COW 2024

COW 2024

COW was held for the second time at Missenden Abbey in Gt Missenden in Buckinghamshire, and I think its set to be our permanent home from now on - assuming they'll keep having us back. It's a wonderful venue, with a wide range of different sized rooms for games, a big plenary room, tea and coffee on-tap (and even a bar in the evenings), lots of bedrooms, excellent food, friendly staff, a huge lawn, a wood and a railway station within easy walking distance.

Just over 50 members attended for the weekend. There were about 42 sessions (almost all games, with just a few "illustrated" discussions), with up to 6 games running simultaneously!

View the COW 2024 Programme.

Missenden Abbey

Friday Evening Games

On Friday there is traditionally a plenary game to act as an ice-breaker. This time it was the Papal Conclave of 1559, with each of playing a cardinal and either trying to be elected Pope, or more likely acheive our own personal goals (making money, securing offices, ensuring the Pope met our requirements). There was also an element of street skirmishing and mob rule involving the Swiss Guard and various street factions. After that there were a number of mostly shorter games for people to play - my sessions of Rubble Town finished around 1am, and othre games included War in the Clouds, Black September and Enemy Coast Ahead.

Rubble Town Modern in full swing with two solo games in operation.

 Saturday Games

Twenty-nine games were available on Saturday. There may even have been a few more as COW as a bit of an "unconference" vibe and if there's a spare slot you can just add a game for it onto the big wall planner. Most games have a sign-up sheet which people use on arrival and throughout the weekend to get signed up for a game.

Company Operations in the Built Environment - in 6mm
Cityfight 2024 - and updated version of the SPI classic played back-to-back
Hinds and T72s attack in Cold War Blitzspiel
National Guard - an RPG-lite patrol game set in the Ukrainian rear area
Dupplin Moor - 100YW using Test of Resolve, and led by the author (centre)
A close of up Dupplin Moor

Sunday Morning Games

Games usually only run on Sunday morning, so that we can hold the AGM immediately after lunch and people can make a reasonable getaway.

The Urban Calculus - a highly abstracted pol-mil model of modern urban conflicts
We even had our own cartoonist-in-residence!
Top of the Docket - life in the Taiwanese Parliament with a Chinese invasion looming!

Blog Posts

Several WD members run their own blogs. Here are links to their reports on COW2024 which are likely to have more detail of the particular games:

We'll add photos of more games as we receive them. In accordance with the WD privacy policy, if you object to your face being shown in any photo then please advise the webmaster and he'll remove the photo. Please also let him know if there are any errors in the captions!