Inaugural SPI Alive in 2025! (Part Deux)

Aaron Danis, 11 August 2025

Mea culpa: Sorry it’s taken so long for part 2, but I spent the last week at the Connections professional wargaming conference (the write-up for that will be published next week). Part 1 of the SPI conference is available here if you missed it.

Day 3 (Friday)

Day 3 started with our 2-on-2 Drive on Stalingrad game getting wrapped up. By late in Day 2 the Russian lines had solidified to the point where my partner Rick Cundiff and I were teeing up select Soviet Guards counterattacks against German breakthroughs on the north map, as well as sending some Soviet infantry and cav divisions to recapture ungarrisoned German-held victory point towns in the south, requiring an Axis response (done efficiently by Lance sending the Italians and Rumanians stiffened by a few German infantry divisions to mop up). By this point (Turns 8-9) the Germans had lost 5 full infantry divisions in combat, and OKW had withdrawn 2 panzer and 1 mech divisions.

The biggest issue was mastering the precarious German supply situation, which relies on skillfully blending 3 things: the painfully slow railroad converversion rate of 3 hexes (total) per turn; using the German truck chains, which create a supply depot at the end of the chain good for one turn to any units within its radius; or air supply (not the band!) which is only good for one phase in a turn. There is little room for error if the German wants to maintain consistent supply. The Soviets, on the other hand, have largely interior lines and have new units popping up everywhere the Germans aren’t. The biggest problem for the Soviets is keeping enough headquarters units alive to keep their units in supply…they are inviting targets for German overruns.

click images to enlarge

A good chunk of the German spearheads outside of Stalingrad were Out of Supply for a couple of turns and could only watch while the Soviets piled six two-sided Guards infantry divisions in the city with 3-high stacks protecting the outskirts of town. A German bridgehead forced across the Don River west of Stalingrad was contained and counterattacked using the plentiful Soviet reinforcements. We collectively decided to call the game so we could move on to other games. I’d like to switch sides next year after we clear up the very bare-bone Don River bridgehead rules that were created by “someone” at SPI (it was not designer Brad Hessel), and do some research on the German supply process to verify if it is close to reality.

The next game was the Cauldron folio from the North Africa quad played against my very able German opponent Martin Spetz. He wanted revenge for denying him the victory point city of Voronezh in DoS, and he would get it in spades. Cauldron has the reputation as the “best” game in that quad, but the Allies start in a precarious position with an open flank (it is the desert, after all) and both Afrika Korps panzer divisions cozied up against it. Before I could even do my first move, I had lost the better part of a brigade of my best tanks (the M3 Grant/Lee). He also pushed his Italians through the minefields more quickly than I thought he could, and it was over in 3 turns. I need to go back and review this battle and why everyone thought it was the highest-rated of the quad, including me!

This also is where the day got very interesting. Former SPI designer David Isby showed up while we were playing! I immediately felt bad because we weren’t playing the Crusader folio from the quad, which he co-designed. Nor was To the Green Fields Beyond set up anywhere in the room, which he famously designed. He was wearing one of Lance Manion’s excellent t-shirts with that box art on the front. He stayed for about 40 minutes chatting about the SPI days. Little did I know that I would see him again in two weeks at the Connections 2025 Professional Wargame conference in Columbia, Maryland.

If there were themes to this conference, it was that the series games were popular…the various folios, the Panzergruppe Guderian (PGG) system, and the original SPI Great Battles of the American Civil War (GBACW) and its predecessors (accept no substitutes!).

The PGG series consists of the title game, DoS, Kharkov, Four Battles of Army Group South (AGS) (folios), Leningrad, Cobra (the Allies breakout from Normandy), and Fulda Gap (1970s NATO vs Soviets). All were played over the week except the last two, and two of the AGS folios. Two of us brought our oversized (5/8^th inch) Camelot Games reprints of PGG, and I have to say, its great playing on a bigger, laminated map with bigger counters mounted on laminated plastic. They aren’t cheap, but if you play this a lot, it’s easier on your eyes. Camelot also added vehicle icons for the armored and mech unit counters (see pic below). PGG was played at least 7 times that I saw, so a PGG tournament next year is doable.

John Hertz and Paul Purman play “computer assisted” Kharkov (not really but it looks cool!) (L), and (R) a morning mini-game of Leningrad.

On Saturday a few of us took more time to visit some of the amazing, jaw-dropping, expensive, ostentatious, and just plain great miniatures games going on throughout the conference center. No public space went unused. A couple of our group played a bit as well.

Medieval; those are some impressive forts!

US Civil War ground (with hexes!) (L) and naval on the river (R)

World War II scenarios

Modern Ukraine, from opposite sides of the table. This game had word-of-mouth buzz.

The dedication and investment by our fellow miniatures gamers is impressive. I hope to buy enough kit to run Dunn Kempf someday (minus the giant boards), and I can already see that it’s not going to be cheap and it will take some storage space.

The vendor area was fantastic. In addition to a seemingly endless supply of miniatures vendors, there were companies and stores selling board wargames as well. Dietz Foundation (Littoral Commander series) and Decision Games (we all know DG!) had booths there. Little did know that the vendors were told ahead of time that there would be SPI gamers present, and many brought some SPI classics (aren’t they all?) to sell, several in great shape. Other used classic games from Avalon Hill, GDW, XTR, and Victory Games, among others, also were on sale. I was unprepared for this and will be better prepared next year (FYI, you can wheel and deal on prices, and they drop by the time Sunday rolls around since vendors hate bringing their stock home).

Lest I forget, I visited the War College speaker area I mentioned in Part I, and I was impressed by the facilities. This is another area where I need to pay more attention next year.

Welcome to the War College spaces!

All the games I mentioned previously, to include WiE, continued on Saturday. A few of the usual suspects, however, went in the opposite direction and broke out Strike Force One, where the rules are bigger than the map and 10 counters! (Pics courtesy of Russ Howard and Martin Spetz)

The Napoleon’s Last Battles quad campaign game was set up (L), but the two players who were supposed to battle it out kept missing each other, so I was able to squeeze in a quick game of Quatre Bras with Henry (R). His French captured the crossroads but somehow I ended up with a few more VPs, so I consider it a draw (right picture courtesy of Martin Spetz).

Day 5 (Sunday)

Amazingly, by Sunday morning most of the miniature’s gamers had broken down their games and were departing. But they have much more overhead to pack up than board wargamers do (unless you are playing WiE or TSS or are Russ bringing his entire collection of SPI games from Omaha, Nebraska, LOL).

Parting is such sweet sorry, and I met some amazing people and fellow SPI gamers at this event. I regret not being able to talk to everyone, which is a resolution for next year. The big games were picked up, my friend Lance and Rick Cundiff played a truncated game of PGG, and I sorted through a beat-up copy of Wurzburg I brought along to make sure I had all the counters (I did!). Russ played a game of Viking from the Pre-Seventeenth Century Tactical Game System (aka PRESTAGS) collection (see pics below, left pic courtesy of Martin Spetz).

We all chatted a bit about next year and agreed SPI Fest is worth running back. The Historical Miniatures Gaming Society (HMGS) leaders who put on Historicon loved us, and we loved their excellent support. Based on initial feedback from our players and those who commented on social media, we may need more room next year. Since I live only 3 hours away in Delaware, I will assist Russ in whatever needs to be done. Thank-you Russ; long live SPI!

Here are a few links if you want to see more pictures and other viewpoints than I could pack into this review.

• SPI Wargame Resources (see Russ’s full After Action Review here!)
• SPI Games Facebook Page – More pictures from Martin Spetz and others posted in more-or-less real time
• Bill’s Wargame World interview with Russ

Till next year!

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