Follow the Wargame Drum

Over the years I have known many people who "follow the wargame drum". Most of them are a mixture of collector, gamester, rulesmith, historian, mid handcrafter. The handcrafters include those who paint, convert, design, Sculpt, mid cast figures as well as those who make all the realistic scenery, terrain and odd details that have such appeal to those of us who view wargaming as a "moving diorama". Nevertheless, since most of the war gaming books and magazine articles deal with rules for movement, melee and morale of the troops, this article is intended to encourage beginning handcrafters and give the "old hands" a few ideas for improving what Charles Grant called the "look of the thing".

Handcrafters enjoy making the war game equipment they need. Some things that I have made include tents, walls and wagons. The tent is a real all-purpose model that can be painted for virtually any period. I found I needed the palisade wall section for my DBA "camps". The baggage wagons can be used for both camps and convoys. These pictured are scaled for 25/30mm, but such castings could be scaled for 15mm figures as well.

While these special features for your games that may not be available or affordable on the market, they can be made of plaster of Paris, cast in latex molds from odds-and-ends patterns (wood blocks, cardboard, modeling clay etc.) and then Painted to set the stage for your games. Handcrafters know that when you make it yourself you can have exactly what you want and you can fix it when it breaks.

Wargamers who have seen the diorama Museum pieces" may hesitate to build their own because they confuse the beautiful, meticulous "scale models" with what I have come to think of as stage models".

In the theatre, the "stage settings" provide backgrounds for, but should not outshine, the "actors". On the war game table the finest details of casting and painting are usually in the miniature figures. The houses and equipment with "Suggested" details and softer, more weathered colors, provide the settings. I remember Charles Grant as one of the "moving diorama" folks. In The War Game, he recalls the importance of "the look of the thing" and the pleasure connected with "realistic-looking buildings from the period point of view". That is, we need stone or wattle-and-daub thatched huts for ancients, timber-frame and stone houses for medieval, and log cabins, brick and clap-board farm houses for the Civil War. The handcrafter/wargamers who build their own can have these things and in their wargames are also able, as Grant said, to "see the effect of action in built up areas and see the effect of their skill or luck with field guns or howitzers".

Case Study of a Hussite Wagon-Fort