I must confess to a feeling of unease concerning the formation of a "National Association" to handle future Conventions, proposed and apparently taken as settled at the recent Birmingham Convention. Having consistently fought against any form of autonomy or control of wargaming by committees, I view this one with suspicion if only because there does not seem to be any particular need for so much organisation, general travelling around, plus the necessity for cash to finance it all. It will only end up with the power of controlling clubs in the hands of the least suitable people simply because they have attended the most meetings. Presumably the proposed rules will be Group so that vested interests are involved. Of course, there's a lot of work organising the Birmingham Convention, and the Worthing ones before that but much of this work is self-imposed arising from the desire to go one better than the organisers of the previous year. But, apart from social aspects, are these Conventions worth it? The winners are never the best wargamers in their particular period but simply those who bothered to enter and make the closest study of the far-too-complex rules which govern the much over-organised wargames. Preliminary rounds are a farce, wide open to fiddling of scores besides being a source of expensive trouble and organisation, Not that the new plans make it any easier because they simply make an already complex situation even more so! Far less emphasis should be placed on the actual contest -- there should be about a dozen tables and no game should last more than about 90 minutes, the rules should be simple "back of a postcard" type, so that the eventual winner is the man with the greatest sense of tactics and not the bloke who can best bend complex rules to suit his own particular ends. The Umpires should be well trained and given autocratic powers so that one murmur of dissent from a competitor means a warning whilst two moans and he is out! There should only be one team from each Club - it is ridiculous to allow one Club to provide seven teams as Leicester did this year. On a completely different subject, Neville Dickinson of Miniature Figurines has suggested to the British Model Soldier Society that they should, as the authoritive body connected with model soldiers, lay down specifications of scale sizes of figures. There is a very strong case for standardising the scales of wargames figures so that for example, the 25mm figures of one manufacturer will match up with the so called 25mm figures of another. At present there is a vast disparity in the various makers ideas of what constitutes specific scales. The illustration at the top of this page comes from a Militar Greetings Card designed by Richard Wastling available from J.Freeman, 62 Plantation Drive, N.Ferriby Yorkshire at 10p each (with envelope) or 50P per half dozen. Back to Table of Contents -- Wargamer's Newsletter # 117 To Wargamer's Newsletter List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1971 by Donald Featherstone. 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