Greetings and salutations fellow gamers! It's a beautiful, sunny day out. Out the front window, I can see people enjoying the park across the street. Out the back window I spy a lawn in desperate need of mowing. At my feet, the cats are crying for me to share my mac and cheese with them. All about me the house begs for some cleaning up. Yet, donning my Wargamer Barbie outfit, I stoically ignore all else in order to do what most of us often find it so hard to do...create time to enjoy our hobby. Where does the time go? It seems I have spent the past two months engrossed in needless minutiae. In my last editorial I vaguely recall that gaming was mentioned. In fact I think that's all I mentioned. "Got to play X, then played Y." Where did that go? Why can't I say that for this issue? In between minute-sucking-minutiae, I did have the chance to speak with many gamers of all colors and factions. The general consensus is that gamers want to game, BUT the number one reason for not gaming is that they don't have the time. Well, I for one am going to get into the drivers seat of my own destiny. I am going to MAKE the time. At the simplest level, if gaming is what I want to do, then that is what I should be doing. Damn the lawn. Damn the cleaning. Damn the ...er...um. Well, I can't damn the cats. Their delegate just informed me that they will chew my leather recliner to bits if I do, so I'll have to negotiate a treaty with them. On to the gaming! As I look about the first floor of my house, I see our "hope chest" of games (I hope that someday I'll have time to play these things!) just chock full of fun stuff: Axis and Allies, Risk, Arkharn Horror, Monopoly (with pewter playing pieces or course). Most planar surfaces have at least one miniature lounging about on it: True North WWII German Officer with Luger, True North WWII German Infantry Marching, Foundry Daughters of the Empire, Gripping Beast Ancients, and a random sampling of Ironwind fantasy figures. They all mutely stare at me. "Paint us!" they cry out. My coffee table is strewn with the latest set of ancients rule books from Games Workshop and a copy of Kampfgruppe Commander. How long ago did I start reading those? It's daunting isn't it? Now that I have all this time to game, I realize that I have no one (on hand) to game with. I think it's the difficulty that stops many of us from having a hobby. Our friends that we used to game with are no longer around, or have moved on to other pursuits (like jobs, or kids, or golf-blech!) There are three ways to make this problem go away. The first is to go to conventions. You can play, have a good time, and really don't even need to help clean up! I always do offer, but most times it's politely declined. It's certainly fun to play in the large, beautiful games that you see at the conventions. I learn so much about the period (like Pelenor Fields at Historicon 2003, or Pickett's Charge at the Last Square's Invitational 2003), but I do like to play with my friends. It's sometimes tough to play with perfect strangers. The second way is to solo game. I've done this with board games many times, simply to learn the rules. I haven't yet tried this with miniatures. I say yet because we have several armies based for DBA, but we haven't played, so I thought I'd at least learn to play by myself. The final way is the best, I think. FORCE your friends to drop what they're doing and come and play with you. Ignore any and all of their pathetic excuses, and FORCE them to come and play! Put on some eats and drinks and make them commit to a whole Saturday or Sunday. That's the way to make this hobby fun! Back to MWAN # 130 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2004 Hal Thinglum This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com