This offering to our long suffering Editor is not intended, nor am I compe tent to give, an overview of UK Wargaming over the last two decades: neither will it contain any deep philosophical analysis of the hobby. I am into wargaming for nourishment, not punishment! WARGAME DEMO AT EURO MILITAIRE (A Modeller & Collector Show) - Sept 1986 - McGarry Demo is of river crossing described in the article. What I hope to do is outline the history of my local Club, the Worthing Wargames Group, showing how it has coped with developments in the hobby, changes of membership, and attitudes. Worthing is a pleasant town of around 100,000 inhabitants on the South coast of West Sussex. It is mainly residential, with some light industry. It has no great history, only developing from a fishing village in the last 250 years orso. It had some smuggling but it would be a strange place on our South coast that hadn't! However, a few miles around in the county there is History with a capital 'H'. One of the few surviving Saxon churches is in the village of Somptingon the outskirts of the town and then a few miles to the west is the Norman Arundel Castle, seat of the Dukes of Norfolk. A little further west is Chichester sitting at the end of its long waterway and harbour, now mainly used by pleasure craft but a port in Roman times and long before that. Just outside Chichester is the excavated site of a Roman Palace, now set up as a museum covering much of the original area. This brings me to what I believe is an important difference between wargaming in the States and UK. Here, very vew people are more than 20 miles or so from a largish town and therefore generally close to some organised club, whereas in your country the distance may be 200 miles. Our situation has made it easy for wargamers to meet but has also made us rather spoiled. Ask a UK wargamer how he would feel about travelling 100 miles, not to a convention, just for a game! For those of you who have not visited here imagine England in particular as one mainly urban area where even our largest farmland by your standards would be just fair sized country parks. It follows then, that when USA wargamers travel long distances to conventions, or even just week-end meets with other clubs, they want to use their precious time to best advantage, not to engage in time consuming rules bending sessions. Now, back to our Club This started in the mid-'60s, became "organised" in 1966 and went on to win the National Championships in 1968. We then hosted the Nationals in 1969 at our largest hotel. This was a very successful affair, enjoyed by all, even the gentleman who started towalk to France late on the Saturday night after a heavy evening in one of the bars. He had friends clear headed enough to get him back with only wet feet and still went on to win his category in the final on Sunday. Somebody should do a study of Beer and Wargaming one day. Since then interest in National competitions as a Club has faded although individual members have distinguished themselves from time to time. Ancients have always had a strong following and for the last 12 years we have hosted a Society of Ancients week-end, normally in March each year when we have open house for Society members. Organisation is kept to a minimum; we supply tables in all sizes with some terrain, and a blackboard where players post their strength, army and challenge. It always runs smoothly, helped by a well stocked bar run by the Social Club who rents us the premises. One of the main objects of regular attenclers is a point of honour as to who can get in the most games at the meeting. The present record is 7, in two days and one very long night! Over a number of years we have built up contacts with a number of clubs, notably Poole in Dorset where they now hold two week-end conventions each year. Not only wargaming but social contacts benefit from these meetings and a number of "family" friendships have formed over the years. Our Club has always got by with a minimum of formality and organisation. We have no committee or officers as such; I collect the dues and pay the rent and everything else is run by the members direct, so that at many of our regular meetings a game situation is cooked up depending on who is there with what, apart from individual one to one games. Most members live within a few miles of one another so that there is a lot of contact outside the twice a month meetings, and probably twice as many games are played at members' homes than at the Club. One comment that has often been made by outsiders is the reference to what they call Worthing Wargames Labour Exchange, being our habit of swapping and loaning armies around amongst ourselves, some of the better painters contracting to paint up armies for others, while scenery and terrain is held almost in common. Our main interest has always been Ancients, and we have worked our way through most of the WRG sets, as well as earlier ones. We took up 7th Edition when it came in and quite soon organised interpretation to our usual practice, which is broadly "if in doubt, throw some dice or ignore it". This cavalier approach to rules is not confined to WRG Ancients, but to any set we happen to be dealingwith. It is surprising how little difference all the nitpicking makes to the progress of a game, especially under 7th. People who measure to the millimetre and try to work out angels to a degree tend to get laughed off the table. We also tend to play fast, and there is a general impatience at anyone dragging his feet. This has probably been helped by our adoption, by general agreement, of 15mm scale some 12 years ago. With a minimum size table of 5'x 3' for a normal 15mm game there tends to be a fair amount of manoeuvre, none of the "wall to wall Hoplites" syndrome. Lately, over the last two years or so there has been a swing to 1/300 scale figures and a Club Biblical campaign, so I find myself making up dozens of Elamite chariots from scratch, all stuffed with archers: but I digress - we have a large numberof 15mm Ancientarmies built up overtheyears, so that we can fit up most periods between us. Also, in 1985/86, we started on a new period for us, Napoleonics; in 6mm scale. We had this idea of getting the mass effect so took WRG 1685/1845 rules in 15mm as a basis, with the same ground scale but in each element we quadrupled the infantryfigures and doubled the cavalry. This gives battalions of between 24 to 80 or so infantry with an average around 48, and cavalry regiments between 16 and 50 figures. As we had hoped, the effect was terrific and very soon there were several complete corps being fitted out, and games being organised. Down to Poole In most cases we discarded the "element" idea and used the appropriate sub-units, companies and squadrons. We took the whole thing down to Poole, organised a multi-player game, two French Corps attacking an Austrian Corps with a few Russians across a river. We had players down to Divisional level, around 12 in total, and myself as Umpire seeing that appropriate restrictions and delays were imposed on visibility, communications, etc. It went well. Some "reputations" were made, others tarnished. The French C-in-C took sometime to get his act together in that he initially gave orders without taking proper account of time and space, resulting in some of the lovliest traffic jams I have ever seen on any wargames table! The Austrians had left 2 Grenadier battalions and a battery of light guns in a strong chateau and its grounds and a French Div Commander had deployed most of her (yes, there are some lady wargamers around) force against it when it would have been sufficient to have masked it and carried on. Meanwhile her husband with another Div. was trying to bull his way across the only bridge with inadequate artillery support and had to be restrained after losing the best part of a Brigade to no purpose. The Austrian C-in-C had spread his forces too widely and had taken no steps to immobilise or secure the local boats with the result that some enterprising French Light Infantry on patrol down the river found some boats, towed them down using commandeered horses and made a crossing about a mile above the little town supported by a battery of Horse Artillery that had become detached (lost?) during the approach and was lookingfor something useful to do. Aftera brisk little action with some Austrian Jaegers the Light Infantry got across and established a bridgehead enabling the pontoon train to come up and start bridging (as soon as the French C-in-C found out what was happening and gave the necessary orders!). By the way, as Umpire I decided, on a dice roll, whether or not detached units showed sufficient initiative to carry out such operations without definite orders. This applied throughout this game and has been followed by all our Umpires in succeeding games. The procedure is broadly as follows - 1. A request from Div (or Brigade) Commander (an actual player) direct to Umpire asking for a particular unit to do something or go somewhere not covered by the original orders. 2. Umpire's response is to - i) Check original orders for Brigade and/or individual units where given. ii) Check that the Div Commander cannot "see" what the situation is (he usually cannot) and cannot therefore order the operation. iii) Dice for the character of the unit concerned and based on this, and the type of unit, set up a further dice throw, taking into account the difficulty/danger of the venture, to see if theywould do what the Commander would like them to do. There is always the chance that the Umpire may decide that they have other options, some of which may be the last thing the Div Commander wanted! Moral - you appeal to Umpires atyour possible peril! All this procedure is carried out in "private" so that neitherfriends norenemy know in advance what is going on. I have dealt with this procedure at some length as it may be of interest to wargamers playingin umpired, non-competition games. Our basic attitude is that umpires are there to add confusion and uncertainty to what might otherwise become a boring mathematical exercise. The initial confusion, etc., is of course provided by the Commanders directlywhen they start issuing orders. We do not see umpires as primarily rule ajudicators, mainly as at the scale of battle we go for rule bashing sessions are immaterial. Much more depends on which Commander has guessed right (or less wrong!) and been able to apply the pressure where it is most effective. The first massed game was a great success, both visually and as a game and started off a rush of painting and organisation and then larger and larger games until oneweek-end at Poole we had a multi-corps per side game on a U shaped set of tables measuring 36 feet around the outside with about 150 square feet of playing area. There were two Umpires, 20 players and an estimated 15,000 figures. I mentioned that we used the WRG 1685/1845 Rules. These were amended to give simultaneous play and a provision for Grand Tactical moves over a longer time period so that some players would be fighting at close quarters in 5 minute bounds while others might be marching to the sound of the guns in 30 minute turns. A large dummy clock, controlled by the Umpires, showed Game Time to all. As well as the WRG Rules we have also used a suitably modified "universal" set produced by the Oxford Club and an experimental quick-firesetfrorn Worthing. In fact, at the very large game I mentioned, three different sets of rules were being used in actions in different parts of the battle! And it all worked! After that first flush, we have cut down the size of the games, mainly because it was physically impossible to get enough players around the table to move formations at a reasonable speed. When some poor chap is trying to move alone a complete corps of some 40 battalions plus artillery, things tend to slow down. We are now revertingto a maximum of 2 Corps a side, with actual players down to Divisional (and some Brigade) level. At our own Club we are running the "War and Peace" board game and bringing selected battles on to the wargames table. As usual with our lot the rules tend to vary -- one battle with modified WRG and the next with the Oxford set. As I write I have before me a completely fresh set from the Oxford Club, this time specifically designed for Napoleonic with 6mm figures. They look interesting, have several features inspired by WRG 7th Edition, including Marcy moves. As for the 7th Edition, all our Club members have welcomed it, after the usual gripe about re-basing. The scope, especially in 6mm, for enveloping attempts, the need to keep a reserve and to watch doubtful sub generals and their commands, has brought new dimensions of uncertainty to our Ancient wargaming and, so we think, made games faster and often more decisive. I hope this has been of some interest to at least a proportion of COURIER readers. I have concentrated on miniatures naturally, but we play a variety of board games, the most popular being the multi-player type, such as Brittania. Enjoy your hobby - we are fortunate to find one so fascinating and compulsive.  Bob O'Brien was a founder and, for many years, partner in Wargames Research Group (WRG). Bob, co-author of many WRG rules, is now retired and exploring many hobbies besides Miniature Wargaming including model racing cars, period sailing ship models, small scale flying model aircraft and the like. Bob has not neglected Miniature Wargaming, however, as this article will attest. Back to Table of Contents -- Courier #55 To Courier List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1991 by The Courier Publishing Company. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. 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