Life has meaning only in the struggle. Victory or defeat is in the hands of the Gods Therefore let us rejoice in the struggle.

--Ancient Warrior Chant

It was in the fall of 1961 when I bought my first wargame. As near as I can determine, it was sometime during the week of October 8th. Coincidentally, the period was also one of the most crucial times in our nation's history.

In August, the Soviet Union had just built the Berlin Wall to shut down one of the last avenues of freedom to the West. Through the month of September, each succeeding news headline conjured up an increasing sense of urgency. The crucial flow of events reached its high water mark on October 12, when President John E Kennedy announced at a press conference that "We live in the most dangerous time in the history of the world." Kennedy then federalized national guard troops to bring the crisis in Berlin right to my hometown in Wisconsin.

In retrospect, the idea of global catastrophe was something for adults to worry about. We fourteen-year-olds had more important things to concern us. First and foremost was the 45 - 7 thrashing handed to the Baltimore Colts by the Green Bay Packers on Sunday, October 8. Packer halfback Paul Hornung scored 33 points, just seven points shy of the record set back in 1927 by Ernie Nevers of the Chicago Cards. On Tuesday, October 10, the New York Yankees finished off the Cincinnati Reds in five games to capture the World Series pennant.

With the Series just ended, many of us were especially looking forward to the Friday the Thirteenth "fright night" movie extravaganza.

The two most promising flicks were Curse of the Undead and The Hypnotic Eye, which largely overshadowed the more conventional billing at the time: Exodus, The Alamo, and The Hustler.

By 1961, television was already making heavy inroads into our homework schedules with Father Knows Best, Checkmate, Hawaiian Eye, and Naked City. Big fast cars began to intrude upon our pubescent world view as well. We watched with longing as General Motors unveiled the new '62 Buick, which touted a 401-cubic inch wildcat" V-8. We also noted that a '61 Chevy Bel Air could be had for $2,495.

Generally, though, we were only dimly aware of the economic struggle for existence that our parents waged all around us. The fact that pork roast cost 29 cents a pound that fall, sirloin 77 cents a pound, or a ten-pound bag of Gold Medal flour sold for 93 cents meant little to us in any practical way. In 1961 the economics of a fourteen-year-old revolved around a market of model airplanes, paperbacks, comics, candy, illicit fireworks, movie tickets, 45 rpm records, and pocket junk. Unknown to us, an upstart game company called Avalon Hill was about to appear and, in a very real way, remake our adolescent world.

The War of the Gizmos

In 1961, science fiction writer Murray Leinster published a book entitled War of the Gizmos. The book was about an invisible alien life form that would attach itself to the face of its human host and suffocate him. As the novel unfolded, it was discovered that the aliens could be destroyed with flammable devices like cigarette lighters and matches. I only recall this one detail from the book because we found the reenactment of gizmo attacks a useful distraction during our religion and Latin classes.

More to the point, however, I recall vividly that I bought my first wargame during the time I was reading Leinster's book. Since I've (compulsively) kept a dated list of every book I've ever read since eighth grade, War of the Gizmos serves as a useful historical marker, pointing to that fateful week in October, 1961.

I had already spotted the game at a local hobbystore sometime around Labor Day. The game was Tactics II and sold for a "wallet busting" $4.98. In those days we were lucky to get a dollar a week for an allowance. Any money we had managed to earn during the summer had already been squandered at the county fair in August. I was destitute, but destitute or not I would have that game. The question was, what to do?

As a high school freshman, I had a hidden source of income: lunch money. It occurred to me that with a little sacrificing and a lot of mooching I could have my game. I was given $2.40 a week for lunch and milk. A reasonable calculus "immediately presented itself: I could set aside two dollars a week for the game and still have enough money left over for several pints of chocolate milk, at three cents a pint. By October I had the money.

Most likely on the late afternoon of Friday the Thirteenth 1961, my good buddy Dave Hable and I rode our bicycles to the southside branch of the public library. Not wanting to fight the afternoon traffic along Main Street, we left our bikes at the library and forged ahead downtown on foot. With each step our anticipation increased until at last we entered Bill's Hobby House and stood before the black and red Tactics II game box. The bold handwriting still proclaimed a price of $4.98: there were no bar codes in the old days, nor shrink wrapping.

We removed the box cover and peered at the blue backed game board that sat folded atop two ample unit holding trays. One of the trays held a white magic cube: a six sided die that would soon introduce us to the arcane laws of probability. Next came the combat results slide rule - clearly one of the greatest single innovations in wargaming history. Finally, we lingered over the pink and blue die-cut unit counters and marveled at the informative yet succinct military symbology. With a deep sigh I replaced the contents of the box and brought it to the front of the store to make one of the most important purchases of my life.

Dave and I quickly made it home despite biking into a chilly northwest wind. Sitting down at my kitchen table we began the time honored ritual of carefully separating the unit counters. The rules were attacked next. Despite the game's apparent complexity, it was intuitively more appealing than chess and even easier to learn. We quickly set up the game and began to play.

Apart from the unforgettable, wide eyed, magical quality of that afternoon, two other memories have remained with me ever since. The first was the mellifluous voice of Roy Orbison singing on the radio his memorable tune "Crying." The song had reached number two that week dueling, for first place with Ray Charles's "Hit the Road Jack." The second memory was of my Mom ironing clothes. The rhythmic hiss of her hot iron on damp, lightly sprinkled clothes created an ineffable sense of contentment that made the afternoon all the more memorable.

My experience that fall day some thirty three years ago certainly wasn't unique. A recent thread on Compuserve's Gamers' Forum is sufficient evidence of that. I would assert, however, that any understanding of the broad and enduring appeal of wargaming must begin at some personal level of insight.

Such direct enlightenment, or zen, is only the beginning of an answer to the question that has vexed and mystified spouses, girlfriends, parents, siblings, bosses, marriage counselors, psychiatrists, ministers, and parish priests: Why are so many baby boomers still fascinated (obsessed?) with wargaming? I offer the following, highly subjective answer.

The Secret Handshake

Over the years my own association with wargaming has become a kind of secret handshake. It has been an easy topic of conversation and a quick way to get beyond the social posturing and facade of formal introduction. Although one could develop a generic wargame "Personality" from a lifetime of such encounters, a more useful composite might be to consider wargame motivation: the essence of will that drives people to wargaming in the first place and then to continue in that pursuit.

There are probably six factors that seem crucial in making and sustaining wargaming as a lifelong hobby or obsession, depending on one's point of view. I'll tick off the six and spend some time examining each one. The notion of self- discovery is first and perhaps the most important in shaping one is wargaming experience.

Second, self-validation appears to play an important motivational role. Third, some aspect of escape seems to play a part in sustaining a long-term interest in wargaming. Fourth, comradery is an obvious but essential element. A fifth factor might be termed creative competition. Finally, wargamers, whether consciously, subconsciously, or unconsciously, view wargaming as metaphor for life.

Finding Your Foot

One of the most enduring memories I have of Tactics II is the supplemental manual on strategy and tactics. Here within the short compass of eight pages or so was contained the whole essence of the art of war. In simple graphic detail, all the creative elements of war were outlined for the prospective gamer.

Further, play of the game created a level of understanding that fairly breathed life into the arrows and formations on the pages. That memory has endured so long because the moment of understanding defined for us a time of magical self-discovery - a self discovery meant in two different but related senses.

First, like any other wargamer, we had engaged intellectually some terribly complex aspect of the world. And, in that intellectual engagement, bridged by the medium of the wargame, we had discovered new meaning and insight. But significantly, the discovery was our own, achieved without outside guidance. No adult showed us the secrets of wargaming or its subtleties and nuances. Like the secret fishing spot or swimming hole, wargaming was our discovery, to be shared and exploited with our friends as we saw fit.

In a second sense, the discovery of the secrets of wargaming was coming of age discovery of self If an individual's personality is, at least in part, a complex mosaic of interests, then the more interests and pursuits one develops, presumably the more diverse the personality. Perhaps the constant admonition we all heard while growing up to broaden our horizons meant to broaden our selves.

In discovering wargaming, we had all discovered a new self. Clearly, as new wargamers we were no longer the same persons. We had been given a new stamp, a new mark, a new validation that would have to be re-validated and self-validated continuously.

The Citadel of the Self

Constant and humiliating defeat is the quickest way to destroy a wargamer's interest in gaming. This is the secret every wife and girlfriend yearns to discover, but once uncovered finds difficult to put into effect.

Wargaming is a self-actualizing endeavor. It is also a continuous process of self validation, a process that reaffirms the wargaming "self." The experience of incessant defeat says, essentially, that the wargamer is invalid and nonvalid as a gamer. At a professional level, for instance, a writer writes as an act of selfvalidation. Every bad review is a possible statement of invalidation; every positive review re-validates the person as an author. Part of the obsession with wargaming concerns the overwhelming personal identification by some gainers with the outcome. For some of us, defeat becomes a personal assault.

By implication and extension, then, invalidation as a gamer suggests personal abnegation, a kind of self-rejection. Insecure souls that we are, gaming tends to offer an attraction that is psychically rewarding and appealing. The psychological appeal of wargaming is essentially its most enduring attraction.

Wargaming is a Place

Wargaming is an obvious form of escape. It is also a place we go to. Those of us who cut our gaming eyeteeth on chess saw immediately the appeal of place offered by the historically grounded wargame. The problem with chess, as many of us recognized, was that it was context-free; it had no history, no personality. Chess is quite literally nothing more than an exercise in logic, like mathematics, the most context-free of intellectual endeavors.

The historical grounding of the wargame created a whole social structure that one could immediately identify with. Even the ahistorical headquarters units in Tactics II had more "personality" than the insipid white queen and black knight of chess. Without question, though, the wargames made history come alive. Reading about the battle of Waterloo or the North African campaign was one thing; actually refighting the battles was something altogether different. While one could escape through reading fiction, wargaming provided the vicarious opportunity to participate. For the wargamer the participation in history made the past our future.

It was certainly more than a cynical marketing ploy that led Avalon Hill to proclaim through its game boxes that "YOU!" could change history. What kind of game could possibly rewrite history? One could also argue that wargamers as a group have an historical awareness and sensitivity that, outside the academic discipline of history, is in many ways unique.

Building Worlds

If a chief attraction to wargaming is the idea of escape, then another, related aspect must also be considered. The gamer in some sense must create the very worlds that he escapes to and participates in. Although the gamer is given a completed game, it is so much wood pulp until he breathes into the game the spirit of his own creative genius and makes the game come alive to his will. Creativity and imagination are all bound together, and there are few creative activities that draw more on the power of imagination than wargaming.

Unlike the sculptor or the painter, the gamer is confronted with an active medium of expression. Unlike the sculptor and painter, who don't have to fight against the piece of rock or swatch of canvas, the wargamer must shape and "color" an active medium that is trying to do the same to him. The active nature of the creative gaming act offers the kind of challenge to one's imagination not found in the arts. At the same time the wargamer has the opportunity actually to tinker with the game itself and devise new creative possibilities. Small wonder, then, that we see such a great demand for scenario builders in our computer wargames. The wargamer has a natural, primordial urge to create and imagine.

A Collision of Minds

The creative marker that distinguishes wargaming from other creative endeavors has to do, as I said, with a living medium of expression. This aspect makes wargaming a competitive art form, and in many cases the very act of competition is sufficient to make gaming a lifelong pursuit. The dominance of competition in wargaming is a natural outgrowth from the struggle for self-validation.

The gamer is locked in a fight against not only an opponent, but also against his own personal limitations, which must be constantly overcome and extended. The sting of defeat smarts because our inadequacies are exposed under the gleeful eye of a smug opponent.

Friendships become defined through the years across the gaming table. Feuds develop and smolder, sometimes fulminating into an explosive break. Victories are tallied with relish on the turn record chart as so many counted coups. And there is nothing more memorable than an "ass buster" - a hard, well-fought victory over a tough and worthy opponent.

I recall one such game in the high summer of 1976. The previous year Martial Enterprises had released La Bataille de la Moscowa. Designed by Larry Groves, the game received a Charles Roberts Award for best amateur wargame at Origins II in Baltimore.

In the game I commanded Marshal Josef Anton Poniatowski's Vth Corps of Polish and Saxon troops against an old nemesis of mine, Ken Gains. Ken commanded the Russian leftwing in front of the important village of Utitsa. Over the years we both had become past masters at wargame psychological warfare. An inveterate chainsmoker, one of his most effective ploys was to arrive at the gaming table with cigarette papers and a tin of Old Plowboy tobacco. Lighting up, the noxious fumes, vaguely reminiscent of burning pubic hairs, would soon begin to roll over the battlefield in our direction.

In one particular session of La Bataille.... the French decided on a course of retaliation. Unbeknownst to Kenny, I crushed up a few spent peanut shells and distributed them liberally in his tobacco. Completely unfazed by the ploy, he seemed to enjoy his smoking all the more with the crackling peanut shells only contributing further to the French discomfort.

We decided then to escalate our psychological warfare at the next game session: we would use matchheads. We sprinkled an entire book of matchheads in his rapidly dwindling stock of Old Plowboy. Thanks to the statistical Law of Large Numbers, Ken had charged his cigarette with an ample amount of matchheads. The subsequent effect was immediate and remarkable: the ersatz cigarette torched off like a cheap firecracker. Mumbling something about strange new additives in tobacco, I tried to keep a straight face but largely failed. The memorable sight of the raggedly smoldering "roach" stuck in the middle of Ken's bearded visage was too much for us to contain. We all immediately cracked up.

The chortling soon stopped, however, when the focus of the game turned on an important cavalry action before the gates of Utitsa, an important victory objective. The village was screened by Karpov's Cossack Regiment and the Moscow Militia, arguably among the worst units in the entire game. The plan was to launch my Polish Lancers to clear the way for charging columns of infantry.

The entire plan collapsed, however, when the Cossacks and Moscow Militia displayed the most extraordinary defense of the game by defeating several Lancer charges. For his stout defense of Utitsa Ken was given the appellation of "Ko Sock EE," which to this day he uses as an effective warcry.

A Band of Mothers

I've tarried at some length over the "Utitsa affair," not so much for its nostalgia, but to suggest another of the socially appealing aspects of wargaming.

Wargaming is social in its competitive sense, as I've already discussed; but it is also social in a cooperative sense. One of the most socially appealing elements of wargaming is its multiplayer dimension and potential for cooperative effort and teamwork. The idea of a group of middle-aged grognards high-fiving around a wargame table is not merely an image one might find in a bad Saturday Night Live skit or in a Gary Larsen Far Side cartoon. It is a common experience shared by virtually all wargamers and suggests the viability of wargaming into the computer age.

It is to the computer that we owe, more than anything else, our wargaming longevity. Let's face it: for most of us the exigencies of family and job responsibility have long ago left behind the halcyon days of lengthy, faceto-face gaming.

The computer has become the ideal on call opponent. Furthermore, computer AI has steadily grown in competence and is increasingly becoming the opponent to beat with modem play still leaving open the opportunity for human-to-human play. But in all cases, multiplayer gaming is still possible against a competent computer or human opponent.

The recent move toward the computerization of such traditional board games as Avalon Hill's Kingmaker and Decision Games' The Far Seas is only a further stage in the natural evolution of the wargame and wargaming.

Since its inception, the board wargame has cried out for computerization and in its own way anticipated the computer itself. Essentially, the wargame was an abstract idea waiting for the computer to give the game fullest embodiment and expression. It is worth pondering that the computer is the most important invention since the book. A universal machine, the computer allows the user to write his own story - a possibility that was already inherent in the old board wargame. The whole fantasy genre makes this point even more evident.

The computer has also created the potential for a much more cooperative and cohesive gaming hobby than has ever existed before. The computer networks put gamers in touch with fellow gainers around the world to foster the greater sense of solidarity that must exist if the hobby is to endure. True enough, the computer has also created a new priestly cognoscenti: a cult of game reviewers and network pundits whose only useful role can be to make us more involved in controlling the fate of our own hobby.

A Metaphor for Victory

In the late seventies Richard Bandler, an information scientist, and John Grinder, a professor of linguistics, sought to learn how successful individuals structured their thinking in such a way as to develop high achievement. Their search led Bandler and Grinder to develop a theory called Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) to explain how great achievers structured their minds.

A whole spate of motivational seminars ensued as the theory caught on and spilled into the nineteen eighties. Led by such notables as Anthony Robbins and Charles Faulkner, entire lives were transformed through practical application of NLP.

One of the principle tenets of NLP is the notion that high achievers are successful because of the unique way in which they are able visualize their reality. These successful individuals are able to develop a reliable "map" of their professional "territory." This in turn is based on a particular metaphorical structure that holds the whole of the "map" together. Charles Faulkner found, for instance, in his investigation of successful options traders, that they saw their professional involvement in the market as a kind of "puzzle," "war," or "game." Less successful traders mctaphorically saw the market as a "Wild animal."

The whole experience of wargaming constitutes a metaphor for life. The gamer is able to take away from the gaming table a unique mindset that helps him to structure his world. It is, therefore, no accident that many gamers have developed successful professions precisely because they are able to employ patterns of thought developed and refined in wargam ing. The ability to deal with the chaos and ambiguity of complex situations, to develop cooperative human relationships, to view accident and probability as opportunity to be exploited, to demonstrate successfully that the greatest social leveler isn't status or money but instead the ability to solve real world problems of broad practical relevance - these abilities, and many others besides, create in the gamer's way of thinking a positive, proactive outlook on life; fundamentally, a view that life in its fullness is a game-like struggle that can be won and that, in the end, all victory and defeat begins in the mind.

Wooden Blocks and Iron Men

I have tried to show, purely from a wargamer's perspective, that behind the outward manifestation of puerile behavior, wargamers are motivated by a complex web of interest; that there are at least six reasons why wargaming induces such a lifelong passion. I have said nothing, however, about the object of wargaming itself, that is, of war; or more to the point, of the relationship of the garner to war.

Clearly there are some closet, fringe elemerits in wargaming who derive a certain bizarre satisfaction in war, death and destruction. The same can be said of other gaming genres like video gaming, for instance. I have found, almost paradoxically, that many wargamers are in fact pacifist in outlook. The fact that wargaming has endured through some tough times over the years speaks to its maturity as a thinking hobby; a thriving maturity that recognizes the serious and lethal business of war, and its profound human tragedy.