It's October of 2000, and my parents, a friend mine and I are going to the Western Reserve Historical Society to see an American Civil War display they were having. We walked in the door, paid, and started to look around. We saw the Chief Wahoo from old Cleveland Stadium, the former home of our beloved Cleveland Indians. There was also a table with what appeared to me to be a diorama that was part of the Civil War display. We hadn't even gotten out of the lobby, and we had already seen some cool things.

After all of this, someone came up to us and asked if we'd like to play. We were a bit confused until the person explained that it was not a diorama that was setup, but in fact a game. I had never heard of playing a game with miniatures figures and terrain, but figured that it looked cool, and it was, after all, a Civil War game. My friend and I said we'd play. So we began to play the morning hours of July 1, 1863. The next thing I remember is my mom pulling on me away saying that if I didn't go see the display at that point I wouldn't be able to see it.

This was my first wargame ever -- the one that got me into miniature wargaming. The person that asked if I'd like to play and ran the game was Scott Mingus. His partner (the one that my troops fought) was Doug Rogers. I feel that Scott, Doug, and several others (such as the Colbys up in Toledo) have done an excellent job at expanding the hobby.

I feel that these type of demos are the key. Take the game out to the public and show them what we're all about. Excellent places for demos such as this include libraries, museums, and reenactments. Make it easy to understand (for JR3 demos, there is a set of easy to use JR3 reference charts in the files section of the JR3 Yahoo Group), don't get bogged down in technicalities. Try to make it fun, and put interesting twists on events. A twist on a unit routing could be that the boys in that unit love their country so much, they're running back to it!

Do demos, and our hobby will definitely grow.