Wargame Bucket Lists

I am not a fan of bucket lists. You know the sorts of thing: ‘I must see Shangri-La before I die.’ Lists of things to do and see before we adjourn to the great cruise ship (or, knowing my luck, the cramped package holiday jet) in the sky. But recently I discovered that I have had a wargame bucket list, and that, so far as I recall, most of the items are ticked off from it.

I am not sure whether this is a good thing or not. After all, popular rumour has it that when all your unpainted soldiers are painted, then the wargamer dies. Presumably, they die happy, insofar as anyone can, but that is a pretty serious end-of-the-road scenario. Perhaps the same applies to bucket lists of armies. I hope not.

Anyway, not being a fan of bucket lists, I have not really been keeping track, but when I posted recently about my Korean fleet it did, eventually, penetrate my tiny mind that the Koreans, and the concomitant Japanese fleet, were ‘bucket list’ items and were in the process of being ticked off. What I mean is that acquiring and using such fleets had been in the back of my mind for years, and was now being done.

That gave me a bit of a pause for thought. Were there any other items, obscure or obvious, that had been on such a list? And the more I pondered the more I suspected that there were. This goes back a long time, of course, to when I was just starting out as a wargamer. I would read, as many wargamers, I suspect, do, the army lists and dream of one day, having this or that army.

Being a skint teenager at the time, reliant for any toy soldiers at all on Christmas and birthday presents, these armies were, and remained, pipe dreams. Of course, being even then a solo wargamer made the possibility of them even more remote – I would need two armies for most of the pipe-dreams, which made it even more expensive and impossible.

At the time I was using, mostly, 15 mm figures. I still have them, badly painted in enamels in a box in the cupboard behind me. I eventually ran to ECW armies, assorted medieval armies (I never quite sorted out what they were), and a few ancient Romans and Picts. Most of these were Peter Laing figures, which have long since, I think, disappeared from the world, although there are a few collectors of them around, I think. I also managed a trip to Minifigs HQ in Southampton and had a few of their ECW infantry.

When I returned to wargaming, space was at a premium, and I decided to go for 6 mm figures instead. I started, naturally, with ECW before branching out into other areas of the world. And this is where I started ticking off some of my bucket list, which had never been articulated or written down, but was just ‘there’.

So, for example, in 15 mm, as a penurious student, I really, really wanted a Polish army of the 17^th Century. You know, the one with the winged hussars. After a bit of messing about in 6 mm, I realised that it was perfectly possible, and they have graced a number of wargames with their presence, along with Muscovite and Ottoman foes.

Similarly, with the advent of DBR, or at least the army lists, my scope and range enlarged. Aztecs and Inca were acquired, although painting the hordes of figures nearly broke me. Indian types with elephants arrived, although I have never quite solved the question of how to represent chained guns and wagon forts in 6 mm (or any other scale, for that matter). As I was running a campaign game of near world wide scope I also had Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Vietnamese, Siamese and Indonesians, all with their elephants and rocket launchers and all the other nice but dangerous looking technology that the early modern period threw up.

I also went back to the ancients and got some of my other teenage years dreams off my chest, as it were. Hoplites were a big thing, and Baccus’ latest hoplites graced my army boxes, although painting all those infantry made my shoulder hurt. Romans, Sarmatians, Persians, and Parthians also arrived, as the blog will attest over the years. The Armies and enemies of Alexander and the Successors came.

Finally, some of the oddities were filled in, most particularly the Hussites. These have to be one of the strangest armies in western history, at least. Not only were they significantly wagon-based, but they were also rather successful, at least until they started fighting themselves. That, of course, is a conundrum that I have yet to solve: how do two wagon-based armies actually fight, rather than just try to stare each other down. Still, the Hussites do have a reasonably important place in the development of western armies, popularising the use of gunpowder.

And so back to the fleets from Korea and Japan. These, as I mentioned, have been on the books for a while but no suitable models were available until recently. Now all I need to do is work out what to do with them and also to start on the Chinese vessels. The Chinese might have abandoned ocean-going vessels, but they still had an inshore navy at the end of the 16^th Century. Plus the fact that Korea has a lot of islands.

So, is that it? That, so far as I recall, is the end of my dreams and aspirations of the last 40 years or so wargaming. I can open the cupboards in the snug (aka the wargames room, but do not tell the Estimable Mrs P that) and pull out every army I have ever thought about wargaming with. More or less, of course. After all, I am still a wargamer, and as we know with figures, more is often, well, more.

Still, am I alone in this? Does anyone else have a wargame bucket list? And, if so, what happened when you finished it? Should I just create another one, or settle down and have some wargames?