[Consim-l] What I bought and what I played in 2006

[John Best]

Dear Consimmers,
Well here it is, the last day of the year, and time for one of our consim-l 
rituals.  Looking back at my log for 2006, it looks like I bought six 
wargames in 2006.  The little table below shows the title of the game, where 
it was purchased, the month, and the price.  "Proseks" refers to Proseks 
Military Hobby and Garden Shop in Winfield, Illinois.

La Bataille Quatre Bras--ebay, Jan., $27.90 (unpunched)
Their Finest Hour (1st ed.)--ebay, Feb., $35.00 (unpunched)
Defiance, Battle for Cufra--Proseks, Mar., $12.00 (new)
200 Miles from Moscow--ebay, Aug., $18.00 (new)
The Big Push--Proseks, Nov., $34 (new)
Guadalajara--ebay, Dec., $23.25 (new)

I'm still searching for a copy of La Bataille Ligny and Mont St. Jean so I 
can make a whole Waterloo campaign with the La Bataille series.  Ligny is 
way more expensive than Quatre Bras.  I wanted the 1st ed. of Their Finest 
Hour, even though it has been criticized as being underdeveloped, because I 
wanted the smaller scale "invasion map" that I think came in only the 1st 
ed.  Defiance is a DTP game dealing with an Italian attack on the Ethiopians 
in 1935.  200 Miles is also a DTP game from Perry Moore, and it covers a 
battle from the Russian Civil War.  The Big Push deals with the whole 
campaign on the Somme in World War I, and with Guadalajara, it's back to the 
Italians again, this time in the Spanish Civil War.  Here's a thought to 
ponder: I spent some money on figs to paint, I spent some money on 
subscriptions to wargaming magazines and an academic military history 
journal.  I also spent some money on military history books.  If you add it 
all up, my whole outlay on my "military history hobby" might be $1000 
(probably less than that though).  But on actual games, I spend only about 
$150.  So if we read in a few days that there were something like 60-80 
games published in 2006, my question is, doesn't that seem like a lot of 
games chasing after a small number of dollars?  Two of the games that I 
bought in 2006 didn't make any money for the publisher because they were way 
out of print.  I just mentally did a few "back of the envelope" 
calculations.  Based on that, it wouldn't shock me to discover that the 
whole hex'n'counter wargaming publishing business might be down to only 1-2 
million dollars per year, worldwide.   Well, let's turn to what I played:

Jan. 1--Jan. 22: SPI NATO
Jan. 22--Feb. 22: Bundeswehr
Feb. 23--Sept. 20: L'Armee Du Nord
Sept. 21--Oct. 20: Battles for the Ardennes
Oct. 21--Nov. 30: The Big Push
Dec. 1--Dec. 8: Berlin 85
Dec. 8--Dec. 31: L'Armee Du Nord

NATO is a game I fondly remembered from when it came out in the 1970s.  I 
finally bought a used copy in 2005 and teamed it up on my table with its 
remake from S&T, Group of Soviet Forces, Germany.  Bundeswehr is one of the 
folio games from an SPI Quad, Modern Battles, or maybe Modern Battles II. 
I've had my copy for a long time, and I got it out mainly to try out some 
ideas about counter-making.  I made a new set of counters for it that were 
back printed with step losses.  I spent a lot of time this year playing an 
older game from Clash of Arms, L'Armee Du Nord (ADN), which I think is the 
only divisional level Waterloo campaign game to show Napoleon's manuevers on 
the Sambre River on Thursday July 15.  I wrote about my earlier experience 
with this game in some detail a while back, drawing some commentary from Ed 
Wimble.  I'll have a little more to say about it in the future, I hope.  I 
also played the Against the Odds game, The Big Push.  The Somme would be a 
really hard campaign to do well in a game; this one didn't cut it for me, 
and was my least fun gaming experience in 2006.  I also played Berlin 85, 
which also uses the same system as Modern Battles.  This game appeared in 
S&T back in 1980 or so.  The countermix and map style were quite an advance 
for them; very colorful for the time.  Ok, well I guess that will wrap 
things up for me here in downstate Illinois.  It'll be interesting to hear 
what the other members of the list bought and played.  Here's hoping 
wherever you might be that you will have a fun year gaming.  Thanks for 
reading.
John Best
jlbest at advancenet.net