CELEBRATE HISTORY I attended the first annual Celebrate History exposition in South San Francisco, CA from February 13-15th 1998. Celebrate History was a convention/show/exhibition that billed itself as "All eras, all interest, all together." As one might expect, anything that attempts to cater to all interests ends up catering to none well. Its promoters hope to not only have a second year but to begin having similar shows sponsored all over the country.

The show was a mix of living history, wargaming, and historical convention. Periods from Napoleonic through Modern day were represented with the heaviest coverage in the Napoleonic and American Civil War eras. My biggest complaint with the show was that they only had a few events on a specific period that were often held at the same time, thus forcing the attendees to choose one over another. I attended seminars featuring fighter aces from the European Theater in W.W.II, The PB4Y Story, model master Sheperd Paine, and retired Air Force general Steve Ritchie. Gen. Ritchie shot down two Migs in Vietnam and his seminars alone were worth the price of admission. If you ever get a chance to hear him speak do it! The man is simply a phenomenal presenter and storyteller. In between lectures I filled my time mostly by roaming the exhibit hall, checking out the gaming room and scale model exhibits, and watching some of the living history demonstrations (Civil War drill and such). The exhibit hall was quite good with game, book, and historical paraphernalia dealers aplenty. The gaming was a big disappointment for me. The majority of the games seemed to be from the Napoleonic or Civil War period and the few that were not took place during the few seminars I wanted attend. This was not a fault of the show as much as the area. The San Francisco area seems to have very few W.W.II gamers. I did get a chance to watch some Krieg!, various miniature air battles, and play a game of Tigers in the Mist with the designer Ray Freeman. TitM is a fun beer & pretzels game but has a bit too much of a dicey Risk feel to it for my tastes. Craig Taylor, Larry Bond, and Frank Chadwick were all supposedly there but, unfortunately, I never got to meet them.

The promoters attempted to make the show a family event and had a number of historical fashion shows and other events for the ladies as well as a very well attended historical costume ball. Overall it was a worthwhile time and with some growth could become quite a treat.

WET STUFF For some odd reason I have been thinking a lot about an old friend of the family lately. He was a SB2C Helldiver pilot based on the aircraft carrier Essex in W.W.II. As a child, I used to sit entranced by his war stories. His influence was possibly the reason I became interested in military matters and related hobbies.

Because of my reminiscences I dusted off a number of products and took a fresh look at them. First, I pulled out my copy of Squadron Signals SB2C Helldiver from their Detail and Scale series. This series is geared towards the model builder but has a wealth of information for anyone interested in the topics covered. Avalon Hill's Flat Top is without a doubt the best operational level naval game I have ever played. I only wish they would do an expansion for the later war years. Victory Games Carrier is a great solitaire game that will keep you up late nights trying to get in "just one more turn".

On the miniatures front I recently got a copy of The Rising Sun by Clash of Arms Games. The Rising Sun takes their second edition Command at Sea miniature rules to the Pacific. Over 50 scenarios, a huge data book, and full-color counters give one everything needed to play. The CaS rules strike a reasonable balance between quick play and historical/technical accuracy. The one disappointment is that there is no real provision for operational matters. You can play with multi-hour turns but the micro-management would quickly become laborious at this larger scale. CaS is best suited to tactical engagements. Hopefully, Clash of Arms will address this gap. Look for the third edition CaS rules soon.

I also picked up a few miniatures for use with Rising Sun. As usual, GHQ provides the most exquisitely detailed 1/2400 scale ships available. But with capital ships costing $7 to $15 each, I have to wonder if they are worth it for anything bigger than ship duels. C-in-C Miniatures makes a line of 1/2400 scale ships that are not as well done as GHQs, but they are good and cost about half as much. In addition, C-in-C offers quantity discounts. I also recently got a catalog from a small outfit called Panzerschiffe Model Ships. They make a line of 1/2400 scale ships that are one piece (no separate turrets or bridges) resin castings. The detail on these ships is even less than that of the C-in-C ships, but at only a couple dollars per capital ship, they could be a good source for larger fleets.

The biggest surprise of this whole naval journey had to be SSG's The Complete Carriers at War game. As the name implies, it is the complete collection of their Carriers at War PC game and its expansions. The Complete collection was produced in 1995 and the original game a year or two before that so it is quite ancient by computer game standards. It is a testimony to the design that CaW is still a great game. I never really got around to playing it when I originally bought it. It has certainly been my loss because I have been missing out on a lot of fun. The AI in the game is the best I have seen--it has beaten me more times than I care to admit. The graphics are a bit dated--only in eight bit color--and the sound is almost non-existent, but the interface is reasonably clean and the play engaging and exciting. The game contains a complete and complex scenario designer if the almost 50 provided scenarios are not enough. CaW is a DOS game but the Complete collection is designed to be installed and played from Windows 95. I believe SSG still sells CaW; I wish they would update the game.

SOFT WARS Talonsoft recently released their first campaign expansion for East Front boringly entitled Campaign CD1. Besides finally providing a complete printed manual with three tutorials, the pack has six new nationalities, seven new campaigns, and 50 new scenarios. The new version 1.07 update supposedly fixes the problems with the campaign system and some other minor bugs. A number of the new scenarios are much smaller than the monster ones provided in the base game. The 1.07 update itself is also available to download free of charge on their web site.

I played with the demo of SSI's upcoming Panzer Commander W.W.II tank simulation game for Windows 95. I do not have a 3D graphics card but the demo still ran reasonably well and looked acceptable. Being a tanker I am rather picky about tank simulations and thus did not expect too much. I was pleasantly surprised. I have not played a demo so much since Microsoft's Close Combat. The demo lets you operate the driver, gunner, and tank commander positions of the German Panther and Russian T-34-85 tanks. The game certainly has its flaws, but overall it gives the best representation of tank warfare I have seen to date on the PC. Once you get the controls down you quickly find yourself concentrating on the things tankers worry about, shooting and moving. (Presumably communicating will come with the full game when you are able to command an entire platoon.) As with most current ground-based simulations, trees are non-existent but impenetrable forest bunches, impassable hedgerows, walls, and buildings are abundant. These obstructions, combined with wonderfully undulating terrain, give plenty of features to hide behind and allow real use of hull down positioning. If SSI polishes Panzer Commander a bit more, it may become a must-have for all tread heads.

I just installed CINC Software's fine Spec Sheets 2.0 program for Windows 3.1/95. SS contains full specifications for just about every vehicle or weapon in W.W.II from over 30 nations. The interface is a bit clumsy and the program does not provide any graphics, but it has more information than a shelf full of reference books. The data included cover in-service dates, armor thickness and angle, weight, size, engine specs, weapon muzzle velocity and penetration, and much more. So far I have not found any data I would consider way off the mark. Spec Sheets packs a lot of data into 10MB of disk space.

I finally found some time to play around with HPS Simulation's Aide de Camp 2 program for Windows 95 (now at version 1.04). ADC2 is not a complete game but a game utility. It allows one to play any board game on the computer. Hex and square-based movement is supported but not area or free form movement. ADC2 ships with a complete gameset for Ardennes from The Gamers. ADC2 allows players to move their units, assign attacks, roll dice, make notes, and then send their turn file to their opponent by email who can then run a replay of his or her opponent's actions. ADC2 supports three levels of zoom. In the first level there is a mini version of the full map, in the second the counters are small but readable, and in the third zoom actual scans of the counters are used (or can be used).

The program also allows you to make your own gamesets including the map, counters, and all counter values. I have not yet tried to make my own set yet, but it is no trivial matter. Have no fear though, a number of other companies and individuals have made gamesets for a number of games that are available for a small charge or for free on the Web. Alan Emrich has done a terrific ADC2 set for Krieg! Check Nick Bell's homepage for Alan's set and many more at http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/NicholasBell/.

If you are dying to play your favorite board game by email or are simply tired of the cat wreaking destruction on your setup every night give ADC2 a try.

Without a doubt, my favorite new computer game is TalonSoft's The Operational Art of War, Volume 1. The game covers operational warfare from 1939-55. In this case "operational level" is defined as "a view of the battlefield on a scale just exceeding that at which differing ranges of various direct fire weapons are significant." The game scale is thus variable from 2.5km to 50km hexes and half day to full week turns. The emphasis is on ground combat and both air and naval operations are abstracted.

TOAW uses an incredibly well designed interface--excluding the dark color and horribly hard to read typeface--that makes the game mechanics a breeze and thus leaves the player free to concentrate on game play. The seventeen included scenarios and all encompassing scenario editor give The Operational Art of War terrific replay value. If you like operational level games get yourself a copy of The Operational Art of War.

BATTLEFIELD To complement my two rule supplements, Easy Eight's Battleground: World War Two main ruleset finally arrived. BG:WW2 is a set of skirmish level miniature rules. The high quality of the expansions is mirrored in the main rulebook. The best way I can describe the game system is as a mix of Avalon Hill's Advanced Squad Leader and West End's Soldiers. It uses a flexible turn sequence based on initiative where players move their squads or vehicles according to random activations. Each unit has a number of actions it can use when it is activated to perform movement and combat activities. The BG:WW2 rules cover all the major elements of squad level WW2 combat including machine gun rules that even cover plunging fire. The game has a great sighting system that prevents the player from acting on all he can see. Tank operations are handled in a unique manner; the actions of the various individual crew members dictate what the tank can do during its activation. The equipment detail in BG:WW2 is only moderate but is sufficient to portray the proper feel but not too much to bog the flow of the game. The overall result is a very fluid and quick playing game that captures the excitement of squad level actions with a minimum of fuss and bother. Highly recommended.

Easy Eight has released a couple more supplements to BG:WW2 since my last column. Tanker's Challenge is a pack of 36 tank charts with a number of new armor rules. The purpose of TC was to provide only the charts, but I was still a bit disappointed that not even a couple tank heavy scenarios were included. To Easy Eight's credit they have posted all the new rules on their Web site. Purchase of TC is only necessary if you want the charts.

The latest BG:WW2 supplement is Normandy Nightmare. NN covers the battles around St. Lo in 1944. NN is similar to the earlier Red Devils and Panthers East supplements. It includes a nice historical summary of the action, details of American G.I. organization and equipment, and a handful of new rules including Bocage combat. Like the other supplements, NN is sprinkled with special characters, great photos, original art, and seven great scenarios. The scenarios in NN are mostly urban battles in the destroyed city. My only gripe with NN is that no good armor scenarios are provided; Normandy Nightmare is definitely an infantry supplement. I was looking forward to the opportunity of pitting a couple platoons of Shermans against a couple Tigers among the Hedgerows. Nonetheless, Normandy Nightmare is another fine addition to the BG:WW2 line and will not disappoint.

TINY TERRAIN I got a chance to see GHQ's Normandy terrain making book along with a couple of finished samples of their Terrain Maker pieces. Normandy is 30 pages with a couple color page shots of finished Terrain Maker boards. The Terrain Maker system is an easy, elegant system of four inch Styrofoam hexes of various thickness that you can paint and sculpt in myriad ways to form incredibly realistic terrain boards for gaming. The Normandy book outlines all the techniques you will need to build just about any terrain feature. As a bonus the book includes eight Normandy-based scenarios that can be used with any platoon level rules. The only real disadvantage to Terrain Maker, besides the work involved, is that you will need a lot of it to cover an average gaming table and thus the system looses some of its practicality.

IN THE BREACH On my way to reading Michael Reynold's Steel Inferno: I SS Panzer Corps in Normandy I got side-tracked by Gary L. Simpson's Tiger Ace: The Life Story of Panzer Commander Michael Wittmann, which is a 346 page book covering the life of Germany's most decorated tanker ace, Tiger Ace contains abundant appendices that cover technical aspects of the Tiger I as well as a great selection of photos. Simpson did some outstanding research for this book including a visit to an armor museum to sit in the vehicles Wittmann manned and interviewed Wittman's widow. Unfortunately, the copyediting is absolutely abysmal. Every paragraph has at least one spelling error, grammatical error, or botched sentence that simply does not make any sense. I have never read such a poorly edited book and this detracted heavily from what would have been an excellent historical account and a riveting story.

Keeping with my recent nautical reminiscences, I am about half way through Eric Hammel's new Carrier Clash: The Invasion of Guadalcanal & the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, August 1942. The book contains 356 pages, nine of which contain personal photos of many of the participants and equipment that took part in the battle as well as an order of battle for the Guadalcanal campaign. Hammel briefly covers the beginnings of carrier warfare and then jumps right into the start of the campaign. His writing is clean and his ability to weave the various happenings of the campaign together is very good. Hammel does a good job of presenting the details of the campaign as well as placing you in the middle of the action. My only major gripe with the book is that it only has three little maps. How someone can write about one of the major naval campaigns of the 20th Century and use only three little maps--only one of which is really useful--truly baffles me. As a result, some of the action is a bit harder to follow than it should be, but overall, the book is a good read.

ON THE WEB A couple notable sites this issue: First is George R. Bradford's AFV News (http://www.mo-money.com/AFV-news/) site. George has a lot of great info for the armor enthusiast. The second site is Alan Emrich's The Krieg! Home Page (http://members.aol.com/alanemrich/krieg-hp.htm). If you play Krieg! then look no further, this site has it all: variants, tips, strategies, expansions, errata, and more.

IN THE READY RACK Items to look for next time: I will finally get around to reading Michael Reynold's Steel Inferno: I SS Panzer Corps in Normandy. I have had a chance to play with Schwerpunkt's new Storm in the West. With any luck I will also be able to attend one of a number of local wargame conventions coming up in the next few months. I will also let you know about my experiences ordering wargaming paraphernalia over the Web.

Check our Movement to Contact section for links to most of the items mentioned in this article as well as even more goodies. Target! Cease-fire.