Don't Give Up... Bend Your Brains...

 Time is a funny thing, and as I head comfortably into my 6th decade, I am hit by the realisation that I am living once again in the kind of environment which existed back when I found our fine hobby, and skipped blythely over the threshold into a whole new world.

The world I went into essentially disregarded the mad bastards with nuclear weapons, whilst at the same time being all too aware that we could get turned to a soot stain at 4 minutes notice. A curious state of affairs indeed.

But, I contend that this constant existential threat was what powered the evolution of gaming to a great extent. When you realise that thing sare way beyond your control, you either cave in and become a sullen and somewhat navel gazing society, or you throw away that which binds you, and allow creativity and self expression to thrive.

This certainly happened with gaming, with tens if not hundreds of small and indeed not so small companies springing up, enthusiastically bringing the public - hang on, no, let me change thattp 'bringing fellow enthusiasts' - new diversions. Some were good and others were not.

In Sheffield, we had a lot of game & model suppliers and one of the country's largest toy stores, as I have written previously, but being one of the main bricks in the latterly termed 'Red Wall' we suffered a particularly rabid political atmosphere, being a 'Nuclear Free Zone' and having a plethora of political and underground press shops, which for a reason I cannot quite figure, also drew gamers. We did not really undertsand the politics, but the grim covers of CND pamphlets and the amazing artwork of that twisted genius Robert Crumb which in several places existed side by side, had a strange way of becoming part of that alternative world into which we had entered. It was literally as if when you stepped into one of these 'fringe' places, you crossed through a portal which endowed you with a temporary invisibilty.

We had Brutalist architecture to rival any Eastern Bloc city and because of the tendency of the Left to indulge itself in the arts (and this is not in any way a critical statement) we, the impressionable youth of those troubled times got an artistic education, which coupled with the proliferation of young, politically driven teachers gave us a sharp eye for all things creative and subversive.

Now, throw kids like that into a a time when wargames clubs were on the whole around a decade old, with many members who remember being like us in the 60's and 70s and boy were you going to get some interesting output.

Of course there was also the rise of 'altenative comedy' and the punk and post punk musical scene. 

If you crossed those thresholds, entered those portals and didn't hurry past because you were intimidated by something that you did not understand, you were going to have a great ride.

Kids were given far more freedom too. We were by no means 'latchkey children', but the first time you were allowed to travel into town on your own or more usually with friends was a sort of rite of passage, with it's own strict rules of conduct and curfew, which you took responsibility for upholding.

I used my own freedom in the most part, to explore what gaming had to offer, with the odd sojourn to one of several art galleries. Through the shops and my former junior school headmaster, I found my first wargames club, which was run at the school by Steve Roberts, who was the man who took me under his wing and showed me so much about the hobby, introducing me to Lloyd Powell, who I considered the closest thing I'd ever have to an older brother, the wonderfully irreverant Paul Bishop, who was kept in line (mostly by his girlfriend - later wife - Lesley), the gentleman gamer himself, John Armatys and many others with whom I have lost touch since the 'Great Sundering' of the post 2015 Triples debacle.

These people were 'Faces' in the hobby back then, and I contest that they were the greatest generation this hobby will see.

The internet has brought us many great things, but it has also created a sense of mono-culture gaming, the seepage of politics and self-censorship which is making the hobby rather dull to be honest. I keep my own politics and my hobby as two things. One is a light hearted subject, the other a deadly serious one - You can decide which is which.

Self-celebrity is becoming more evident with blogs (yes I know and I am indeed caling the kettle... well you know) You Tube and the miracles of a tech driven world. Painting is no longer a demonstration of skill with a few limited mediums, but more a demonstration of accurate application, of 'miracle in a bottle' products, which do the work for you. Dipping has generally (there are some exeptions to this) led to lots of mediocre and drab miniatures. Rule sets with sourcebooks which encourage poor research by making themselves the arbitrary source of knowledge, no matter how erroneous, and the rules themselves which sttempt create small level forces incorporating components which are higher echelon assets. The closest thing I saw to this in the previous decades was single Old Guard units being used in French Napoleonic armies. We used to call these (with an appropriate degree of derision) 'Mickey Mouse' armies.

Now it seems that Disney, is a universal constant.

I am not saying that everything new, is bad and everything old is good, but we really do need to stop collectively navel gazing, and have something of a house clearing of the hobby. I never thought that I'd see a time when large armies were akin to the White Rhino. 

We have become polarised and led by big companies with small minds.

I used to have large armies in all scales, and at the same time, skirmish forces in a similarly broad range of scales. I skirmished where that was the right scale to portray something, not just because I was folowing a new retail line, with rules which cost as much as the forces on the table, and those forces costing the same as a traditional 'large army'. 

As the erudite 'Yarkshire Gamer' Ken Reilly asks his guests '96 figures... Pike block or an army?'

My brother from another mother, Roger, pointed out the other day in a round about way that we can skirmish AND have those large armies which boh of us love. And, he's right... We have become the gamers we aspired to as kids, but at the same time we have also to a degree forgotten (I guess that I am more guilty than Roger - let the record show) about the great games we had with just a few well, selected figures of a skirmish apropriate period, 'back in the day'. 

The only difference between a mass battle figure and a skirmish figure these days, appears to be a premium price for the latter, because, let's face it the big companies are playing on the post 90's GW-conditioned generation for whom £5 per figure is 'normal'. They are in my humble opinion, greedy bastards and predatory fuckers. Oh, sorry about that, I got a little heated there.

For my part, I can see the similarities in the world between 1982 and 2022, and I am indulging myself in some real time anthropological investigation. I am watching the TV shows and listening to the music of that earlier time, and trying to approach gaming with the same sense of 'underground' wonder.

And it's working. I am finding a drive that has been evading me. I have a great gaming room, great terrain, a sense of direction in regards to periods I want to play, and with Roger and I both sort of 'specialising' in different things I see a really fun future for our gaming. My wife is working on 28mm ACW, ECW and terrain, my brother has a few smaler projects and his ECW on the go and Roger's youngest son is finding his feet quite admirably in the hobby, and holding his own if our Christmas game was anything to go by.

I know we live in strange and stressful times, my friends, but they are as stressful as you let them be. We cant do anything to change the geopolitical bollocks which are at the forefront of every day at present, we can change social imbalance by quiet personal changes, without having to wear badges, we can agree to disagree too. But none of this has to get into gaming.

Gaming is about creative and mental freedom. It's about playing with little metal or plastic dollies and funny shaped dice. It's about pretending to be somebody else, rather than imposing your real self on an imaginary world.

As Howard Jones sang, 'Throw off your mental chains...'

 

TTFN