It’s suddenly 2023
and I’m wondering where the time has gone. But I’m getting ahead of myself. My
name is Jonathon. I’ve been a wargamer since… well, let’s just say, it’s been a
long time now. Not as long as some, but a while all the same.
My first wargame
was Titan Strike (No.
3 in SPI’s Capsule Game series, 1979) which was a lot of fun – I was a sci-fi
nerd – but left me unfulfilled. I soon graduated to a second-hand copy of Modern Battles II (SPI,
1977); all four maps covered (really well) in clear Contact and the whole thing
rolled up in a tube with the rules and counters. I had to provide my own dice,
which wasn’t as easy then as it is now (I was fourteen and broke). These were
followed by Strategy & Tactics and Ares Magazines with their incumbent games,
starting with Barbarian Kings (Ares No. 3,
SPI; even as a teenager I exhibited pronounced brand loyalty). Around the same
time my friends and I discovered RPGs, and so began my lifelong devotion
to Traveller,
but I always found time for both.
I hit something of
a gaming drought generally in my twenties, moving states twice in four years,
earning a degree, getting married and the host of other things that life throws
at a person when they’re just trying to make their way in the world. Eventually
things settled down, and slowly I came back to both RPGs and wargaming, as well
as general family gaming (my wife’s family have always been big on games; not
the types of games I was used to, but a step up from Monopoly.
About fifteen years
ago I joined up with a group of like-minded souls for a weekly game. This
started off as almost purely role-playing, but has developed into a shared space
for RPGs and boardgames. I’m also lucky enough to have a near-weekly game with
my brother-in-law, Toby. This started while my wife was in hospital for several
months, as a kind gesture to cheer me up a little and make sure I got a
home-cooked meal once in a while, but has kept going since. For the first six
or seven years, Toby and I played Commands and Colors:
Napoleonics (GMT, 2010) almost exclusively. We’ve both got
quite good at it and are a good match, both in skill and temperament; a win is
always an accomplishment, a loss an opportunity to congratulate the victor and
plot revenge. More recently we’ve (I’ve) tried to mix it up a little, mostly
with other flavours of C&C. Occasionally, I’ll even sneak in something
like Time of Crisis (GMT,
2017) or a game from Worthington’s Blue and Gray Campaign series
(Worthington Publishing, 2016).
Like a lot of folks
in our hobby, I own a lot more games than I’ve actually played. I’ve managed to
get some to the table at least once, some maybe a half-dozen times, but the
majority (around 70% – I made a spreadsheet) I haven’t played one single time.
Not even a two-handed learning game. This is something I’ve become acutely
aware of in the last eighteen or so months. We live in a smallish apartment,
and storage space is a premium. I used to buy games on a notional “I’ll get to
this one when I retire” basis. Well, I’m in the semi-retired or pre-retirement
or some such stage of my life, and those games are starting to haunt my waking
hours. It’s actually beginning to feel unethical to have shelves of games I’ve
bought, unboxed, fawned over and read through the rules of but never actually
got to the table.
So, it’s suddenly
2023, and I’m wondering about a lot of things, actually. I tried to distract
myself one day from thinking too much by opening Facebook. I noticed a few
people in various gaming groups – from the Boardgame Geek group to hard-core
wargaming outfits – proudly presenting their 10×10 lists. They all wrote like
this was the most natural thing in the world and so everyone must know what
they were talking about, so – former librarian – I did some digging. I realised
that these were my people, folks that owned more games than they’d played, felt
guilty about it*, and so they’d selected ten games out of their existing
collections, with the intention of playing them ten times each, over the course
of the calendar year, and were announcing this to their peers so they would be
held accountable for this declaration of intent.
This is something I
could do, I thought. So, in a burst of enthusiasm I started to put together a
list. I soon realised I wouldn’t be able to make ten runs at ten different
games in the space of a year; there just wouldn’t be enough year. I could, I
thought, maybe do six games six times each. That, I thought might b doable. I
looked through my collection, made a list, and posted it on Facebook in a group
devoted to geographically local gamers. I was excited. I was elated.
Then I looked at
the list again, and I thought to myself, What was I thinking?
I picked six
wargames (it being a wargame group, and for the fact that I enjoy wargames, I
own a lot of wargames, and I would like to play more wargames.
My List was as follows
(and in historical order):
I also threw in one
as an honorary mention of 1960: the Making of the
President (GMT, 2007), which isn’t a wargame, but it’s sat on
my shelf for too long and I’d like to get a play or two in this year as well.
What can I say? I’m catholic in my gaming tastes.
The problem showed
itself when I looked at the list again in the cold light of day. Well, the next
day. Churchill, but all reports, is a fine game. Some may argue that it doesn’t
belong on a list of wargames because it isn’t a wargame. I don’t want to get into
that here. My issue is that it’s a three-player game. It’s a struggle for me
sometimes to get one more willing player to try a new game. Group game night is
always four to five player games. No, Churchill must go. I’m still deciding
what to replace it with; I have a lot of two-player contenders. The guidelines
I set myself as I was making the list were:
- No doubling-up on publishers or designers (this was hard – I could have easily put together a list of just GMT, or just Worthington, or only Legion games)
- Interesting mechanics or new applications of familiar ones (new to me, at least); and
- Playable in an appropriately brief time. Nearly all my face-to-face games get played on week-nights; two-and-a-half hours is about the outside limit.
So, the blog. I
figured if I’m seriously going to pursue this 6×6 thing, I should try to keep a
record of it. Also, I make up for not getting to play so many games by thinking
a lot about games. So this blog will probably turn into a channel for pointless
ruminations about whatever I happen to have been playing or reading lately. The
occasional rant might also be on the cards if something particularly grinds my
gears that week (don’t ask me for an opinion on the whole WotC catastrophe
playing out as I write).
One of the joys of
writing a blog is not expecting anyone to actually read it. I’ll try to keep to
a schedule of one or two entries a week, but won’t feel too guilt-ridden if I
have to skip a week. I’ll try to keep it to wargaming, but sometimes other
kinds of games may get an airing. I’ll keep a log of my ludological
accomplishments, and around December, if I’ve enjoyed the experience, I might
sign up for a second tour. If you’ve read this far, say hello in the comments.
And if this seems like your bag, tune in from time to time. It could be fun.
* I may be
projecting here.
