Do We Get
What We Deserve?

by David Commerford, United Kingdom

I was very interested by Pat Conner's article on the future of the hobby in issue No9. Something familiar about the name Conner. Big blokes wearing sun glasses and leather jackets, wandering around armed to the teeth, asking for Sarah in a funny accent........ However I digress as they say. I have to agree without reservation with what Pat said, particularly having had the embarrassment of escorting a prospective wargamer to the Nationals this year to be confronted with something akin to a church bazaar. I suppose given it was the "high point" of competitive gaming in this country; a process having a spectator excitement level slightly below watching paint dry, I should have known better but as I had not been for a number of years I rashly thought it was worth a try. Perhaps I will ask him if he would like to come to Salute 93 if he is talking to me again by then. Having said that I feel it was a little unfair of Pat to say the things he said and then leave hanging in the air. There are very good reasons why main stream wargaming suffers by comparison with the Games Workshop view of the world which needs to be pointed out. To begin with the aforementioned organisation only has itself (and it's customers) to please. The position Games Workshop finds itself in today did not happen over night. It is either the result of years of carefully planned marketing or one of the biggest train of confidence known to mankind! A few years ago the local retail outlet of this organisation had the biggest selection of Avalon Hill and other manufacturers board games I knew of. Today all you can buy there are Games Workshop products of a very similar ilk. They sell good stuff, well made and well presented but it is also very well marketed. You can only tailor your purchases to your exact requirements through their "in house" mail order service. If you do not you would be amazed just how much the packaged contents fail to meet unit sizes. You know the trick, you need four Grundlewerfer but they only come in threes, so you have to spend twice as much and throw two away etc. Other figure makers do this but these guys have it to the level of an art form. Also they are not afraid to cross over into "our world". Over the past couple of years having taken their original product lines about as far as they could go, they moved into what had hither to be mainstream wargaming. Now, if you look at White Dwarf, in that nice Mr W.H. Smith's reading room, you will find battle reports, articles on building scenery etc. written by people who contribute to Wargames maga zines not to mention being wargame figure producers themselves (yes, Perry twins I do mean you). Why should youngsters come over to conventional games when it's being laid on a plate for them elsewhere in an easy pre-packed format. Add to this clubs run around the retail outlet, games in the shop on Saturdays and after school; is it any wonder kids get sucked in. Good God man, it's just like the drugs trade! Main Idea Just in case you have started to wonder what the point of all this is and have I got any bright ideas, well actually no I haven't. However, I don't feel Pat had either and comparing a lose collection of groups and small traders with a unified and obviously well managed single organisation does not seem to me a very helpful way forward. The very diversity of wargaming, it's periods, it's products and it's protagonist make concerted action to promote and improve the hobby virtually impossible. Furthermore it's historic nature leads to fragmentation. I do not truly know what a Napoleonic battles were like and so my interpretation of evidence from many sources. These in turn are often interpretations themselves and may not align with other peoples ideas of the same information. In the Games Workshop sphere there is only one rule set per major subject. The history and culture they portray are fictional and have universal acceptance as they are the only source material that exists. It is completely accepted that the Eldar, Space Marines etc. evolved in a certain way, no one has any reason to question this as they have never existed and in any event Games Workshop authors are the only ones who get to write on the subject. The National Wargames Association, now in it's formative stages, may have some long term effect by providing an umbrella organisation for all periods of the hobby. Things don't have to be the way they are now. In the U.S.A. for example shows are more like Games Workshop events but then they always did take their fun more seriously than us and larger disposable incomes never hurt either. They also have a longer established tradition of quality products in the leisure market which might account for the better rule sets. If the rules are good and the finish is superior you attract customers and competition sharpens the breed so others follow suit. Having said that in the end it's a matter of attitude and in my experience most British wargamers would rather argue about what makes a good game and pick holes in the finer points of rule mechanisms, (the WRG inspired Barrack Room Lawyer's have a lot to answer for), than to do anything constructive within the hobby so in the end I guess we get what we deserve! Back to Table of Contents -- First Empire #10 Back to First Empire List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1993 by First Empire. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com