Greetings to you all! It's been a good while since I wrote a column, for which I crave your indulgence. Since last October my life has gone through a series of changes, mostly for the good. I have moved to Toronto to be with my wife Lori, who is working on her PhD in Church History (mostly early medieval Irish Christianity) and am employed by The Foundry to do their U.S. Trade Sales, as well as editing rules and writing part of a major project. WORKING FOR THE FOUNDRY Most of you will be familiar with The Foundry in one way or another. Really excellent 28mm figures, huge ranges, that sort of thing. Massive expansion in the last couple of years. Rumours of plans for global conquest etc (this last part is entirely true, by the way, what with bestselling books on C19th Central Asia and the Himalayas being sold to Hollywood for movies, huge sales of WWII British Home Guard figures etc). Giant factories staffed by muscular ex-miners wielding monstrous ladles of molten metal. Gleaming Bentleys in the car park. All overseen by cigar-chomping mogul Bryan Ansell from his tropical island estate on the pirate's haven of Guernsey. And now, as part of the Plan, they hire hard-driving, stop-at-nothing gaming impresario Howard Whitehouse -- All absolutely true! I'd known Bryan as a voice on the phone for several years. He'd enjoyed my writings, especially the wacky Sudan Wars sort-of-RPG 'Science versus Pluck', and started sending me samples of what was then Guernsey Foundry stuff, sculpted by the estimable Mark Copplestone and cast by Bryan and Neville Carre in a cavern beneath the island cliffs. I wrote some stuff on scenery-making. One day in early '99 he called and, as I was still waking up (there's a five hour time difference) told me about a Victorian Science Fiction project he and Mark were coming up with (of which, more later) and would I be interested in doing some writing? It all went by rather quickly - I hadn't made my first pot of tea yet and was still groggy - but one thing that caught my attention was the phrase "Well, if you are interested, well get you over to talk about it." Now, in my world, people who want me to do something in the writing line tend to say things like "I'll write you a letter" or "I'll call again". Get me over - to Guernsey? Sounded good. I mentioned it to Lori, at that time snowed under in a Canadian winter, and she was interested in going, too. Nothing much happened for a while, then in early summer Bryan called and we spoke more, and in August we were off to the jewel of the Channel Islands, as the tourist brochure called it. We stayed, in company with Mark Copplestone and amiable Scots Science Fiction writer Bill King at Bryan's 'other house', which turned out to be a Victorian mansion (alright, a small mansion, but still a mansion) where he kept his astonishing collection of model soldiers. For a week the four of us were cocooned in conference discussing the project, named Victoriana, while Lori visited the sights. Bill and Mark went home to Prague and Birmingham, respectively. Bryan mentioned to me he was looking for somebody to handle the Trade Sales business for Foundry in the US: previously it had been handled by Ed Patrick as part of the mail order business, but Ed already had a full-time job as a police officer, and this needed somebody who could spend 40 hours a week on it? Did I know anybody? Yes I did! I'd been pretty sick of my social work job for a while - daily encounters with human misery grind you down - so I jumped at the chance. I spent two weeks at the factory in Nottingham, learning how figures are made, splashing hot lead over myself under the aegis of Angus, a dour ex-miner with hands like asbestos, and wandering through box after box of metal castings from many periods, including things I had no recollection were in existence - Ooh, does that guillotine really work? Are those C16th American Indians? - and seeing new figures go from the 'green masters' (British home guard on bikes? Really?) through the mould-making process to the finished product. I learned the fine art of phone sales with Mark Farr - 'here's a list of model shops in Southern England. Call 'em up and persuade 'ern to let us send catalogues and samples. Then call 'em back next week and see what they think. Then get 'ern to order some ---' After Nottingham I went to Guernsey to see the mail order operation and became a member of the packing team for a few days. These folks have a religious zeal to get orders out! Incredible. So now I am the trade sales bloke for Foundry in the US, though my mailing address is actually in Canada (409 Wellesley St East, Toronto, Ontario M4X IH5) If you are a game store and feel that your life, business, sales, sex appeal etc would be enhanced by carrying Foundry figures (and who could disagree?) call me at 877-360-9111 toll free, fax 416-968-6888. We've vastly improved our delivery time by means of a new shipper and a quick turnaround at the factory, which had been a problem area in the past. COLONIAL WARGAMERS - A DIFFERENT BREED Here's something I noticed a long time ago. There's something different about colonial wargamers. We are romantics, enthused with a slightly odd period of history. We don't really care who won the real battles - I certainly 'pull' for the locals and love a Great Imperial Disaster - and we tend not to be competitive in our gaming styles. Ask an ancients touranament player if he wants to play the French at Camerone or the British at Isandhlwana - he doesn't, not at all. He'll lose. Ask a colonials player and he's there already, possibly stuffing a kleenex under the back of his cap for that Foreign Legion look. Years of running colonial games at conventions has shown me that the people who turn up are the nicest you could meet. The only people I've disliked are those bozos who make 'boom-box' jokes about the Zulus (I punish them with hidden ambushes and umpire-inflicted catastrophes), who almost always wandered in because there wasn't an ACW game where the Confederates were bound to win. Real colonials players love Kipling (we kipple all the time) and Stanley Baker in 'Zulu', but also collect African masks and Tibetan prayer-wheels, and are looking for a good Ethiopian restaurant when they visit a new city. There are other periods where the wargamers are essentially romantics. ACW buffs are usually real enthusiasts, walking the battlefields, reading the memoirs and, as Vicki McGinnis said of husband Bill "he knows the Confederate generals better than he knows the neighbours". Civil war gamers can be serious about arcane, but not in the same way as, say, a tournament player or a rules lawyer. They just want things to be as exactly right as possible. Any real ACW enthusiast will happily take command of a beat-up brigade ordered to charge uphill against breastworks manned by twice his numbers -as long as the scenario is either precisely historical or convincingly placed at an exact time and place. He won't win, but it's sort-of re-enacting. Again, your ancients-tournament bloke wouldn't touch that sort of scenario. Old west gamers play for fun, often mixing movies and reality in a cheerful blend. Some Napoleonic players fall into this category, loving the panache of the French and the Regency air of the British - but most, I fear, get entrapped in the overarching detail of many sets of rules and don't seem to be having any fun. Correct me if I'm wrong, fellas. ON CIVILITY, NEGATIVITY, AND BRINGING OTHERS INTO OUR HOBBY We all realise (alright, I am telling you --- ) that our hobby is a slightly strange, eccentric fringe sort of activity largely confined to, well, people like us. By which I mean mostly middle aged, white males who can't play golf. We are generally pretty well educated, certainly well read on our chosen topics, often a bit lacking on the social skills front - well, not you or 1, no, but those fellas over there --- indeed, whenever I come back from conventions I feel like Pierce Brosnan, suave and sophisticated, because my waist measurement (though by no means sylph-like) is less than my height, and because I did not leave extra room in my baggage for extra figure purchases by leaving out deodorant, toothpaste and spare under-wear. But this is not a diatribe at those loveable misfits who celebrate a wargaming weekend with multiple varieties of food stain down their only XXXXL T-shirt (the one with 'Napoleon Bonaparte European Tour 1812' on it, only faded so you can't read it any more). They may be a bit ripe, but they are usually well intentioned, and it's not like they have wives and girlfriends to spruce them up a bit before they go out in public. Indeed, if there's any Satanists out there looking for a virgin to sacrifice, ignore the teenage girls and go straight to the chubby 44 year old guy in the Civil War kepi over there --- but I digress. My concern is the air of negativity that hangs over some of our comrade s- in-gaming like a pollution cloud over an industrial zone. You know what I mean, the characters who are only happy if they have something to gripe about. It could be the actual hobby, or the world in general. In fact, grumbling is their other hobby, which they feel free to indulge in at any time. What could be more off-putting for a potential recruit than meeting someone who complains incessantly about, well, you name it. 'Figures are too expensive' is a cry I (in my new role as seller of such things) hear from some of the veterans: 'I remember when you could get a 20mm figure for a penny. Three for a penny. Somebody's gouging us!' Alright, I go back a long way too. My weekly disposable income in 1972 allowed me to buy 3 Hinchliffe 25mms or a box of Airfix 20mms. 'Rules cost too much. And the convention organisers are all jackasses! And these kids playing Warhammer and Pokemon and card games ---' If it's not wargames it's politics, usually of that virulent strain where libertarianism and fascism collide in an unholy heap of resentment. Friends, we don't need this. We don't need carping criticism and poorme moaning and pointless arguments when we play our strange, odd little games. Because that's what it is. They are also fascinating, absorbing little games, where we make lifelong friends and share a bonhomie derived from our love of history, and our love of model soldiers. Frank Chadwick said it well: model soldiers are COOL! Show some to almost anyone and they are fascinated, whereas they are bored silly by your stamp collection or whatever. They really speak to people. We can get a lot more people interested in wargaming provided we accentuate the positive and, er, eliminate the negative. I'd love to see all kinds of people coming into this hobby; women (who are terrific role-players, and add a wonderful new dimension to the game), minorities ( I sold a bunch of Foundry Sikhs to a Mr Singh, ain't that great, really connecting with his heritage) and, generally, people with clean clothes -- This won't happen if the public face of wargaming is that of angry, unhappy men with a chip the size of a minivan on their shoulder. Have you seen the letters page of Wargames illustrated? It's full of complaints by these kind of people, about the British show circuit, mostly. Does that attract anybody? Likewise, do the internal politics of HMGS on this side of the pond interest anyone except those directly involved? I think not. Miserable buggers serve only to drive off everyone except other miserable buggers. As a wise wargamer - Brent Oman - once told me, "If I want an argument with someone, I can always go to work. I get paid there". I attended some model railway shows with my good friend Tim Lee. One thing I noticed was that while the enthusiasts looked a lot like wargamers, there was a higher proportion of what I shall term 'the normal blokes' and less of what some would call 'gceks'. A lot of these normallooking gents had brought their families along. They seemed happy, and interested, and nobody was quarrelling that I could see. And there were lots of them, because the model railway hobby is a mainstream, accepted recreation in the way that we are not. But could we be in that same situation? Why not? I believe that miniature wargaming could be immensely more popular. But not if we exude an atmosphere of complaint, of being an exclusive and argumentative group of misfits. Angry White Men are essentially losers. Let's not allow them to be the public face of our hobby. So take off that damned SS T-shirt and take a bath --- your friend, Howard. Heard on Canadian TV: "I thought Pokemon was a Jamaican porn star". Back to MWAN #106 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2000 Hal Thinglum 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