Trumpeter Salute 2013 After-Action Report

Corey has already done a nice report from the field on his gaming Friday evening, with some great photos, but here’s the rest of the weekend from my perspective!

We headed over from Victoria Friday afternoon, making good time and even seeing orca whales from the ferry, which I haven’t seen in years. Friday evening I spent flying in Rene’s perpetual World War One air combat game. I was doing fairly well until a Fokker Dr1 slipped in behind my Camel and blew me away in one savage burst!

camel
Smoked Camel! Attempting to defend a Brisfit bomber, I let a Fokker Dr.1 triplane slip in behind me and he blows my engine clean off it’s mounts! Click to view larger over on Flickr.

Saturday turned out to be “Soviet Saturday” for me! I played the 30mm Dust Warfare skirmish system with Martin (an old friend) and his nephew Riley (this was Riley’s first gaming convention!) and another gamer in the morning, Weird War Germans vs Soviets over cardboard ruins Martin and I had been up until 2am assembling! It’s a fast system with some interesting features, and I want to have another bash at it at some point.

Saturday afternoon it was time for my big Russian Civil War game, with a full set of six players and loads of toys on the table – the White Russians had a SPAD XIII for air support and a field gun, while the Reds had a huge horde of cavalry, an armoured car and an armoured train! The cavalry did better this game than they have ever done before, completely shattering one wing of the defending White force by themselves.

reds
Red forces advance! Sailors on either side of the train and armoured car, and a huge Red cavalry unit in front, heading towards the woods!

We rounded out Saturday evening with more Russian-German action, this time a WW2 Eastern Front scenario of a scratch Soviet force trying to hold off flanking attacks by German panzers. The 15mm figures and vehicles were really well done, and the terrain was elegant. It was a close fight, with the Germans losing a fair number of tanks to Soviet infantry but being positioned by the end of the game to push their untouched reinforced infantry units into the Russian villages with their remaining tanks in support.

Sunday Martin and I played Colin’s very nice and well-run War of 1812 scenario, a re-creation of the Battle of Crysler’s Farm 200 years after it actually happened. I played the invading Americans with two other gamers, and we got our asses absolutely handed to us by the British/Canadian/Mohawk defenders. Nevertheless, we apparently did better than the Americans had actually done historically – we did manage to drive one of the two big British infantry regiments from the field, but the effort wrecked my brigade, while Canadian militia light troops and British cannon drove the rest of the Americans off!

1812
The Americans advance confidently toward the British-Canadian defenders. A few turns later they’d be lurching backward in a considerably less controlled fashion!

The rest of my twenty photos from Trumpeter Salute 2013 are over on my Flickr account. Corey and Martin (who both have more capable cameras than I do!) both took more great photos, so I’ll try to get some of those up here on the Warbard soon.

2 thoughts on “Trumpeter Salute 2013 After-Action Report”

    1. Thanks! It was a great convention, I’ve gone five out of the last six years so a lot of familiar faces and friends I only really see at Trumpeter. Not quite as many games this year, but still a high point of the gaming year for me! — Brian

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