Why Wargaming 8

It has been nearly five years since I looked at my journey through life from a wargaming perspective, I used the fatal words of 'almost perfect' when I signed off last time, have things lived up to that, we will see.

I had found War and Conquest and dipped my foot into traveling twice a year for games with new people and different armies, the rules reminded me of years of happily playing WRG 4th, 5th and 6th editions before 7th basically killed the community. The latter were seen as a move forward in wargaming mechanics and bringing the genre up to date, what it did of course was ruin what probably thousands of people worldwide saw as good fun just to be different, that trend continues. I digress, back in 2015 I was talking about maybe building another two armies, I built another three. I got three good years out of the WAC weekends before they folded, they did so for quite a few reasons, politics and personalities being first and foremost, a real shame, I did make some good friends out of it and we keep up through Social Meedja on a regular basis.

War and Conquest took up a good few years of my time, weekends away and as I said the building of three new armies. I made an effort to continue the weekends here at Casa Anderson as I have the room and could easily place four and at a stretch five 6'x4' tables in a 'closed for the weekend' Post Office, but that was a failure. I did however manage one small WAC weekend last year and also a Bolt Action weekend and both were a delight, I also managed some solo visits by friends which also were a joy, these along with my son have kept the home front going.

The club continues to scratch my wargaming itch and I can immerse myself with like minded individuals who know just how important the hobby is to we few, we happy few, this will continue as long as the club meets up on a Tuesday, no matter which games are being played.

With regular WAC games gone and no need to add more armies I looked around for something else to do and if you remember I was going to jump into Muskets and Tomahawks, for some reason this became completely skewed and I went for the Seven Years War about which I knew and still know very little. As I normally do I jumped in with two feet without thinking, I got rules and troops, I always need both sides and chose British and French, I painted up two small forces to try out Honours of War and then .... everything stopped for tea. I wondered what was I doing building up a large horse and musket force when I had between 4-5000 15mm ACW figures which hardly saw the light of day, how many times would I get the SYW boys on the table. I got an attack of commonsense and called a halt, for now at least.

This of course did not stop me adding more wargame figures to my collection, I then spent much of 2019 adding to my WWII terrain for Normandy, I now went a bit crazy and added more troops and vehicles, a lot of vehicles, especially German. Because I have been drawing maps and reading quite a bit on the Eastern Front I jumped for a Russian force, I tried to fight this urge and convinced myself it would be my 2020 project, but as 2019 waned my Russians were ready. I don't get a lot of WWII gaming in so why, why not came the reply, the same voice is telling me to get Volksgrenadiers next and up my Waffen SS squads into a full platoon, I do have plenty of British and Russians in case you call me out for lack of diversity.

My collection taking over the Post Office, more in the house.

 So the club is going well, home games not so much, I never seem to get enough, and it is the latter which is causing me to pause and take stock, I can still concentrate on terrain, especially for WWII for this year at least, but I do have to ask myself should I spend more money on forces which might only get used once in a blue moon. The money I have no problem throwing at suppliers due to the Legendary Map Fortune, it is the actual gaming side which has yet to catch up with the logistics or will I just never get enough, the latter might be truer.