Tuesday, July 22, 2014

The HAWKs Celebrate Their 20th Anniversary at Historicon

Saturday night at Historicon the HAWKs (Harford Area Weekely Kriegspielers) celebrated their 20 anniversary.  The festivities included a large sheet cake, which was shared with all who were there in the club's room at the convention.
The HAWKs was formed as an outgrowth of a non-credit course, that was called "Wargaming With Miniatures", held at the local community college in the Spring of 1994.  The course was run by Andy Haag, who went along to become one of the founding members of the club. Two participants in that original course are still active in the club today, Eric Schlegel, and myself. Slowly the club grew by word of mouth, and today we have over 20 active members.
Buck Surdu gives a short speech prior to the cake cutting
For a complete history of the club, see here: HAWKs History
Member Bill Acheson does the honorary first cut of the cake with a Franco-Prussian era cavalry saber.  The club got special permission from HMGS to bring the saber in for the ceremony.

The cake is cut for the crowd

The earliest known picture of a HAWKs meeting, taken in 1996.  The club was meeting in my basement at that time. The game is a Stalingrad Factory game.  Shown from left to right are Buck  Surdu, Jamie Davis, Doug Rockwell, Andy Haag, and Eric Schlegel.

The club today.

2 comments:

  1. I've played that Stalingrad factory game!

    Buck had the different rooms initially separated and would put the back together in their proper order only as the players explored. Made for some surprising moments when you ran down through a door and appeared over there in that section full of angry enemy. I think that was the first BAPS game I ever played.

    Congratulations to the HAWKS and here's to 20 more years of gaming fun

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    1. Yep, that's the game! :) I remember it being a lot of fun. As I recall I was in a room with another fellow who tried to toss a grenade through the door into another room, and it hit the doorframe and bounced back into our room. Ouch!

      Thanks for the congrats!

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