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by Rachel Carpenter

Photos, videos, marketing materials, and counting pixels and yelling at the computer 😜. It's been a productive day. Hopefully tomorrow will be too...

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Game Over On borrowed time...

Happy Thursday and happy playing!
-Rachel

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by Carani

€25.00 for Board Game: Legacy of Dragonholt
Condition: Good
Location: The Netherlands

by p55carroll

In the history of my lifelong gaming hobby, wargaming features prominently. I played other games before I discovered wargaming (around 1968), and I still like some of those. And I branched out from wargaming and learned new kinds of games; I still like some of those too. However, wargaming made a huge impact on me from the beginning, and it continues to be a favorite pastime that I don't want to let go of.

Of course, my wargaming life has evolved over the decades. I've changed, and the available selection of wargames has changed too. So, what changes in particular am I noticing?

It began with a friend showing me a new game he'd just bought--Waterloo. Before that, the only formal games about war we ever played were Risk and Stratego. This new game was something different--real history. It was about a battle (or campaign) that actually happened. And the game was complex enough to convince me (and maybe my friend too) that it was an accurate simulation of that historical conflict. We wouldn't just be playing a game; we'd be re-creating and studying a slice of military history.

In time, I realized I cared more about that than many other wargamers did. Lots of wargamers (maybe most) are amateur historians in some way or other. But another appeal of wargaming is witnessing and vicariously experiencing the excitement and drama of combat. Many World War II gamers were (and probably still are) big into tanks and planes--the weapon systems and all their destructive power. And gamers who lean that way sometimes see wargames--at least the tactical ones--as fast-paced shoot-em-ups. On a strategic level, they find it cool to play at being Hannibal or Genghis Khan or Napoleon--some military mastermind who might have what it takes to conquer the world.

But for me, that was but a small part of wargaming. Yeah, it's amusing, but it's usually just a Hollywood version of events, not real history. I wanted to know the unvarnished truth of what actually happened in the battles and campaigns of history. And I hoped wargames would show me some of that. I also wanted to learn how war works--how a brilliant military commander assesses situations and makes solid decisions. I believed wargames could teach me that too.

It was around 1972 that I discovered miniatures wargaming--at a convention in Grass Valley, California. That made a big, lasting impression on me. But here again, it turned out my interests didn't align that closely with those of other wargamers. What I appreciated most was what, to me, came across as the seriousness and commitment of miniaturists. A board wargamer might pick up a copy of PanzerBlitz, skim the rules, and jump right into casually playing--and might later set the game aside and forget about it. But a miniatures wargamer was likely to devour countless books on the armies, weapons, and conflicts of his (or her) favorite period; spend hours upon hours carefully painting and basing figures; and join a club so as to share information with others and arrange for weekend-long gaming events. I wanted in on that more serious, enduring kind of wargaming.

Unbeknownst to me, however, most miniaturists were mainly into it for the miniatures. They had something in common with model railroaders; they liked collecting and playing with toys. They liked painting and crafting, and they felt all the work they put into it was well worth it when their armies were displayed on a sandtable or tabletop with those of fellow miniaturists. I never got that. On the other hand, I always disliked the look and feel of paper-and-cardboard wargames; I thought the material was too cheap and two-dimensional. I liked the look and feel of a nice chess set, and I believed wargames deserved that kind of treatment. I sure didn't want to have to do it myself, though! It didn't take very long at all for me to discover I hated painting miniatures.

Well, because I hated that, I gave up on my main venture into miniatures after only a few weeks. But I continued to have a strong interest in military history, and reading about that became a hobby in itself. I kept wishing I could somehow get into miniatures wargaming--the more serious, committed side of the hobby, as I saw it--but I had to settle for board wargames.

Most board wargames--the best ones, anyway--were set in World War II. Not my favorite period, really, as I felt I'd had my fill of it. My dad had fought in that war, and I grew up hearing about it and seeing it on TV. Also, I had a distaste for all the products of industrialization that made up so much of the world I lived in. My fascination with history prompted me to look back at earlier eras. To me, World War II was too recent to be very interesting. Still, Advanced Squad Leader was such an exciting game that I ended up spending some fifteen years teaching it to myself and playing around with it.

When I thought I was going to be a miniatures wargamer, I felt pressured to choose a specific period of history to focus on. It's a time- and money-consuming hobby, and I'd never be able to create armies for many periods; I'd have to stick to just one. So I agonized over that decision. Being a reflective, introspective person, I felt the period had to suit me perfectly--had to make a statement about me and be part of who I am. For various reasons, I considered the medieval period and even World War I, but I settled on the American Civil War. One of my main reasons for that was that most miniaturists then were into Napoleonics, and I didn't want to be just another face in that big crowd. I hadn't yet learned that the ACW is also a very popular period. I thought I was getting into a niche period--something unique to me.

Also, it was an extension of the Romantic era, or a bridge between Romantic and Postmodern. Often, the ACW is described as a foreshadowing of World War I, partly because of all the trenches and the sparsity of cavalry. But the ACW isn't just one of the first modern wars; from another perspective, it's one of the last of the Napoleonic-era wars. There was still some sense of honor and glory. A lot of ACW soldiers had read Ivanhoe and could see war as a noble and glorious adventure. Yet, many were also disillusioned and sank into gritty realism. Hence Sherman's famous statement that "War is hell." It wasn't until World War I that most everybody dropped all romantic notions of war and started to see it as just a dirty, disgusting business. The Civil War was still half romantic; hence all those songs and statues to war heroes and famous units. I'm something of a romantic myself, so I wanted to choose a period where soldiering was more than just a job--more of a calling. Something meaningful.

Anyway, that choice held for the longest time. I read lots of books and articles on the ACW; I wrote term papers on it in school; I bought and played every ACW board wargame I could find. I even visited some of the battlefields. I tried to wear my ACW interest like a tailor-made suit of clothes that I believed showed off the real me. Yet, all the while, part of me found that period boring. And in some ways, I also found it irritating. In hindsight, I can see that it was irritating because it's still so close to the present day; because of that, the political and social issues that motivated people to fight still haven't settled down or been forgotten. I was very interested in warfare and military history, but I was generally repulsed by politics.

That's another thing that still sets me apart from many wargamers. Many modern wargames or world conquest games, like Europa Universalis and Crusader Kings, prominently feature politics, economics, and other dimensions of competition and conflict. And even years ago, there were games like Origins of World War II that dealt squarely with politics. But to my mind, politics spoiled the study of military history--that is, kept me from focusing on the aspects of military history I liked. I only wanted to look at strategy and tactics--at decisions that governed movements and actions within a campaign or battle. In other words, I wanted to study what war has in common with games like chess and go. And I did not want to look at politics (or economics) at all.

Well, it took years for me to realize it's easier to keep that focus when studying the military history of long, long ago. In the 1980s, there was a big surge of interest, among miniatures wargamers and others, in the ancient and medieval periods of history. By then, D&D had become popular too, and lots of role-playing gamers were primarily fascinated with those early periods. Fantasy merged somewhat with ancient and medieval history. And it was kind of a natural fit, because much of legendary history is mixed with myth anyway. Much historical information is lost, and much has been distorted (sometimes for religious or propaganda reasons). Modern-day wargamers don't have much skin in the game when pitting one ancient tribe against another. But some modern wargamers do hesitate to play as the bad guys in a recent conflict, because we still have a lingering sense of who the bad guys were (Nazis, for example).

For several years now, I've been greatly enjoying the PC game Dominions. It's a fantasy game with a good deal of ancient and medieval history mixed in, along with mythology from around the world. It's a wonderful game, and I'll continue to play it. Just played it last night, in fact. It's a strategy-level game, though, and tactical battles are only for viewing, not playing. Also, I still have a hankering to get back to studying actual history.

Enter Field of Glory II. I was completely unaware of this game until some company offered me a free copy. Then I decided to install and play it, just to take a look. It had never been my period of history, but I had tried De Bellis Antiquitatis: Quick Play Wargame Rules with Army Lists for Ancient and Medieval Battles while trying to get into miniatures years ago. And here was something just about like it--only bigger, and on the PC instead of a tabletop.

So far, I'm impressed. I now own three or four related games, and I have several others on a wish list. I guess I'm a lousy tactician, as I just lost a tutorial battle, but maybe I'll improve if I read the manual and start paying more attention. In any case, here's just the kind of wargame I always wanted--though I didn't always know it was what I wanted: It's not all paper and cardboard but looks like a nice miniatures game and has music and sound effects to boot; it focuses squarely on what warfare has in common with chess; and it's set in a period far removed from today's ongoing political issues. Furthermore, ancient and medieval literature sometimes elevates warfare and soldiering to the status of a noble calling or sacred duty--something meaningful and potentially romantic.

Suddenly I find myself motivated to start reading up on ancient and medieval history--periods I only skimmed over before. Is this the "new me" in wargaming? Maybe. We'll see.

Not too long ago, I bought another PC wargame, Strategic Command: American Civil War. It looked like a game I ought to take to and enjoy. It covers what had been my main period of interest, and it's an approachable game (unlike a similar one I ended up abandoning--Civil War II). But although I started into it a few times, I could never follow through. For one thing, it's such a big, sprawling game that it'd take forever to play. For another thing, I feel I'm kind of done with that period; I got my fill of it. Also, while the period 1850-1900 used to seem just far enough back in history to be interesting to me, now it doesn't seem far back enough. The events are too recent, and things were still too much the same then as they are now.

As one grows older, I think they cast a longer shadow into the past: When I was ten, World War II seemed far back in history, because it happened a whole twenty-odd years earlier. Today, twenty-odd years seems almost like the blink of an eye. Nothing counts as real history to me anymore unless it's at least two or three centuries old. The rest is all part of the extended present.

So, my wargaming past: Board games and attempts to get into miniatures, with focuses on World War II and the ACW; sometimes forming or joining clubs to share the experience.

My wargaming present: PC wargaming on my laptop, almost exclusively single-player, with a newfound focus on pre-industrial-age warfare, sometimes mixed with mythology or fantasy elements.

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