by Aaron Danis, 25 July 2025
My friend Lance and I attended the Russ Gifford’s “SPI Alive in 2025!” (aka SPI Fest) convention held for 5 days from 16-20 July 2025 on the margins of the Historicon Miniatures Convention in lovely Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Russ has been threatening to hold this event for a few years now (mainly in the Great Plains, where he lives) and finally pulled the trigger. “My goals are simple – to celebrate and enjoy the unique experience that SPI gaming represents,” says Gifford. “To do that, you need to PLAY the games. And guys, we ARE running out of time to do that!”
We were not going to miss it!
Day 1 (Wednesday Mid-Afternoon and Evening)
Conference badge, event guidebook, and a miniatures gift in honor of the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary.
My friend and I arrived at the Lancaster County Convention Center (run by Marriott) on Wednesday afternoon to check in and unload our gaming gear. We wanted to stay at the convention center but it sold out incredibly fast on the day a few months prior we were allowed to book the block of rooms for the hotel (and I am a “Marriott guy;” the rooms literally sold out as I was trying to book one on the website!). We got rooms at a Marriott 4 miles away and had no issues getting to the Convention center. On-site parking filled up on Friday and Saturday, but nearby garages handled the overflow, and conference attendees received mostly-free validation!
We dropped our stuff off in the moderately-sized Hickory suite and met Russ Gifford in person for the first time. “Mr. SPI” is as nice a guy in real life as you have come to expect from the SPI Games Facebook page and his website www.spigames.net, and twice as knowledgeable about all things SPI. I hung my SPI Classic Games sign outside the door and we went to registration.
most images click to enlarge
Registration was a breeze if you prepaid and registered online (only $70 fee for 4 days), and we received our badge, guidebook, and a miniatures gift to honor the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary this year. I made the mistake of tossing the guidebook into a bag and not really looking at it until the last day. I missed out on the Historicon War College, which was a series of 30 guest speakers talking on wargaming and historical topics from Thursday-Saturday. There were several I would have liked to see. Also, former SPI designer Dr. Al Nofi was on the agenda to speak about the U.S. Navy from 1923-40, although the time was mis-scheduled and he didn’t give it. He DID end up stopping by our SPI room.
We hung out waiting for others to arrive and chatted as they showed up. We were interested in playing Drive on Stalingrad (DoS, with all official errata), designed by Brad Hessel. We found willing partners in thedynamic duo of Martin Spetz and Rick Cundiff, who came up from Tampa via the Gettysburg Battlefield (which is only a little over 50 miles away and easily can be put on your route coming from the south or west). We had met them before at a Compass Expo a couple years back, and Martin is known for his excellent play aides and storage graphics under his pseudo “Hugewally” on Board Game Geek (BGG). They also are staples on the Facebook wargame pages.
It took us a while to break out and set up my old copy of DoS, and since it was getting late in the day, we only played the first turn. My friend Lance teamed up with Martin to play the Wehrmacht, and I with Rick played the Soviets. Predictably, my thin Soviet line was vaporized on Turn 1 by Martin on the north map, but Rick got a reprieve as Lance’s German forces were frozen on turn 1. Lance made up for it on turn 2. Such is the life of a 1942 Soviet commander.
Smaller games were also on the menu (L–R) Wurzburg; Viking; Nordlingen; The Creature that Ate Sheboygan (in this case, Lancaster). The design genius of the SPI folios shone through in this convention: small, easy, and quick to play.
It was getting late and we were tired, so we went back to our hotels.
Day 2
To kick off day 2, Russ and I compared our SPI t-shirts. His is authentic SPI from back in the day, of course.
Day 2 saw us get down to business in the morning on DoS. There’s nothing quite like waking up early thanks to a fire alarm at your hotel and then having to come in and face the remains of what was once your front lines. The Germans rapidly captured Rostov-on-Don for double victory points but couldn’t get Voronezh because 2 Guards infantry divisions were parked in the city behind the Don River, tripling their strength. Thankfully an infusion of over 20 infantry division and new leaders on turn 2 helped us put together a front line and slow the German advance. It also only took a few turns for the German supply issue (slow rail line conversion and a reliance on truck chains to intermittently stockpile supplies for an offensive) to rear its ugly head and give the Soviets some breathing room so Stalin wouldn’t send us to the gulag. The arrival of over a half-dozen Guards armored corps also gave the Soviets a potent counterattack force that could be shuttled east to west on interior rail lines.
Elsewhere in the room, WiE began to pick up steam. France fell, and the Germans began to eye North Africa and its neighbor to the east, Russia. As someone who had never seen the entire game before, it was neat to see late SPI art director Redmond Simonsen’s production spiral charts. I won’t pretend to understand them, but the players were making them work. Old SPI players have a decidedly love-hate relationship with these. You can always use the standard reinforcement schedules provided with the scenarios.
My friend Lance and I took a break from DoS at lunchtime because we had a cool event that had nothing to do with SPI: we were going to play the old U.S. Army Dunn-Kempf training game (get the rules here) used from the late 1970s through the late 1990s. I had connected with gamemasters Dave Frank and Mike Dunn (no relation to the Dunn who made the rules long ago) over Facebook and volunteered to be the Soviet Opposing Force (OPFOR) independent tank battalion commander with four companies of 41 T-62 tanks and one BMP-1 company with 10 vehicles attacking a U.S. tank company team with 10 M60A1s, (two platoons) 8 M113s (two platoons of infantry), three sections of 6 M-150 TOW vehicles, and a Scout platoon with 4 M114s & 2 Sheridans. I was assigned five brave socialist company commanders who had signed up for the game, and Lance played a tank platoon leader for the capitalist Americans. Four hours after we hit the line of departure, we called it a wrap due to the time limit. The Soviets had one full and one partial Soviet tank companies closing on the final objective (a hill on the far side of the map with only a mixed platoon (+) in our way. Victory was ours for the taking! After nearly 40 years, I got my second chance to play this and want to play again! Next year though, I am brining along the SPI game Firefight, which came along at the about the same time for the same purpose.
With Dunn-Kempf behind us, we returned to Drive on Stalingrad. The German side was struggling to keep supplies flowing (just like real-life), which gave time to the Soviet team to build the defense behind the Don River all the way to Stalingrad (which already was held by 6 Guards divisions), and start conducting harassment attacks in the south out of the mountains against Axis forces. At the end of the night we decided to call it so we could play other games the next day.
On day 2, the Panzergruppe Guderian (PGG) system ruled the roost
The other big games carried on. In TSS the Confederates pushed onto the board and into the Union 1st Corps in a big fight on the Ridges approach Gettysburg from the northwest. In WiE, the fight in North Africa started a bit early as did Operation Barbarossa. The WiE players, knowing time was limited, tried to speed play when possible.
Russ broke out the Blue & Gray games to get walk-ins playing: (L) Chickamauga; (M) Shiloh; (R) Bundeswehr of the Modern Battles II quad (the only game designed by former SPI Librarian Virginia “Ginny” Mulholland and one of my faves!).
James Dunnigan gave everyone a chance…
Across the Universe with Dave Peterson on two different nights and 2 different Hawaiian shirts!
(Righthand pic courtesy of Martin Spetz)
As a wrap on the night, we had a special treat: Dave Peterson gamemaster’ed a playthrough of the SPI roleplaying game (RPG) Universe (which he would do again the next night). Having only played Dungeons & Dragons once in my life, I had no visibility on this game. Dave had 3 players each night, and everyone enjoyed it. I learn something new every day!
End of Part I. Days 3-5 coming soon!
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