Wednesday... It's The Best (Well, It WAS The Best)

 As I have already related, I was introduced to to Sheffield Wargames Society by the late Steve Roberts, and this was where I really started to find out the 'dark arts' of wargaming.

The roleplayers were a gret bunch, but they sort of lived in a bubble, oblivious to the wider gaming world, apart from those 'old sweats' who were 'there' when Dungeons & Dragons came along and who'd already been wargaming for a long time.

Now, the wargamers were an interesting bunch, generally older than the roleplaying mob, proper 'grown-ups' with jobs and homes and families, all heady stuff to a teenager. I'd been going to the club for I'd say 18 months or so by 1984 being born late in the year and therefore not reaching the requisite 14 years old until late 1982, but I used my time well.

I was introduced to some of the best known 'characters' on the northern wargames circuit, many of whom were part of SWS.

SWS specialised in competition wargaming, using some really dirty tactics. Being largely functioning alcoholics, they were rarely sober on a weekend away at a convention or competition. They drank and they partied and they - against all odds - won competitions. 

The majority of the club's competition players would sit there, looking hung over and closer to death than victory, but behind those bloodshot eyes and neanderthal brows were brains which were in equal parts ferret, Rommel and Genghis Khan. Just as their opponent thought they had the game in the bag, around about the time the bar opened and the first drink was delivered to the table, the SWS players would come to life, raise an eyebrow, smile knowingly and kick the living shit out of the other side as fast as possible to allow thenm to get on with the real reason for a weekend at a wargames show - drinking.

One or two players were sober, and played a more stylish game, with dry, witty comments and almost surgical play style. It was an education.

As an aside, if anyone remembers, the king of competition players was Bruce Douglas with his silver hair, brown leather jacket and trousers and a sense of wargaming style which always saw a crowd around the tables when he was in the finals. Truly a sight to behold, let me tell you. Today's scruffy lot would do well to learn from his example.

I once played in the Nationals at the junior level, and whilst the 'Drunken Master' gambit was out to a kid (at least in public during daylight) so instead, I came up with a plan. 

At the show in question during the Friday night set-up, I went over to see Rose at Trafalgar models, a sweet lady of middle years at the time and a much missed face on the scene these days - unlike her husband who was probably the grumpiest trader I ever met - and asked her to pop a few things aside until Saturday morning, and went back to my hotel room which I was sharing with Darren (now Professor) Ashmore.

The SWS senior cadre had set us up with a double bed... Yeah, yeah... Two teenage boys having to share a bed was never going to go well in the 80s was it?

One of our older friends was Chinese and probably the second best player of Moderns I have ever seen, who played like a lawyer on amphetamines, and he popped by our room to see if we wanted to go out and grab a takeaway. Darren had to paint a dozen or so tanks for the morning and was sitting at the dressing table with a pot of green enamel and a wad of toilet tissue instead of a brush, trying to get a uniform coat of green on to the models - all models used had to be 'painted' - but I was available and hungry, so tagged along for some grub.

We found a suitable-looking takeaway and I was told to 'Just nod and agree' which I did, as my elder and bettter ordered, nodded and went what I can only call 'professionally Chinese' because I don't think he'd been further east than Cleethorpes. A few minutes later and ahead of the rest of those in front of us, we left with the biggest bag of takeaway cartons I have ever seen one person carry - for what even then was a pittance.

So, using Sun-Tzus 'Art Of Taking The Piss', we ate like emperors back at the hotel.

That night, I was kept awake by Darren talking in his sleep and so, after putting on my shoes, standing on the bed and kicking him in the ribs a few times, I went and ran a hot bath and slept in that for the rest of the night, topping up the hot water every so often.

On Saturday morning, I arrived at the competition table, looking 'lost', aided by dark rings of fatigue under my eyes and nursing a nasty case of Bruce Lee's Revenge.

My opponent looked on in horror as I asked what rules were were using, and that I'd been given an army and told to play by the guys at the club. I don't think he could believe his luck and eagerly told me what rules and lists we were playing to.

Of course, I knew, and as I had worn my Gush rules and lists to the consitency of tissue paper, I needed to replace them, hebnce my visit to Rose the night before. I nipped out to the main trade hall, grabbed my order and returned to the table, playing a blinder of a game culminating in a surprise win (for me) thanks to 12 compulsory D class cossacks routing a init to which the enemy general was attached.

I was through to the finals where, I got well and truly pasted - serves me right for being a weasly little shit the day before.

Still, I did get a first place in the painting competition, but only found out when we were half way back to Sheffield, the older gamers wanting to get home, having collected my model whilst I was getting slaughtered, and arranging to have my trophy posted to me so that they could leave before the awards ceremony - BASTARDS!

And so, I was now in with the big boys in wargaming's playground and so began what has become a lifetime of gaming tomfoolery, more of which I shall recount in my next epistle...

TTFN