Two years ago Terry Gore elevated [Ed. Are you sure that's the word you want to use?] me from wargame opponent and personal friend to that of associate editor of SAGA, or more exactly, the electronic editor as I decided to get on the Internet with e-mail capabilities. Over that time I have downloaded articles and queries to Terry and faithfully handed the discs over to him. Now that Terry has finally gotten a newer computer my position as electronic editor has been eliminated. Now, like any true and dedicated editor, he has been haranguing me to write articles. The fact that besides working on my masters, play testing MW and AW and researching army lists holds no water with Terry, he now e-mails messages, asking where my article is? This treatment has prompted me to fulfill my assigned duties and submit the following article.

This past November, both Terry and I went to FALL IN held at Gettysburg, primarily as a business trip and to demonstrate our rules. However, we both excited about seeing the battlefield. For Terry, his last visit was some years ago [Ed. Thirty-five, to be exact], for me over forty, when my parents took me when I was about ten. That trip with my parents started me on my love of history and soldiers and after all those years the love is still there. In many ways going back was a return to basics, a return to what grabbed my imagination as a child and continues as an adult.

My love affair with wargaming started when I bought a copy of Avalon Hill's "Gettysburg" game at a souvenir shop for $2.59. I stayed up late in the motel room punching out the counters and placing them on the map, visualizing all the soldiers that fought in that great battle. Now instead of cardboard counters I use lead figurines and my initial interest in the American Civil War has waned, to be replaced by Napoleon, Frederick, Alexander and to Terry's chagrin, Charles the Bold. Along with Terry I now write rules, rather than attempting to learn from someone else how to recreate the feats of these men I now am doing it myself (with Terry's able assistance) [Ed. There's something about this terminology here…now I'm the assistant!]. But like all wargamers, and historians, we tend to forget about history and pursue our "own" perspectives concerning history.

Many of us are familiar with the battlefield at Gettysburg, being able to recite from memory all the terrain features and relate how they figured into the fighting. However, when we refight the battle, we suppose god-like knowledge in claiming that a certain unit would be able to see the enemy coming up on their flank and turn to meet them. We, as wargamers, tend to let a unique situation in military history become a shibboleth for all simulations or recreations.

All of us have experienced a game when an opponent justifies a move not in the rules by claiming an obscure event to justify themselves. We are all guilty of this, including myself. Terry and I had, and continue to have disagreements over rules or definitions. The creation of "house rules" is a standard practice in any game. We tend to allow myth to creep into our history and our hobby. I just turned in a twenty-two page paper to my graduate advisor on the influence of myth in military history, it can also apply to wargaming.

Walking from the Peach Orchard, climbing through Devil's Den and coming upon Little Round Top is an exhausting and eye-opening experience. We did it in November at a leisurely pace, not braving heat, artillery fire or the mixture of human emotions that soldiers have faced in battle for centuries. Folds in the terrain, woods and hills do block line of sight, battles are not fought on flat pieces of plywood covered by cloth with a few hills, trees and building stuck on it for visual appeal. Standing above this "ground" we are able to see everything and impose our perspective upon the simulation.

Walking that part of Gettysburg made me put history back into a proper, line of sight perspective. Of course we can not walk every battlefield, but we can be more aware of the realities that soldiers and generals faced in these life and death struggles and attempt to gain a better understanding of what these men faced. Sometimes we have to a step back and take an objective look at what we are doing. Are we recreating history or just our interpretation. I am no purist, it is impossible to recreate the stochastic battlefield without miring the mechanics down into agonizing detail, spending one hour to recreate fifteen minutes on the battlefield. We have to give up some realism for the sake of playability. The bottom line of our hobby is to play with little soldiers and have fun-something many of us lose sight of, rather putting our egos on the line, on a roll of the dice.

So lets have fun, enjoy our hobby and history and remember to keep everything in perspective.