The Wargamer

He wasn’t your typical guest of honor to be sure, but he certainly made the festivities unique. His name was Miles Quintus Agricolus, or something akin to Private Quint Farmer for all you non-Latin speakers out there, and from 17 – 19 March 2006, The Eastern Chapter of the Historical Miniatures Gaming Society (HMGS East) made him its guest of honor at Cold Wars 2006, held once again at Lancaster, PA’s Host Resort. Cold Wars is the Chapter’s winter convention, this year themed the Rise and Fall of Rome – A Millennia of War, and good ole Quint was just about everywhere you looked. Some times he dropped by in 15 mm, some times in 25, and sometimes in the guise of flesh and blood reenactors only too eager to recruit and interpret daily life for one of Caesar’s lads on the frontier. Far be it from me to note to my Rome: Total War corrupted colleagues they were wearing white, not red, uniforms, but that is another story.

There were nearly 2100 attendees at this, one of the Chapter’s junior conventions, and believe me, many took the theme to heart. In fact, some seemed to go just a tad overboard, or perhaps they simply misunderstood. One chap, rather than building a Roman army to do battle, actually built Rome itself. On another table one member actually custom built a good 12 feet of Hadrian’s Wall in 25 mm (and, no I couldn’t find a Keira Knightly figure) while across the hall several large scale biremes and triremes were dropping off more 25 mm legionnaires to do battle with their many foes. When you count all the SPQR standards that always seem to show up in our ubiquitous Ancient’s tournament and a convention book illustrated by Osprey, there were literally more Romans at this convention than you could shake a toga at.

Outside the tournament schedule, which not only included Ancients but Renaissance and Flames of War events as well, there were 335 events on the gaming docket, certainly something for everyone. The breakdown for all these games was as follows: