Outside the Wargame Wall

All of them are in tears,

The ones who really love you,

Walk up and down,

Outside the Wall.

Some hand in hand,

Some gathered together in bands,

The bleeding hearts and the artistes,

Make their stand.

And when they’ve given you their all,

Some stagger and fall, after all,

It’s not easy, banging your heart

Against some mad buggers wall.

                                                Roger Waters, Pink Floyd: The Wall (1979)

There is a certain amount of peace which is available once you have admitted that you have hit the wargame wall. Admitting there is a problem is, perhaps, part of the solution. I have given up worrying about hitting a wall, but that does not mean that the wall has vanished. I think it is still there, I am just trying to stop it having any power over me.

The estimable Mrs P has, in fact, banned me from wargaming, unless I really want to, until the end of the month. This might seem a very odd thing to do, but it does have its advantages, namely in stopping me worrying about it. If I’m not allowed to wargame, then the Wall has no power. I’m sure there is an interesting study in psychology going on there somewhere, but I’ve no idea as to what it might be.

I think part of the problem here for me is that of identity. Life is hard enough, perhaps, without having to shed part of who I am. I have been, one way or another, playing with toy soldiers since, ooh, well, pretty well as long as I can remember. It is a part of who I am. If someone said to me ‘who are you?’ part of my reply would probably include that I am a wargamer. It is not the whole story, of course, but it is a part of my identity.

One of the problems with the Wall, then, is that hitting it throws my identity as a wargamer into doubt. A wargamer is someone who wargames, paints figures, reads rule sets and so on. If some or all of these activities are in question or doubt, then my identity as a wargamer is in question. The answer to ‘who are you?’ becomes more problematic.

Of course, I have not always been a wargamer. I mean, when I started playing with toy soldiers that is what I did. I think I started with the Airfix ‘Beachhead Assault’ - German infantry, British paratroopers and a command post and gun emplacement. The gun fired matchsticks, as I recall. Somehow the British always ‘won’, although I cannot recall what winning consisted of.

As with many of my friends we progressed through various sets of Airfix soldiers. Extensive collections of plastic warriors paraded their way across our floors. Somehow history and contemporary events got muddled up. The Russians, as I remember, usually got brigaded with the Germans (no doubt to the chagrin of the originals, the Molotov – Ribbentrop pact notwithstanding). I also remember energetic discussions as to whether the Ancient Britons or the Romans were the good guys or the bad guys. Mind you, that is something that continues to some extent in modern historiography.

I found, as did most of the rest of the wargaming world, books by Charles Grant and Donald Featherstone in the library, and devoured them. The world of my imagination expanded to include 15 mm figures; much was the family hilarity when it was discovered that the Miniature Figurines shop in Southampton was on the edge of the city’s red light district. I was warned to be careful about what models I brought back (I was far too young and naïve to know what that meant).

And so things progressed. I played role playing games at college and university – they were smaller than wargames, after all. But I returned to figure wargaming, perhaps via the Flashing Blades route, which I mentioned a while ago here (OK game, great setting).  I re-arrived in wargaming with the English Civil War.

The point of this ramble through memory lane is not any claim to interest or uniqueness of experience or route, but simply that wargaming is part of my identity. It is not just a hobby, I submit, but it is part of who I am. For example, I quoted Santa Anna to the estimable Mrs P last night (something like ‘poor Mexico, so far from heaven and so close to the United States). ‘How did you know that? Are you an expert on that too?’ No, I am not. But it happens that I read it while I was reading about the war. I don’t remember when that was: probably around the time I visited Texas, and went to the Alamo. My visit there was one of the oddest I have experienced at a historic site, but to explain why would be to digress too far.

Anyway, I do not think that I can just stop wargaming, or being a wargamer. Perhaps you can never stop being a wargamer, you are just an active one or a passive one. If you hit the wall, you do wonder what happens next but, I suspect, for many for whom wargaming is a primary hobby, there is no way of becoming a non-wargamer. It is always there, dormant, like a volcano, ready to erupt at the slightest provocation.

Of course, this is all subjective. It is my experience, my way of dealing with the wargame wall (or of not dealing with it, we shall see).  I have these experiences, this view on my identity and how I might or might not be willing to change it. There are very likely other ways of dealing with it, although the experience of hitting a wall seems to be more widespread than just me.

I have a few days left of my enforced sabbatical. After that I am supposed to do something, wargame wise. I’m not sure what it will be, but I am starting to form a few ideas, incoherent as they may be. I am still thinking about Hussites, but I am not sure that creating a completely new army without foes is a great idea. I am reading Richard Vaughn’s Charles the Bold, and that is another army of interest. I might go back to the Spanish doubling project, and I did discover a box of GNW Poles in the cupboard as well. The future lies open; I wonder if I can grasp it.