Well, our first annual “WW2 Camp” was a success, overall! Unfortunately, two of the players who’d said they’d come didn’t, and though we recruited replacement players for 2 of the days, by the 3rd day, when those were unable to come, I found myself having to take over 2 teams, which kind of skewed the result. (Having a 40-year-old who’d played the game since he was 12 play against 12 year olds was not quite a “fair” match-up, but what else could I do?) Nevertheless, a good time (and hopefully some good learning) was had by all. Since it was a small group, I had us play on a classic board, but made use of as many of the new HBG pieces as I could…
I took some pictures that I’m going to send you guys as soon as they’re sent to me. (I don’t own a camera, so had to borrow one from our head-of-school and a fellow teacher.) On the third day I also set up a game with the big GW1939 board and every one of the newest HBG and FMG pieces that I could to help gin up excitement for the potential for future years and also took pictures of that which I’ll also send you guys. I also finished up a set of task force markers using your downloadable set, including 10 ships and 30 land-based markers, which, again, I also took pictures of to send you guys.
I also created a set of unit stat sheets and set-up charts of my own. The set-up charts are for GW1939, and are my own modification based on those I downloaded, but with changes based on either history (e.g., adding a Dutch flotilla in the Java Sea) or a desire to make use of a greater variety of those cool new HBG (and FMG) unit types. The stat sheets include both a d6 and a d12 version. All three document sets are done in MS Word so that they’re endlessly customizable for other fans out there, and I’m quite willing to make them available to others through your website downloads section if you’re interested… (I don’t know how you guys feel about Word-based downloads, but I thought they’d be useful as it’s a format that others could use to customize more easily than pdf.) I also plan to create a set of “Game Record Sheets” based on the set-up tables which I’d also gladly make available to the HBG community in Word format. I use such Game Record Sheets quite a bit for Risk and AA-based games that I do with students (or with friends), since finishing a game in one sitting is almost impossible. They make recording a game to put away and set up again to continue later relatively painless.