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Contact Us Board Members Jeff Cohen - President It all started for me around 1977 when I went to a convention at Loyola University and played in a 15mm Napoleonic miniatures game of Friedland. I started the game commanding a single Russian Cavalry Regiment (Polish Uhlans) and ended the game commanding all the Cavalry on the Russian Right Flank. I met Mike Suszynski that day, and he really introduced me to the hobby, taught me how to paint, and there has been no looking back since.
While Napoleonics will always be my first love, I have managed to collect a fairly large miniatures collection covering Medieval, Napoleonics, Mexican-American War, Civil War, WW II. For now my main efforts have been towards Flames Of War games, putting together some FOW mega games that have been run over the past few years at Little Wars.
As President I have set a few goals for 2008. First and foremost to get firm control of the website, this has been accomplished by Loren and has been updated to reflect the Little Wars 2009 info. To put out a quarterly newsletter that will available to anyone through the website. Loren has some great ideas for the website and newsletter. We will start a series of articles that will cover terrain tips. Everything from setting up a nice terrain battlefield suitable for club or convention that is inexpensive, to making special types of terrain pieces like bocage. Another goal is to bring more children events to the convention, to make Sunday of the convention a day that will feature games, tournaments, painting competitions and other activities. We will be looking for volunteers to help get this going. I can be contacted at the following: jeffriecohen@aol.com
Rodger Kruse - Executive Vice President Like most kids, Wargaming was a hobby my friends and I thought we’d invented. We started copying battle diagrams out of history books (eg, the Bachelder Papers from Gettysburg) and using a coin toss to decide the outcome of combat between one unit and another. With a little more research, the battles, and rules, grew more complex. By the time high school rolled around, a hand full of spilled rivets at the bus stop (plus the always present nickel), moved some of us from paper battles to miniatures. After that, the sky was the limit, sort of.
Driver’s licenses and friends with wheels led to local hobby shops – Dale Bruner’s out in Palatine and the one in Skokie across from the Skokie Swift station come to mind. Games Plus and the Last Square were just figments of the imagination. While at those stores, we found things like SPI’s Terrible Swift Sword and Wellington’s Victory. The monster board games solved the typical gamer problem – not enough cash – until my Senior year in high school. That’s when I got my first introduction to true historical miniatures – if stick Minifigs and $1.98 15 mm Heritage packs fit that bill by today’s standards.
My initial period of interest was Napoleonic – but it had to be. The only other figs we could borrow to game with were French OG Nappy’s. What else, right? As a dedicated Francophobe, and with OG to deal with, its only natural that my first purchases were British Line and Russian Cuirassier. I know they don’t mix, but the rules were Tricorne – cut me some slack!
After college, and the burnout we all experienced with Empire 3, my focus shifted to my real love, ACW, and naval – especially WWI Naval. I still don’t have all of those old Heritage packs painted, but it is the nucleus of my unpainted lead collection!
When you don’t see me hosting an ACW or WWI Naval game at Little Wars, I’ll probably be around the Convention answering questions, or putting out a fire. As a engineer by training, my goals for Little Wars are continuous improvement, and to host a well run Convention. I know the LW team won’t please every taste every year, but I hope by now that you know you can count on a consistent, high quality product.
I can be contacted at the following:krusemssl@aol.com
Kevin Seward - Treasurer I ’ve been gaming with miniatures since 1967. I was inspired by a newspaper article about a group called “Chicago Splashmarks” to attempt adapting Fletcher Pratt’s Naval Rules to the Arab-Israeli War played out in the backyard sandbox with Mini-Tanks. Avalon Hill games came next, along with an ad for a new magazine called Strategy & Tactics. S&T published a set of WW II miniatures rules that led me to Tractics. Its been downhill from there. My primary interest is American military history with occasional excursions into Napoleonics, WW I dogfighting and whatever sparkly thing de jour that catches my eye.
My goals as treasurer are to insure that our bills are paid on time and to safeguard the Society’s funds. I can be contacted at the following: kevswrd@comcast.net
Loren Haberkamp - Membership Vice President / Website I was a history major in college and have been interested in military history since high school. My interests led me to board games like "Risk" and "Axis & Allies" and also historically based computer games. I was originally introduced to the wargaming hobby through Skip Peterson, a co-worker at the time who has since developed into a great friend of mine. I then began gaming with a group of friends that included Skip, Mark Pawelski, Jeff Cohen, John Read and others. Our group continues to get together regularly and we cover every period imaginable, from Napoleonics to American Civil War to World War II. I particularly enjoy the World War II period and this is where I have focused on in building my collection of figures, building and terrain.
My position as Membership Vice President is to make sure that the membership receives their membership cards after the convention. I also update the website and keep the master database, so if you have any changes in your address, or need a membership card, I can be contacted at the following: HMGSMWmembership@yahoo.com
Harlow Stevens - Secretary My first exposure to wargaming came in 1965 with the purchase of Avalon Hill's Bismark game. It then expanded to PBM (Play-by-Mail), found a couple other players in the Chicago area that way. There was a Chicago area group led by Len Lakofka that held a 'Con' somewhere in the city that I went to and from there found out about TSR. I attended GENCON II and have been to at least 20+ since then. As a result, I go involved in D&D and preferred using the miniatures to just pencil and paper. I also started collecting ROCO WWII plastic miniatures and managed to scrounge up a copy of some Rules for WWII miniatures combat (not Tractics) and conducted several large battles in the fraternity in college. I started up an on-line, interactive gaming network back in 1979 called GameMaster, all text, 300 baud modems, and people outside the Chicago calling area had to pay their LD charges as well. It lasted for about 4 years. We were about 20 years ahead of our time. Got very hooked on Magic The Gathering when it first came out, then had great hopes for GW's Epic 40K (version #4) 6mm miniatures, but in usual GW fashion, they pulled the plug on it (like they did with first three versions) and have been hooked on FoW for the past 4 years.
As Secretary, I plan to fulfill the duties of that office by providing complete and concise minutes and agendas, and helping out with other duties as needed. I can be contacted at the following: harlows1@comcast.net |