyt, who, had it not been for this game, I would probably never have befriended, he being a conservative and a Christian, and me being a godless liberal. Engineering students that we were, toward the end of our senior year, Mark and I calculated that, in aggregate, we had spent a full month of 24-hour days over the previous two years of college playing ASL.

After I graduated, I moved from my hometown in southern Oregon up to the (relatively) big city of Portland and met many more guys who, just like me, loved to play the game. In fact, ASL has introduced me to some of my very best friends. Andre Danielson, Dave Hauth, Stewart King, Sonny Hayes-Eberts... the list goes on and on. In Portland, we eventually formed our own club, the Berserk Commissars that, in its heyday had a dozen dedicated ASL players. But we were more than a club of game-playing geeks. We were a community of friends. We saw each other through marriages and divorces, growing families, aging parents.

Berserk Commissars at Wild West Fest '97

Front seat: Bruce Billett, Stewart King (driving)

Back seat: Carey Cardon, Andre Danielson, yours truly

And nationwide, of course, there is an ASL community. I have been to Maryland exactly once in my life: when I went to Bowie to participate in the Winter Offensive tournament back in 1996. I have good friends from all over the country. Hell, from all over the world! When I went to Sweden in 1999, I took a train ride from Stockholm to Gävle with the express purpose of getting in a game or two with Patrik Manlig.

Well, I guess I'm straying pretty far into my reverie, but the point is this: Boys, we're a dying breed.

The kids these days, they're all into their PS-2's and their Wii's and their first-person shooters. Try getting a teenager to sit down at a hexagonal-grid geomorphic board map and explaining "This little cardboard square represents a PAK38. If you place it with the depiction thusly, it's covered arc is defined to be thus-and-so." Said teenager's mind is far, far away, fighting World of Warcraft Forest Trolls before you can finish the sentence.

Mark (Snave) Evans, myself, and Timbo Wilson at WildWest Fest '98

There's no future in games that have you sitting hunched over a table for 3 to 10 hours, mumbling cryptic phrases to each other, then dropping dice into a tower and discerning an outcome from the result. Take a look around, the next time you go to an ASL tournament. How many young faces, say people under 30, do you see? There aren't any new recruits, boys. It's just us.

And we're getting old.

We've had a few casualties already. Remember Carey Cardon? Or Kent Smoak?

Well, it's inevitable. But I like to look at it this way: ASL is ours. It belongs uniquely to us. It's our thing. When the last ASL player rolls his last MC, ASL will have passed into the foggy ruins of time with him. But, if we're lucky, there'll be a well-lighted game room up there in the celestial other-world, with dice towers and well-organized counter storage systems.

When we get there, I wanna play Pleva.

***

"Six up two."

"Roll it."

The dice drop. Clack, clack.

"That's a one check."

"And my sniper... (clack) Pin. (clack) Break. (clack) Break. (clack) Heat of battle!"

"Roll it."

Again, the clacking.

"Minus 1, elite. Plus 2, Russian. Berserk!"

"Sucks. Don't forget your sniper roll."

"Gotta love this game, man."

"Yeah. Gotta love it."