Some Quotes from WSS

The lattest issue from Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy (issue 84) has a nice opinion article by Warwick Kinrade. It's titled "The Four Pillars of Wargaming", and describes what makes a good wargame.

 After reading it, I found this article hits the nail on the head, because it correlates so much with what my own thinking is about wargaming as a hobby.

Let me give a few quotes:

"Fundamentally, wargaming is a hobby of collecting and painting."
Very true. I also wrote an opinion piece about this some time ago - "It's the figures, stupid!" back in WSS 78. Miniature wargaming is a very tactile hobby, and no matter how academic you want it to make, it's essentially still about playing with toy soldiers. Your figure collection will still be with you 20 or 30 years from now, but rules and the type of games will change over the years. It's the collection that forms the backbone of one's wargaming life.
I therefore do not understand one aspect of the current trend towards smaller games - warband-style, that only need a dozen of figures a side. I'm okay with smaller games, but I'm not okay with people selling off their forces when they switch games. It's probably less of a barrier to do that if it's only a few figures you're selling, but if you're constantly switching, buying, and selling armies, are you truly a wargamer?

"Even more than collecting an army, collecting terrain requires a long-term commitment to the hobby."
Again something I agree with completely. A good collection of terrain - both the "underground" and the terrain pieces that go on top of it, is a question of years. My own terrain collection has slowly been upgraded over the years - buying new (sometimes expensive) pieces, and out-phasing lesser quality pieces. It also takes some time to know what sort of terrain fits your style of play. A mat? Tiles? Hexagons? What sort of visuals do you like? Also, a good collection of general purpose pieces that can be used in wide variety of settings (and sometimes scales) is worth spending some money on.

"I want drama and tension and to feel as if the game rewards me for making good tactical decisions."
This particular quote is about the rules. I strongly believe a wargamer should write his own rules. Perhaps not for all periods, but you should have at least one period for which you write your own house rules. It forces you to think much more about the flow of games, and to sharpens your senses about what you like and don't like in wargames. And it's okay of this is different for each and every wargamer.

"... you have a responsibility to your opponent to lose with good grace and not ruin their enjoyment."
Wargaming is a social activity. What happens before and after the game is as important as what happens during the game. You need opponents that share a common view on wargaming, and with whom you can spend an enjoyable few hours pushing toy soldiers.
In my gaming group we have an abbreviation "DDZAB". It's somewhat difficult to translate from Dutch, but it roughly means "Always be the one who disadvantages himself". It implies that whenever there's a discussion about the rules, don't be the one who drags out the argument, but graciously give your opponent the advantage (a die modifier e.g.) in case of doubt.

Anyway, I really liked reading this piece. Recommended.

Pantheon of Chaos

 I just backed the Pantheon of Chaos kickstarter.

I've always had a soft spot for Chaos miniatures, dating back to my first days in fantasy wargaming  (and being a GW junkie, of couse).

Search for "Chaos" on this blog to see a few of my Oldhammer chaos miniatures.

I am not sure yet what models i will select from pantheon of Chaos, but they could form the backbone of a new Chaos warband.

First Issues of Miniature Wargaming added

I've added 4 issues of Miniature Wargaming to the growing index ...

It's quite amazing when you go through a lot of wargaming magazines as I've done during the past couple of months, how much hidden gems there have been published: rules, scenarios, experimental ideas, ...

It's one of the reasons I started the index, to tap into the potential of published articles much more often, rather than resort to always buying new stuff because you don't remember what you already have.

New recruit

We have a new recruit at the Liezele Wargaming Mansion. However, I doubt he will be moving figures on the table or rolling dice.

But the wargaming consequences are I currently do not have much spare time to keep myself busy with wargaming stuff. A new dog is a lot of work!

7 issues of Practical Wargamer added

I added 7 issues of Practical Wargamer to the index, that were donated to the cause. Slowly but surely the index is growing!

First donation for the Magazine Index!

This week, I received a first donation of old magazines for completing the Wargaming Magazine Index.

Robert McLean from The Wargamorium was so kind to donate 20 issues of old Miniature Wargames and Practical Wargamer. They will be added to the index shortly.

Imaginations in 42mm (4)

Yesterdat I also finished 4 cavalry figures for my 42mm army. The gloss varnish really came out well, and give the figures the impression of shiny toy soldiers.

My question now is whether I should do something to the bases. I varnished them as well - for me it's fine as they are right now, but I am so conditioned that wargaming figures should have "proper" bases, that it still feels a bit strange to me.


The last image shows 2 old toy soldiers - lancers - I acquired during a garage sale many years ago. I have no idea about the manufacturer or how old they are, but they fit size-wise perfectly. I'll probably clean them up and repaint them in as close to their original colours as possible.

Imaginations in 42mm (3)

I finished the 3 infantry units & 1 artillery gun for my late 19th/early 20th century imaginations campaign. I applied 2 varnish coats, one spray-painted mat varnish, then a gloss varnish applied with a paint brush.

I was not entirely sure the gloss varnish would work out ok, but it did. I have the practice of first trying the varnish coat on a few figures first, before applying them to the whole bunch.

I am quite happy with the results. Below you see them, using my vintage wooden block set to build a small fort.

Why I write my own rules ...

I like writing my own rules ...

... because I think that wargaming as a hobby is about designing your own game, not playing someone else's game.
Just as we hunt for the perfect figures to use, paint them ourselves and engage in building scenery, I feel that constructing your own rules is part of the wargaming experience. A wargamer should design and build the entire game himself. But of course, one should not be too dogmatic about this philosophy. After all, I don't sculpt and cast my own figures, nor do I carve my own dice out of wood.


... because published rules also contain quite a lot of arbitrary design choices.
When I started out my career as a wargamer in my late teens and early twenties, I slavishly followed published rules. My impression at the time was that wargaming rules were the perfect representation of how battles had happened, and that rules designers spend years honing and polishing their rulesets, based on original research. However, after a couple years, you start to learn that published rulesets do contain a lot of arbitrary design decisions, ranging from game mechanics to army lists to point values to die modifiers; and that the "deep research" is not so deep after all. Once you realize that a published ruleset is just written up by another fellow wargamer instead of an all-knowing demi-god - the step towards modifying published rules or writing your own suddenly becomes much smaller.

... because wargaming is about telling stories, not simulating war.
Although I know that some wargamers see a wargame as something that should recreate the commander's experience, I see a wargame more as a tool to tell stories inspired by military history.  I understand that if you consider wargaming as a way to simulate (for lack of a better word) a real battle, a well-researched ruleset is a necessity. But I have evolved towards another approach, in which the purpose of a wargame is not to learn something about how battles were conducted, but as a way to tell stories inspired by military history. In that sense, the rules should support storytelling, and should not support the idea of running a simulation. This provides much more freedom in writing rules and injecting elements that are not aimed for historical recreation, but are aimed at providing drama at the gaming table. As such, one should not be too worried about the historical validity of wargaming rules. As long as the rules provides an exciting game, it's ok.
 
... because developing rules is fun.
I like tinkering with game mechanisms. I like playtesting various ideas. I like the creativity. That's why I like wargaming as a hobby so much!

Imaginations in 42mm (2)

A progress report on my 42mm Balkan Wars figures, which will form the core of my imaginations armies.

As you can see, I have 3 units of 8 figures each. Each unit has 6 riflemen, a standard bearer, and an officer. I plan to develop the hex-based rules such that 4 figures occupy 1 hex. That means that a unit will occupy 2 hexes, thereby nicely dividing a unit in 2 subunits. Whether these are Regiments/Battalions or another scale remains to be decided.

Each unit has a distinctive fez colour (red, straw, turquoise), with artillery crew in the back having a magenta fez. This of course is not historical at all, but is a nice way to visually distinguish units. Moreover, since these figures will be used in an imaginations setting, I do not feel any restrictions w.r.t. the historical colour of uniforms, although things must remain plausible. Note that the unit colour also is repeated in the flags.

I spend quite some time on deciding the flag pattern. Since this is an army in the late 19th, early 20th century, a somewhat modern look was ok. I also wanted something different than the traditional 3 vertical or horizontal bands, or cross patterns. I browsed many webpages listing historical flags, but finally took some inspiration from naval signaling flags.

The current design is rather simple to paint, and allows customization and addition later on - either when more units are added, or when these units have deserved their battle honours. As in some of my other campaigns, I don't mind repainting figures or flags to match their wargaming history.

The only thin that's left to do is to paint the bases, do some touchup work, and (gloss) varnish.

I also started working on the horses, and my efforts of indexing my wargaming magazines already proved it's usefulness. It pointed me directly to an article on painting horses in MWBG 374, which in turn had a reference to a colour plate in MWBG 366 (which I did not list in the index), but will be very useful. In less than 5 minutes I had the relevant reference material.