The major aspect of wargaming is not assembling armies of model soldiers, painting and organising them into units, then parading them on tabletop terrains, to fight battles of historical or mythical background. That is the outward and visible manifestation, satisfying in it's splendour and brain-exercising aspects. No, the prime feature of wargaming lays in the fact that it is a social exercise, a means of uniting a group into a cohesive unit welded together by their common interest. Ask any veteran wargamer who are his best friends, and invariably they will be those comrades against whom he has tabletop battled over the years. I had a son Peter who, when he was about two years old, would laboriously clamber up the back stairs to the wargames room where assembled the half-a-dozen men who mysteriously invaded his house every Wednesday evening. He would be lifted up to give him a view of this fascinating and colourful scene -- and later he became an ardent wargamer himself. When, twenty-six years later, he was killed in the course of his duties as a policeman, those same six men offended his funeral, having never ceased wargaming in my house over that period. That is the nature of wargaming to me, which has brought me countless good friends and comrades in this country and America. Of course, the solo-wargamer, he who battles on his own for reasons of choice or lack of opponents, may find this difficult to practice, or perhaps even comprehend. To them, I would urge every effort to find a like-minded man to face across the table and become a brother-In-arms. On the other hand, fighting a battle of your own choice, at your own speed, to your own rules has attractions - made even more so if the solo part of wargaming is carded out in conjunction with, or as an accessory to stimulating and regular face-to-face wargaming. Even if this is not possible, then wargaming has enough going for it in any circumstances to make it an integral part of your existence -- think, what would your life have been like if you hadn't discovered our hobby? Back to The Gauntlet No. 1 Table of Contents Back to The Gauntlet List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1994 by Craig Martelle Publications This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com