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by Randy Paulin

Gamers' Paradise Vol. II number 22

My mentor, guide and friend Fred Chapman said “Regret wastes life. Reflection uses it [well].” I tend to be reflective by nature anyway, and as I’ve arrived at three score and ten, I’m more reflective than usual even today.

I’ve spent the past few days working on getting my game room in order, too. The paint-and-brush storage unit and the lighted magnifying glass are my birthday presents to myself. As you can see, I’ve got a lot of 15mm minis on the desktop and shelves. And I’ve got four or five times as many more in some of the desk drawers awaiting assembly and priming.



And those minis are all German and (Soviet) Russian vehicles (along with 3 Hungarian 38M Toldi II’s). This is neither accident nor coincidence. My fascination with the Eastern Front began, as I mentioned previously, with SPI’s War in the East, in the summer of ‘74, and it has only intensified over the past half-century.

My introduction to wargaming, courtesy of my friend Alan, came in the summer of ‘68, with Avalon Hill’s Blitzkrieg, followed by Jutland and, later, Anzio. Alan also discovered and then introduced me to S&T. With that came, among others, Flying Circus, U.S.N., and the first S&T game from my own subscription, Winter War: The Russo-Finnish Conflict. Over the next few years I put my energy, and money, into SPI games, while Avalon Hill fell by the wayside.

Over the next few years my gaming became a solitaire venture. In high school Alan and I went in different directions- and I didn’t know anyone else who gamed. I found I really enjoyed playing solitaire, though. I also bought, in addition to Anzio, Sniper! my first ‘semi-monster’ game, Strategy I. And then there were those six S&T games a year.

So, in other words, my gaming choices were pretty eclectic in my early gaming ‘career’. Then along came WitE. I was attracted to it not so much for the subject matter but the fact that it was a four-map(!) monster game. Four maps. A zillion counters. And a remarkably timely arrival. It was the summer before I started college, and I had plenty of room to set it up in my dad's old shop, which was otherwise in disuse by that time. I spent a lot of happy hours with that game that summer. And in the course of playing it, I became intrigued with the war on the Eastern Front in general. And, boys and girls, in 1974 in America, that conflict was almost completely unknown. The American narrative was that the Allies landed on D-Day and proceeded to liberate Europe and bring down Hitler and his gang. No really. That was 'common knowledge'. Oh sure, people had heard of Stalingrad, but other than that their ignorance about that titanic struggle was pretty much complete.

Meanwhile, in my life, years passed. Dungeons & Dragons (Original Edition) came along. The girlfriend I'd end up marrying came along. My wargaming pretty much came to a stop. It wasn't until I got out of school that I started playing again, in the fall of '78. The game was Wacht am Rhein. Another four-map, zillion-counter monster. It seemed that a pattern was emerging.

Over the next 15 years or so my gaming was all solitaire, and I played a lot of S&T/SPI games on a lot of topics. But my interest in the eastern front continued to simmer. I didn't do a lot of reading of military history in that time period. I was too busy teaching, and that left me approximately zero time and energy for pleasure reading. And of course there was no internet; no Apple books; no Everand... you get the picture.

In the fall of 1994 our lives took a big turn when we both started grad school at the University of Idaho here in Moscow. She earned a Masters in Mathematics and started a teaching career in the math department at the UI; a career which would last almost a quarter century. I on the other hand spent six years working on a PhD in education before becoming fed up. Good ol' type II bipolar played a role there. I ended up walking away from the PhD program and into a one-man business I called Gamers' Paradise. Moreover, in those six years between '94 and '00 I made the acquaintance of a group of local gamers-- miniatures players predominantly, because let's face it, if you're going to get together to game with six or seven other guys for a few hours on Friday night, miniatures are the natural way to go. But several of them were board gamers as well, which was just superb from where I stood.

I've written previously about my friend Wally, and his influence on me during this time. For purposes of my interest in the Eastern Front, though, one thing stands out head and shoulders above the rest: Enemy at the Gates. Monster game + Eastern Front + OCS = complete infatuation with subject and system. Wally and another guy named Jon and I played Enemy at the Gates together. And of course a lot of early OCS games-- quite a few OCS games right down the years, for that matter-- were set in the Eastern Front. Over those six years I bought a lot of wargames (from Wally). By the time I started Gamers' Paradise-- on the 6th of June, 2000, as it happened-- I owned probably 125 of them.

I loved owning my own business. I really loved owning a game store.

I was, however, a really crappy businessman. I knew just about nothing about running a business, and when it comes to running a business, on-the-job training is not the best way to go. Bottom line (pun intended): I had to close the doors of Gamers' at the end of 2003. But I have no regrets. It was the greatest experience of my life, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

What I did do-- what I did have to do over the course of those 3 1/2 years-- was sell off my games (on eBay) in an effort to keep the store afloat. It was when I had the store that I also conceived a love of painting miniatures. I sold a lot of painted miniatures on eBay back then; miniatures I painted when things were slow at the store. Nevertheless, by the 1st of January 2004 the store had sunk beneath the waves, and my game collection was gone.

Fast forward, then, to the summer of 2022. (And if you knew my back story, believe me you’d be all about fast forwarding.) My wife and I moved into a roomier place (where we still are today), and moreover a place which had a room for my gaming. A series of 'coincidences' then led to my joining BGG, discovering Noble Knight Games, and proceeding to buy my current crop of games. You can see how many, and on what subjects, in my profile. But in the past four years I read military history voraciously. I had always had an interest in WWII-- my dad served in the 42nd ID in Europe-- and my current collection reflects that. It also reflects the fact that my fascination with the Eastern Front really took off, both in terms of game purchases, and in readings in military history. Thanks to Apple books and Everand, mostly, I've read about 200 books on military history in the last four years, and the majority of those, to the point of near-exclusivity, were about WWII. And the subject of most of those was, you guessed it.

The Eastern Front.

So, here’s the evolution of my interest in the subject. Look at it like an archeological dig. On the bottom layer is my interest in WWII, which predated my discovery of wargaming. The next layer up consists of that discovery, and my concomitant exploration of the hobby, and acquisition of an eclectic collection of titles. That layer spans about six years. The next layer’s about three years deep, and it shows no evidence of wargaming. Instead it shows the ecosystem being taken over by that foreign culture called D&D. Next is a two-year layer devoid of artifacts. Atop that is a layer of solo wargaming, consisting largely of games found lower down (i.e. acquired before the time represented in this strata). This layer spans about five years. Then there’s a layer of about a dozen years which is, again, artifact free.

And that brings us up to 1994, and the beginning of a nine-year span of deeper and deeper involvement in wargaming, and of being involved in, for the only time in my life thus far, a flourishing f-t-f gaming community. And then there’s that desert between 2004 and 2022. And in the layer representing the past four years, that big ol' bunch of 'artifacts', which include games from back in the day I was replacing, and a lot of new (or new-to-me) titles, about a third of which have as their subject matter...

The Eastern Front.

Or you can just vary the metaphor and look at my Eastern Front fascination as an exponential curve upward. By my quick count, 41 of the 126 games I currently own are Eastern Front titles. And sure, I enjoy playing games on other conflicts. But it is my Eastern Front collection that I most have a yen to play, and that would like to play all the way through before I shuffle off this mortal coil.

Writing all this today has also had my thinking about the 'why' and 'how' of my gaming preferences and behaviors. (It's also been a lovely way to spend a milestone birthday.) I'm so intrigued with Eastern Front titles partly because the sheer scale of the 'Absolute War', to borrow the title of Chris Bellamy's book on the conflict. It was absolute, total war, on a scale and of a savagery unlike anything Europe had seen since the 30 Years War. And the story of the war has a definite arc, and yet lends itself to a multitude of interpretations. What was the turning point of the war in the East? Kursk? Stalingrad? The failure of Barbarossa in December '41? And so on. We can explore possible answers to those questions via wargames, of course. And some are more accurate and complete than others. But exploring all of that makes for some fascinating gaming.

So much for the 'why'. The 'how' of my wargaming is certainly applicable to any game I play, no matter the era or topic. I game primarily for two reasons: to gain insight about a conflict, and to enjoy the intellectual challenge of playing the game well. I've never had a problem playing two-player games solitaire. I think that's probably because of those two reasons. I'm really not the least bit competitive. And I enjoy gleaning insight not only from playing a game, but even from studying the set-up, and getting a handle on what the designer's doing (or trying to do) with the game. So, for example, as I'm currently setting up Roads to Moscow: Battles of Mozhaysk and Mtsensk, 1941, I'm thinking about the units involved, getting a picture in the mind's eye about the forces involved, and the ways in which different unit types interact. And so on. And all this is, I think, pretty much in aid of those two reasons above, especially the first one. For the same reason I'll often set up a game, play a turn or two, and re-set to try something different.

This all works for me because I am, as I've suggested, a solitaire gamer who plays primarily to gain insight about the subject of the game in question. That works for me. I know it would drive others of you right around the bend.

I guess what it comes down to in large part is that I have a tremendous appreciation for the infinite variety to be found in our hobby. And certainly part of that variety lies in the various ways each of us chooses to approach things. Vive le difference!


Here's the setup of Roads to Moscow in progress. I'll probably spend at least an hour just setting out the units on the setup cards, before I even put any of them on the map.



And, on an unrelated note, here are pics of my game table yesterday and today. I snapped them both at about the same time of the morning, and I love the way the 'worth a thousand words' pics display the difference between those two days.

July 31st:


August 1st:








Holly decided she'd warm up a D6 while I was setting out counters. I didn't have the heart to tell her this game uses a D10.

by Rachel Carpenter

My laptop was not behaving today. That said, Last Leaves has been formally submitted to BGG and I posted updates in the existing WIP thread for Nine Tails: A Solitaire Game.

Tomorrow: hopefully I can get Caturday and Rachel's Spider Solitaire Project off the ground and finally edit the new playthrough video for Lincoln's Cat!

Image Credit: TeeTurtle

Happy Saturday and happy playing!
-Rachel

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