There was a time when I knew almost every wargamer in the state on a first name basis. Now, at hobby stores or at Enfilade I see many people who I have never met and know nothing about. I want to know - who are these guys? What do they do and how are they doing it?

A few years ago, Hal Thinglum used to interview wargamers and print the results in his Midwest Wargamers Association Newsletter. This was very popular with the readership. It also seems like a good way for Northwest wargamers to better get to know some of the guys you see around the gaming table and at conventions but never have the chance to meet.

Ian Croxall grabbed about as much attention as you can get at the last Enfilade. Huge table covered with great looking and functional terrain surrounded by large crowds of enthusiastic gamers. Hundreds of attractive figures fighting, scaling walls and landing from scratch built boats. French Foreign Legion, Wind and the Lion and intrigue in pre-WWI Morocco. I can think of no better subject for the first interview with a wargamer.

Please give some background information about yourself.

My name is Ian Croxall. I was born in 1960 in Derby England, some 25 miles southeast of Nottingham. My wife, Emily is from the U.S. and we now reside in Neotsu on the Oregon coast. I have been in the US for 12 years and I became a U.S. citizen in 1996. 1 have never been back to England.

I have the British equivalent of an associates degree in electronic servicing and a bachelors degree in history. I worked in the electronics field as a Quality Assurance manager in England and continued in the computer field in the U.S. Growing tired of helping people with their computer problems, I underwent a career change a few years ago. I am now a "Special Investigations" investigator for an insurance company.

How, where, when and why did you become interested in wargaming?

My first figures were Timpo plastics (which were about 54mm, and now seem to be being re-issued) medieval figures, of which I must have had about a hundred. I had a big castle, bombards, catapults etc. I was about 7 or 8.

Some of my fondest childhood memories are of going to the movies with my Dad and seeing such movies as Lawrence of Arabia, Zulu, Waterloo and Young Winston. My figure collections moved to Brits and Zulu's, Arabs and French Legionnaires, Napoleonics, all in Airfix plastics. I had all the buildings they used to do back then too. I was a prolific kit builder, my room being a plastic armored vehicle museum full of AFV's, aeroplanes and 1172 figures. My parents used to get very concerned that I would get brain damage from the Humbrol fumes. Games were played between myself and my younger brother and the odd couple of friends I could interest. Rules were home made and I forget the mechanics now but they were simple. My Dad bought me all the books I needed for historical information and uniforms.

This was back in the early 70's and I didn't get into lead figures until the early 1980. This was in the days of the big bad soviet empire, so my first lead army was a Russian motor rifle regiment in 1/30011, and 1/2851h on a 1:1 scale (yes, hundreds of vehicles). For their opponents I had a single British Territorial Army company in Bedford Lorries, armed with Milan's and 84's. The scenario was usually how many turns the TA could slow down the onslaught. It was a lot of fun.

This era introduced me to many other gamers and here my interest flourished as I discovered that many other people enjoyed what was until that point, something my peers had impugned as a weird hobby for someone of my age. In the 1980's, my interest evolved into 15mm ancients as this was a popular period at the club. I built up Gallic, Republic Romans, Carthaginians and Numidians.

What periods, scales and rules do you use? What are the sizes of your collections in these periods. What attracts you to a particular period?

In addition to the 15mm ancient armies (which are way too big for normal gaming) I have a 28mm ACW setup of about 1000 castings. For it, I use "On to Richmond" a now out of print but brilliant set of rules which I believe were duplicated in, and unnecessarily complicated by "Fire and Fury". I haven't played any ACW for a few years since I last put on a stand-in game at Enfilade in 1994 or 95. Here the rules were so well received by the players that I ended up running off about a dozen copies of the rules on the hotel copier.

About the same number of castings for War of the Spanish Succession in 28mm. French, Bavarians, English, Dutch, Prussians, Austrians and a few others. This period is much more interesting to me and the figures are more interesting to paint. I mean, with the ACW you have Blue, Grey and that's about it. The WSS figures are so much more colorful. I use Warfare In The Age of Reason which I also like for their simplicity.

I have quite a number of 20mm WWII which I have never gamed, but they look nice on the shelf.

For the last two years I have been developing my French Invasion of Morocco figures. This for me has been the most fun period I have ever worked on. The potential for scenarios is virtually endless. A war of many skirmishes and battles that lasted for decades and European political intrigue to rival the Boxer Rebellion. These figures are also 28 mm made up mostly of Old Glory and Foundry with a few Dixon and recently added, Riveresco models.

Are there any projects you are considering for the future?

I hope to expand this period somewhat. I am hoping OG or Foundry will add Spahis and Tirailleurs (instead of the Franco Prussian war Zouaves I am currently using which actually look pretty good).

As part of this project I have already started to add German Colonials be

How is the hobby different here in the Northwest as opposed to England?

Well, imagine Enfilade on Friday night, without the dealers and that's your average English wargame club weekly meeting (makes ya sick don't it?). I think that the conventional wisdom, that more people game in England than the U.S., is somewhat of a myth. Its all about population density. Oregon is about the size of Britain with 4% of its population. With the same percentage gamers, it stands to reason they don't bump into each other often.

Regarding scenarios, what do you think makes for an interesting game?

I think players like to be able to identify with something. If you can really feel you are the commander of a unit the more you will enjoy the game. If you think you're just pushing toy soldiers around on a piece of felt then that illusion is lost. I think its great when players get into character.

At Enfilade, we played out the final battle scene from the Wind and the Lion. Giving the Berbers the opportunity to torture any Germans they captured to find the location of the Raisuli, was just a hoot, even for the player being tortured (we used dice rolls of course). I also think players like something different to the usual "Capture the Bridge", "Hold the Mission" sort of thing.

For example, if your mission as e French Foreign Legion is to protect a supply column, make the supply the Madam's "Mobile Army Entertainment Wagon" complete with girls. It adds a level of entertainment that is a lot of fun.

What do you personally look for in a set of rules? What /eve/ of combat do you usually try to portray on the tabletop? Have you ever been involved in writing your own rules? If so, why. If not, why not?

Simplicity! I like to focus on the game, not the rules. My favorite rules will fit, along with all their charts, onto two sides of a sheet of paper. I get pretty worn out by those rules that read like an Insurance Policy Handbook. I prefer the ones that read more like a Dick and Jane play book.

In colonial gaming such as I've been concentrating on in the last couple of years, I prefer the 1:1 scales, albeit with a compressed ground scale. As far as ground and time scales are concerned, I don't get too worried about them as they are just more technical distractions. The beauty of one to one is that you start thinking of your figures as men (and identifying with them more), this makes you more concerned about losing them rather than spending them like some  surplus baffle currency. We're back to the illusion thing again.

I think the most innovative set of rules ever written (that I have experienced) are The Sword and the Flame. Very original when they first came out and are still being emulated today. They are readily adapted to different periods and their author encourages such adaptations. Quick, easy and to the point. Most players have them down by turn two, but also, the rules are very responsive to differing tactical approaches.

I detest games that are masses of charts, factors and calculations. I don't see the point of having so many factors for this or that, whether skirmishes are deployed or not, is the commander an idiot or not, whether the unit had breakfast or not that morning. If the net result of all these differing variables mean that an average French Column, over the course of an entire game, has a 30% chance of breaking an English line, why not just throw a 3 or less on a D10 and forget about all the other factors. I have concluded that these technical players actually like all this calculation business more than the actual game and I have been bored through many a game (often horse and musket) where participants have argued for % an hour or more over whether this unit should be able to do this or that in these or those circumstances. It's just tedious exercises in micro management.

I don't spend much time writing new rules because why re-invent the wheel. I'd rather spend a little time tweaking the axle design. That's why I concentrate on gaming and use the SATF. The rules work, they're terrific. I just tweak them a little to suit my period and location. So many gamers seem to spend an awful lot of time and energy seeking the holy grail of wargaming rules. Find a simple set and just play the game. That's my philosophy.

Many of us were most impressed with your terrain and models. Would you tell us about your efforts to produce such great looking yet highly functional terrain?

Well, I was very flattered by the reaction to the models. Many beautiful models are available commercially but what seemed to impress people was the fact that I had bothered at all. Even including terrain that is superfluous to the actual game. We're back to the illusion thing. Trying to create the atmosphere of the period. I try to be a little different with the games. Even the period I chose is not common. Often those gaming French Foreign Legion pick Algeria as their theater of operations, but by picking Morocco this is a little different. The models I used were little more than elaborate boxes made from foam core, plastered with wall board compound, undercoated and dry brushed. What makes them a little different were the barrels and boxes in and around them, carpets hanging over the parapet to dry etc. (the carpets were just printed images of Arabian rugs off of the internet).

The minaret was popular. It's just a simple tower minaret, but I had taken some Arab prayers, downloaded from the internet, and put them on a micro- cassette (hidden in the adjacent building) and wired to a speaker just below the openings in the top of the minaret. The effect was ear catching and added to the illusion. A nice set up can sell the game to a player before he even starts. I think participants were convinced they were going to enjoy the game before they even sat down. That's half the battle. My games table at home has painted back drops at one end to set the scene. There is nothing more boring than having to wait 20 minutes for a turn looking at masking tape roads on felt cloth.

We've all seen the spectacular photographs from the British Wargames magazines. There is no reason not to make your table look like that.

Why spend months or even years painting up gorgeous figures then 20 minutes putting five trees an a sheet of green cloth with a book under it. Tables generally Iook a lot better today than was acceptable 20 years ago. Masking tape roads was the norm then, today most people would frown on it at least a little.

This hobby seems to be highly individualistic. There are many different parts to wargaming, such as writing rules and articles, painting and modeling, research, tabletop gaming and more. What facets are most important to you and which the least?

There are three facets to the game, Modeling, Gaming and History. It is the balance of the three that determine what kind of wargamer we are. The thing I enjoy most is creating a game that is different and unusual enough to attract players who wouldn't necessarily otherwise be interested in the period. Colonial gaming tends to lend itself to this better than some other periods, as does skirmish games.

For example, If I was told I had to do a Napoleonics game. I'd get into something a little off the wall, like, say an Egyptian skirmish scenario where Napoleon has his troops go off to capture a crocodile for the Paris Zoo and bump into a Mameluk patrol who tries to stop them. Or a retreating rag-tag bunch of Legere, Hungarian dragoons and whatever else you can think of. Sit round the only fire in five miles roasting the only pig available west of Moscow and its' 109 below. And just as they're about to tuck in, some Cossacks arrive with different plans for the pig.

These are the sort of reasons real soldiers fight, nothing so ethereal as La Gloire. Players instinctively know this and therefore identify with these kinds of scenarios, they seem more real and I think are enjoyable as such. More philosophical stuff, I know, but that's how I approach it.

One of the lesser important factors for me is re-creating actual battles or specific events in history. I am, of course, very interested in military history, but only in so much as it set's the scene for a game of toy soldiers. To me, gaming is a tactile way acting out a novel or a movie, and can be every bit as fictional so long as it stays within the bounds of historical plausibility (the illusion thing). The historical plausibility is of course where the historical research comes in. So, like most wargamers, I have a growing collection of books.

What part of wargaming do you enjoy most/least?

I most enjoy hosting a game. I play the part of "The Hand of Allah" sending lighting bolts down on the figures of those players who whine, complain, leave their rulers on the table or whatever. I rarely had to do-that at Enfilade this year and only for breaches of esthetics (leaving clutter on the table).

I least enjoy discussing, during the game, whether the cavalry should be able to charge "in line" over a bridge, because oversight in "The Rules" omits to specifically forbid it. Whereas, had I been "game master", two minutes into the argument, a theretofore undiscovered structural flaw in the engineering would have rendered the bridge flotsam and made the argument moot.

You have your own web site Warflag, (www.warflag.com). Will you tell us a little about the site and how it came to be?

Warflag grew out of my creating flags on my computer for my own armies and those of my friends. Over the last 7 years it has grown into a free download site of over 1800 different flags specifically designed for the wargamer. It gets about 900 hits per week. In the last six months I have added "The Amazing Adventures of the Red Shadow" a subsection on my colonial wargaming interests. Many of my scenarios are based around the fictitious (borrowed from The Desert Song) character of the Red Shadow.

What are your thoughts as to the direction that the hobby is taking? Do you see a potential for growth in the number of gamers?

From my perspective, its not taking any direction. That's its problem as an organized hobby, it has no direction.

I don't see any growth in the number of gamers in the hobby, but I'm sure the potential exists. Wargame product manufacturers don't seem to be very well organized in the realm of marketing. What good marketers there are (Games Workshop, for example) don't bother with historicals. The reason for this is that most manufactures in the hobby run it as a home business. they are artisans, artists and craftsmen, not business men. If you want to attract people to the hobby, you have to sell it to them. Why cant you go into Toy's R Us, or any mall toy store, and find a big plastic box, with 250 Old Glory Miniatures, A video of Zulu, an A&E documentary of the Zulu war, 15 pots of paint, 5 brushes, an eXacto knife, 250 bases, flock, glue, varnish, 4 Osprey books, a full color brochure of the Old Glory Range and a $25 coupon for Geo-Hex or something.

Finally, is there any subject relating to the hobby that you would like to comment on?

Yes, the lack of Senegalese Spahis!