In the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century a respected British clergyman developed a novel idea. He suggested that the then current style of warfare might be much improved if civilized armies adopted weapons which fired humane, spherical bullets at Christian opponents, but mowed down the heathen with square projectiles honed to a fine cutting edge. Victorian generals were unmoved, but the idea of scything through the underbrush of contemporary wargaming with a few square slugs aimed at the heathen remains a tempting one. If you remember, in the beginning we wargamers operated secretly and on a shoestring budget. There were no figures available then, except for the clumsy Marx, Herald, or Britains, Ltd. 45s, which you had to purchase on the sly, telling everybody they were for your little brother. As time went on, there appeared in the West the pioneering 30mm efforts of Jack Scruby, while from across the Atlantic a few bootleg Staddens and Surens reached our shores in the teeth of the blockade. You could buy these through the mail, in plain brown wrappers, so as not to blow your cover. Remember ordering all the way from London S.W. 1 exactly the number of grenadiers or whatever that you needed to complete your regiment, waiting five months, and finally receiving one less? Such was wargaming in what some gamers may nostalgically recall as the Golden Age -- in truth, a time of small variety, primitive table-top hardware, and embryonic rule systems. We did a lot of arguing in those days (remember?), and the anguished cry "But that's not realistic!" echoed passionately and often around our makeshift tables. But, in the main, wargamers were a noble band of brothers upholding an ancient faith. We met in darkened rooms, at dead of night, with secret passwords and vows of anonymity sealed in blood. To be publicly branded in that era as one who "played with toy soldiers" led inevitably to social ostracism, if not to actual police surveillance. The scarred survivors of that repressive period now marvel at the way wargaming has emerged from its closet. Nowadays, even those who fiddle with ores, trolls, pixies, and fairies are threatened with no more than a certain distaste. Wargaming, it seems, has come a long way since the Time of Persecution, and wargamers have had more than twenty years to achieve maturity and gain respectability for their hobby. Unfortunately, progress -- other than material progress -- has been pitifully slow, and many wargamers today are, often rightly, characterized as juvenile cranks. Of late, even our material progress appears to be threatened by cancellation of some historical figure lines and deterioration of molds in others. Some prophets of doom are already foreseeing a new Dark Age in terms of figure availability. This last possibility, however, should not worry us unduly. Today's corporate gaints, such as Lord Minifig, who monopolize the wargame figure industry started as talented amateurs in basement workshops. If existing companies fail to fill the needs of serious historical gainers, new companies, formed by equally talented part- time enterpreneurs, will eventually replace them. We should not worry about materials; it is, rather, with the intellectual quality and standards of wargaming that we should be concerned. Wargamers, let's take a hard look at ourselves. With all of the sophisticated table-top hardware, new paints, accessories, finely-detailed castings, and new or reprinted books that have been available for years now, how many of us can justly say we have kept up with the times? How many of us still game on a bare floor, a pingpong table hastily converted for the occasion, or on a threadbare swatch of poison-green felt strewn haphazardly with a few scruffy bits of wilted lichen? What proportion of our wargame armies are still composed of inaccurate, unevenly painted, poorly painted, spray painted, or even (shudder!) unpainted castings? Look about you. You will be dismayed to see how few have read widely in the literature of the periods in which they game, and how very many have only memorized whatever ponderous rules they feel are representative. Does, then, our hobby present a quality-oriented, carefully researched, meticulously detailed, and visually attractive image? Or a haphazard, gimcrack vista of shoddiness? Chances are, a this point, that the legion of wargamers whose layouts are not of very high quality will counter with a ringing excuse to the effect that the game itself is what really counts, not the pieces, or the surroundings, or the knowledge behind it. Competition is the key, winning is what's important, and so on. This excuse, of course, precisely indicates one of the basic wrong turns our hobby took years ago. Contrary to what seems to be the popular belief, wargaming is not a competitive sport. From time to time various hobby magazines print the box scores and round-by-round descriptions of "tournaments" and "play-offs" wherein some gamers apparently test their manhood in contrived contests under rules which manifestly have no connection with historical reality or human possibility. These Battle Bowls -- in atmosphere very reminiscent of these grotesque arm-wrestling and chest-beating championships held annually in Petaluma, California -- seem to cater to the very worst elements of pseudo-intellectual machismo extant in wargaming. The intricate stratagems, convoluted formations, laborious rule systems, and to-the-last-man style of play demonstrate only the ignorance and immaturity of the players, who must not have cracked a book since reading Ivanhoe in freshman English. Besides making the contestants themselves look pretentious and half-baked, such carnival contests demean the whole hobby as well. What possible good can anyone derive from touting up wargame batting averages? And then there's D & D . . . Who would have thought that Professor Tolkein's leaden theatrics would have spawned such progeny! I really believe that there exists only a small, hard core of longtime D & D'ers, since surely, the commonplace thrills of such derivative fantasizing could not engage the meanest intelligence for long. Nevertheless, as P.T. Barnum said, there's one born every minute. D & D is cheap and easy. It's a game requiring no skill, no research, no human insight, and even, very little imagination. It is the ideal activity for the flabby, credulous, and undisciplined mind, a sort of intellectural racketball. I also suspect that D & D'ers include in their midst sizeable numbers of UFO contactees, Bigfoot spotters, and general believers in lost- tribes-and-sunkencontinents gee-whizzery. There seems to be as well an affinity between D & D, with its overdeveloped nudes done in 25mm scale, and the thinly- disguised comic book pornography masquerading as pedestrian science fiction to be found on so many news stands. D & D gets most of the wargame coverage which reaches the popular prints. When outsiders think of wargamers, they normally conjure the image of a wild- eyed college dropout in a Spiderman suit. It's hard to attract quality recruits to our hobby with a lure like that. Is there any hope? I believe so, but any cure will be painful and prolonged. Wargaming began as an elitist hobby, a disciplined activity requiring some committment, attractive only to the few. Knowledge and quality craftsmanship were what counted originally. It took some while for the slipshod artificer and the gun-notching type of player to change the direction of the hobby. I started as such a player myself, and believe me, it was a struggle! The time has now come, I believe, to restore the basic sanity which has been discounted. Let us therefore, be a little intolerant of poor paint jobs and sloppy tables -- our own as well as others. Let's read more widely in military history to learn just what it is that Generals do -- too many of our rule systems seem to have no conception. Let's do some competent research and write articles about new historical periods so that new interests are developed. Let's exchange bibliographies, ideas for hardware improvement, and progress reports through magazines like this one. Let's measure our standards against others' and calmly profit where we can. As historical gainers, let us speak out clearly for what we believe in. Wargaming, as I hope to have demonstrated, is a far cry from cutthroat sports and airy daydreaming. It is rather, a social activity where men of probity and good will gather to amicably recreate an accurate historical contest with fine accessories in an atmosphere of goodnatured rivalry and some scholarship. Let's not be reluctant, therefore, to separate ourselves from those who have no place in such a context. Wargaming may be headed for a crisis in the foreseeable future and many "summer soldiers and sunshine patriots" will be leaving the hobby. Good riddance. Numbers count for nothing and if those who remain are serious and talented the hobby will be the better for it. "We may be" as Jo Shelby said, before leading his Confederate cavalry brigade into Mexico after Lee's surrender, "the last of our race. Let us be the best, as well". That, I think, is excellent advice. Hobby Views Introduction by Dick Bryant Square Bullets by Samuel T. Gill Exhortation and Warning by Otto Schmidt II Responses: Letters to the Editor Vol II No. 6 Responses: Letters to the Editor Vol. III No. 1 Back to Table of Contents -- Courier Vol. 2 #4 To Courier List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1981 by The Courier Publishing Company. 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