It seems that one of the conditions which will apply at the National Wargames Club Championships next October is as follows "A player who .... leaves the table .... will have 10 points deducted from his final total at the end of the game for each minute or part-minute of such delay." Apparently Dave Millward (of the Pike and Shot Society and a well-known competitor at the National Championships) recently fought against another Birmingham member a wargame under the conditions that will apply at the National Convention. Phil Barker umpired the game and is also the "period" umpire at Hull in October. Reporting this, Dave writes "On the face of it, that's a reasonable rule designed to cut-out undue and unnecessary delay at the Convention. However, the way it was interpreted during my game was, in my opinion, far from reasonable as I was prevented from leaving the table to answer a call of nature! To my mind that is taking petty officialdom too far. With little flexibility the rule could improve Convention games but applied without consideration for the players comfort it really does become rather nasty. Whatever happened to humanity and commonsense?" Dave continues his letter muttering darkly about .... some people get power-mad when you put them in a position of authority". Like Dave, I can go so far in seeing the point of such a ruling if there had been notable past instances of competitors vanishing for long periods and delaying the game or destroying their opponents concentration - a "gamesmanship" aspect which might have to be considered. I can never recall hearing of a tennis player leaving the Centre Court at Wimbledon during the course of a match nor have I ever seen a professional footballer vanish from the field for a few minutes so really I can see little need for a wargamer to vanish during the course of a game. On the other hand, it is well known that excitement causes the adrenalin to flow and that, to some extent, an athletes performance is often greatly raised when the adrenalin begins to flow, making him capable of feats beyond that of normal every-day life and, if we presume that a Wargames Championship is an affair which stimulates excitement then I suppose it might be possible for a player to become so stimulated as to make frequent visits to the toilet. But this usually occurs before the event - when working with Southampton Football Club, I can recall a well-known professional footballer creating a Club record by going to the toilets sixteen times in the period between lunch and the kick-off! Fellow players would look very keenly at a gambler who left the card table, imagining that he would return with an Ace hidden in his sock or up his sleeve, but this does not apply to wargamers because it would be no easy job to thus conceal a regiment of infantry or a squadron of cavalry or nor could they be slipped from ones sleeve or dropped out of a handkerchief as in the manner of a card. So far as the Wargames Championshipq are concerned, if a man is forbidden by the rules to leave the table or disinclined to vanish because the rules penalise him, then it could well mean that the player with the better bowel-action wouid emerge triumphant over a man becoming increasingly jittery as he feels less and less c~,wfortable - so are the Championships designed to reveal the best wargames generals or the man who possesses the greatest degree of internal fortitude? So far as Dave Millward personally is concerned, I am aware that he wargames with the greatest intensity and in a manner that could cause nervousness and unease to a less practised opponent who might feel as--inclined to absent himself from the table to escape the tension! Looking at it from the other direction, if the rule is specifically and personally aimed at Dave himself (whose game has been known to be buoyed-up with a few draughts of ale) then it all seems a bit ridiculous. What have leaving the table and other minor infringements got to do with the actual ability of a wargamer to defeat his opponent and surely that is what Championships are all about - to decide whether one man is better than another not whether he is better behaved. Back to Table of Contents -- Wargamer's Newsletter # 174 To Wargamer's Newsletter List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1976 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