Wargaming is essentially (although not exclusively) a social activity. A group of like-minded individuals gets together to battle one another with miniatures across a tabletop. You can always game solo but the social interaction with others who share your enthusiasm makes for an enjoyable and fulfilling pastime. A few weeks ago I was fortunate to be part of the birth of another wargaming group (not ‘club’ - we don’t want to get to formal just yet!). A cold winters day in Canberra was made warm by the friendly competition between about 14 wargamers playing Napoleonic, WWII and ACW games in the old Canberra Services Club at Manuka (full bar facilities available!). The turnout may have been modest (but pretty good by Canberra standards!) but the bonhomie and fierce but friendly competition saw the establishment of the Canberra Kriegspielers as an ongoing concern. The advantages of wargaming with a club or group are many - particularly if you’re starting off in the hobby. Most veteran gamers are only too pleased to be able to talk about their hobby and impart of their wisdom to anyone expressing an interest (with most of the wargaming ‘grognards’ I know - you couldn’t shut them up!). If we want the hobby to continue to grow as it has done in the last few years we must encourage those who take an interest - particularly the younger players no matter what their choice of wargame. The historical vs fantasy ‘debate’ is a complete furphy - it matters not what type of wargame you play. The enormous growth of the hobby in the last 10 years has been fuelled by the equally enormous success of such wargaming businesses as Games Workshop. GW alone has attracted tens of thousands of youthful players to the hobby all over the world. It stands to reason that while some may drop out many more will be interested to experience other forms of wargaming. It is the responsibility of all historical wargamers, groups and clubs to encourage them in any and every way. Pointless debate over whether a ‘historical’ wargaming magazine should address other forms of wargaming such as Fantasy or Sci-fi do the hobby a disservice. There are many aspects of fantasy gaming of interest to historical gamers and vice versa and we at Kriegspieler have published the first of what we hope may be many more articles that we consider to be of interest to historical wargamers. A far more serious issue was encountered recently that effects this magazine - plagiarism. Being a small publication we are dependant to a large degree on contributed articles, we are thus also dependant on the honesty of those writing them. Presenting someone else’s work as your own is a form of theft and cannot be tolerated. All we ask is if you use someone else’s material be honest about it and say so, obtaining permission to use it if necessary. The complete correspondence surrounding our case of plagiarism can be read in the ‘Letters’ section of this issue. Let it serve as a warning to anyone who may be tempted to flout the law - an issue such as this could quite easily destroy this magazine. Just to show what a gentleman he is, the victim of this plagiarism Phil Yates of New Zealand, has kindly agreed to write for us and we’re proud to say its the first article by a Kiwi - we hope its the start of many more from our wargaming brethren from the land of the Long White Cloud. Finally, I’d like to think that the Kriegspieler is attempting to support and encourage the hobby in this part of the world and if you agree with this we’d like your support as well to continue to do so. Contact details, including our new address, and instructions on submitting articles, subscriptions etc, can be found on the inside cover of every issue. Back to Table of Contents -- Kriegspieler #9 To Kriegspieler List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2000 by Kriegspieler Publications. 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