It's 6:30AM... Get off my lawn!

 As I type, it's 6:30 AM here in the UK and I'm tuned in to Smooth Jazz New York City. All is gentle, warm and mellow. It's one of those times when you are so comfortable and at one with the world, that internally you are raging at the concept of mortality, shaking a mental fist at the heavens...

And that is how I feel much of the time about my hobby.

You see, I have always been something of a gadfly in the past, moving from one thing to another as many more gamers do than would likely admit to it, because they don't want to come to terms with, and openly admit to, being no better than crack whores in the manipulative hands of an industry always pushing some new drug to finance it's own lavish lifestyle.

However, when I hit fifty nearly five years ago now, I decided that everything I did had to have worth or it wasn't going to be done. 'Worth' was not a financial worth, but more a way of saying that I had gained something from any activity.

My frankly frivolous and some would say wanton expenditure on the hobby needed direction. I began to realise that it was not about owning as many models as you could buy, piling them Smaug-like in some shed or attic room, but rather about actually gaming. It didn't help that those in my peer group 'came up' with the original cheque book wargamers in the mid 80s, because that just made us all the worse at a time when figures were not as expensive and overly so in my opinion as they are today.

I still prefer metal to plastic models, and to be honest the cost of plastics is creeping up, in the same way as Games Robshop began with 3 figures for 75p and now charge much , much more for figures cheaply manufactured with so much inbuilt wastage that it beggars belief.

But I digress...

I had a games room built out to the rear of the Dark Tower and furnished it with great terrain, teddy fur mats, Grand Manner buildings  and the like. And to be honest it was not so much for me as for friends of mine who have dispersed across the globe in some cases, but with whom I may one day enjoy a game or two in the kind of environment we dreamed of as kids.

I have a reasonably sized table which is a default 12x4 with a possible 15x5 feet for multiple players, in a well-lit room with a decent DAB radio and coffee making facilities. It's very pleasant indeed, and often when I can't sleep, I just go and sit in my archair in there, reading with a cup of coffee, listening to the birds in the woodland behind the house. (I live in a city, but my house backs onto an Iron Age hill fort, overlooking the Don Valley, which is nice and actually quite apt for a wargamer, I think.

Anyway, as you may recall, last Summer I decided to totally empty the figure collection and build a new one based on stuff I really liked rather than just ticking boxes. My rules were simple:

1. It had to be stuff that I really wanted for my own sake.

2. It had to if possible have plenty of options for game play or cross-period use.

3. Unless it was a specifically skirmish based set-up, then 800 was the bottom line for any period, BUT, the top end was also to be rigorously capped, so that I wasn't just indulging in a wall pissing competition of the sort so favoured by wargamers who I am sure over compensate for being nerds by bragging about how large their armies are. Even big games have a limit to what can actually be played with in a given time.

4. Most importantly, it had to be painted.

So, when it came to the annual Christmas game, and I was without figures at the time, because a friend had asked if he could slip a few figures to my painter ahead of my own pre-paid block booking, and then sent 200+. I just thought 'fuck it' and then let the Memsahib send another 450 because by that time my own few thousand were not going to get done in time.

So, it was down to my friend to bring the models. After all, I was providing the venue, some excellent terrain and the Memsahib was providing a smashing buffet lunch for 5 people, rather than actually playing herself, so I'd say it was a pretty equitable arrangement.

Unfortunately, the game went tits up. It was a simple attack and defence game, and being the defender with a river in front of me and a strong deployment, it wasn't at all inspiring tactically. I had little to do apart from stand and fire, reload, fire, reload - rinse and repeat. This was taken as me being disinterested by my friend, and when I was forced to sit down due to my arthritis, this was taken as yet more indication of my disinterest. Apparently I also made some comments that he found offensive. 

 I still don't know what they were. Added to that, six months along the road there are a pile of boxes full of my friend's 30YW cluttering my games room. I suppose I could hand them in at the police station and then legally claim them as my own in six months, but that would hardly be fair.

My friend for his part was trying to fit too many activities into such a short period of holidays and I guess that made him less than his usual self.

Anyway, add to all of the above, that I was not seeing my own family over Christmas and you will see therein a recipe for disaster.All in all, it was grubby.

As a consequence, I am pretty certain that he will not want to come for a game in the future, but what can I do? It's a shame to be sure and a waste of good gaming opportunities, and I for one am not - being of advanced years - wasting said opportunities, no sir. I suffer from terminal anoraksia nerdosa, so for me it's all about the game.

Anyway, as it was a 17th century game we were playing, when the Memsahib and I walked into the game room last week, she having spent ten days in hospital having been as I understand it close to death when she was admitted, we looked at the two beautiful 298mm ECW armies we have, gave each other a knowing look and agreed that yes, they were going to go.

As my wife said, Christmas left her with a nasty taste in her mouth and she knew I had been somewhat depressed asfterwards, so perhaps we should wipe the slate clean and just not bother with that project. 

True, I do have a growing ECW skirmish collection using the excellent Bloody Miniatures range, but the Christmas experience has left me cold, for a period I've loved for over 4 decades. Anyway, that means that we are now looking for new homes for the two armies, some 1400 models.

However, it does mean that my approach is changing to the extent that I am pleasing myself and not others. After all, as I said, I am growing older and just want to play games with soldiers, not fight with bruised egos and roughed up feeleings - my own included.

2023? Well, I am already hard at work on that...