What do real, rather than proper, wargamers look like?

In yesterday´s post I´ve shown that all of the 18 wargames bloggers scored between 13 and 18 points on the 20 questions posed by Phil Broeders, with an average score of 15.

But that is all based on the ideal of scoring 20 points, while it is much more interesting to look at the score of each question. This way we can learn about real wargamers, rather than the ideal that Phil holds up (even though with a wink).

The scores for each question, based on 18 respondents

What unites us is that we all spend a generous amount of money on our hobby. 500 pounds is not a hard threshold to attain given the fact that many of these bloggers are veteran gamers. Although most respondents indicate they don't spend 500 pounds each year, I've also seen comments that people have flunked on this question on purpose so as not to arouse suspicion with the wife.

Much of this spending is aspirational. Every wargamer has tons of unpainted lead on the shelf, and more dice than he has use for. This probably also has to do with the fact that we are all very broadminded in our taste of periods and rulesets. Everybody dabbles in more than one period and almost all of us have tried at least 10 rulesets. And if not, that's something we expect to happen in due time. I've written a bit on this aspirational buying and the concept of the anti-library elsewhere on this blog.

Wargaming is not a solo activity. Almost everyone has been to a wargames show at least once, although for many it doesn't seem to a regular event. I am happy to see the high rate of club membership. Playing in a group of potential opponents seems to be the dominant form to enjoy the hobby. I think it's a good thing that we're a social bunch.

These bloggers all seem to have seen both sides of wargaming as all of us have suffered embarrassing defeats, and almost all have inflicted whopping defeats. And although many have experienced a game so tight it went to the last die roll, this isn't a universal experience.

Luckily, less common are the experiences with the occupational hazards of wargaming, such as injuries caused by pointy objects and dropped boxes of miniatures, but they have still happened to the vast majority of us.

Although not for everyone, there's still over half of us who've gone through the pain of rebasing an army for a different ruleset. Given that this is one of the most highly detested chores in miniature modelling, I personally would hold this up as a defining question to establish whether someone is really hard core.

Me taking an apprehensive stance as the umpire calls the situation. 
Will I explode into rage and embarrass the Liphook Historical Wargamers?

The questions with the lowest scores are obviously not particular to wargaming but more indicative of the individual character and digital behaviour. Although about half have used eBay (or digital equivalents) to buy miniatures, fewer still have used it to dispose of them. Some people just don't like eBay and paying online. Bring & Buys are mentioned as alternatives. And in most cases it was as units or individual miniatures, rather than armies.

Although over half of the wargame bloggers admits to having had a proper, standup argument, this was followed by so many qualifications it was stretching the argument very thinly. Throwing dice apparently is also more a matter of poor hand-eye coordination than frustration. And finally, only very few of us have made enemies as a result of wargaming. That would indicate that we are a reasonably well behaved lot, but then again this describes a group of mostly middle aged men drawn to reflection, rather than hardcore competition gamers.

I think this overall image won't be too shocking for most of us. Tomorrow I will post my answers to Phil's original questions, Lee's expansion and even on Trebian's alternative list and you can judge for yourself whether I am a proper wargamer.

Any questions?

Proper Wargamers? Analysing the evidence

Over a week ago, Phil Broeders started a new wargamer questionnaire Are You A Proper Wargamer?
This was about as much fun as Ray and Fran`s list of 20 questions in September, but that was much more an indication of subcultural preferences than of behaviour. Also, Phil`s attempt takes the scoring approach and most people understand that they need to score as high as possible in these cases.

Phil asked for more questions that could be on the list and these were used by Lee Hadley for a second part of the questionnaire. However, as only a few people have answered these extra questions, I won`t use them here.

Just because it's a classic doesn't mean I can't recycle it

As with all questionnaires (even those designed by professionals) there`s a lot of interpretation possible by those surveyed (especially the Frontline Gamer), but this generally leads to longer and more interesting stories. So it might actually be a good thing.

"Looking at it the late Paddy G might not score above half on the list, and he was a proper wargamer."

Some people, like Trebian at Wargaming for GrownUps, even take issue with the principle of scoring and the contents of the list: "Looking at it the late Paddy G might not score above half on the list, and he was a proper wargamer." Trebian offers an alternative set of questions that is as interesting as Phil's but regrettably hasn`t been answered by anyone.

What I`ve done is to collect 18 questionnaires, including my own and scored both the questions and the surveyed people Most of these people were on my blog roll, but I also did a lazy google search on `proper wargamer`. Although 18 questionnaires is not a lot, the pattern was getting pretty solid, if you don`t take it all too seriously.

The 18 questionnaires are mine (follows later), Phil Broeders, Sidney Roundwood, Ian, Frontline Gamer, Jim Hales, Lee Hadley, Mike Whitaker, Greyhawk Grognard, Legatus, Mik, Stefan, Joe, Wargamer Girl, Anibal, Millsy, Christopher and Shermon.

Some of them had already scored their own responses very carefully, in other cases I`ve made a judgement call. This is not proper social science after all. That`s too much like work. So I`ve also not tested whether these 20 questions actually make a good scale (I doubt it). If you care about these things you`re welcome to use my database and calculate.

All the individual total scores

The total scores of all these bloggers were very close and with little variation. The minimum score was 13 out of 20, the maximum 18 for Phil himself, who of course set his own standard. Next up was Christopher with 17.5. The average was 15. All proper wargamers indeed, I'd say.

But the more interesting thing is the scores of the individual questions. The rate at which each question has been scored is an indication about real miniature wargamers, rather than Phil's ideal one. That post will be up tomorrow, followed on Sunday by my answers. See if you can guess what they will be.

If you have filled in the questionnaire but are not on my list, please leave a comment with a link to your answers. I will do an update later.

Proper Wargaming

Spent part of tonight gathering in answers to Phil Broeders' Are You A Proper Wargamer questionnaire from about 16 bloggers. Including my own.

Some interesting result but I didn't get it finished in time. More to come.

New books: Napoleonics, Apaches and WWI naval

Totally forgot to mention that I have expanded my reading list with two books on the Napoleonic period. Both in the Hero of Waterloo project scope.

First of all Dominic Lieven's Russia Against Napoleon, The Battle for Europe 1807-1814. This has me enthralled because it starts out with a chapter on recruiting, horsebreeding and arms industry and promises more on logistics. You know, the kind of stuff I am as resistant to as chocolate. Easy read as well.

Although the Ruski's weren't at Waterloo, they were instrumental in bringing down Napoleon and liberating Germany in 1813-4. Also, their armies were marching westwards as Waterloo took place and Lieven will have some interesting things to say about the Russian capability to take on Napoleon in case of a French victory in the Low Countries and their determination to bring him down again.

I picked up the less bulky Battle Story: Waterloo 1815 by Gregory Fremont-Barnes because it is really aimed at the general public and explains a lot of things in small text boxes, for example the size of the battlefield, cavalry vs squares, shrapnel and disabling guns.

His description of the timing of events is also elaborate and might help the uninitiated. There's concise biography's on the main participants and many small illustrations. This all looks promising.

The three Ospreys show my inability to stick to the confines of my projects. The Nile campaign book I bought more for the land battles than the sea engagement. And I have this interest in North American Indian that sees me buy these Ospreys one at a time.

Coronel and Falklands I bought because it is written by Mike McNally, who's a friend I helped out researching his books on the Boyne (1690) and Aughrim (1691). He's also done a good one on the Teutoburger Wald battle or Varusschlacht (some things just sound better in German), and although Colditz and WWI naval stuff aren't my first love (or second, for that matter), I picked them up anyway.

Bonapartist France defeated - Levee en Masse

Played a game Levée en Masse tonight, relearning it after more than a year. But it's fairly easy to pick up and once you've gone through the rules, the game plays fast, in around an hour.

Not bad eh? No real challenges to the republic after first deck

Levée en Masse is one of the solo States of Siege games published by Victory Point Games. It comes in a ziplock bag with rudimentary quality of components, but a well written rulebook. Recently VPG has published higher quality versions of some games, while GMT is also releasing a few. But if you don´t care more about gameplay than components, you´ll be fine with the original VPG edition.

In the game you play solo as the French republicans against foreign armies on the map and monarchist and despotist (ie Bonaparte or some other general) rivals on the political track. The enemies are all driven by the event deck while you can counter them in a limited number of actions.

The main challenge is to survive the game to the end, which means keeping the enemy armies out of Paris. If you make it, the extent of the victory is determined by the extent to which you have kept the monarchists and despotists down and the enemies back.

Looking good after the Terror: puppet states in place, republicanism dominates, enemies far away

The game goes through 3 decks. The first deck covers the initial revolution up to the execution of King Louis XVIII, the second the Terror and deepest military crisis, while the third deals with French expansion and later coalition wars. Each deck poses different challenges, with the Vendee more active in the first deck than later, and the Austrians and Brits becoming active later.

Things seemed to be doing quite well for me until the last deck. Although I had been able to keep a decent edge for the republicans vs the despotists and monarchists, this situation reversed in the space of two or three events, which partly limited my ability to react. This meant that the despotists claimed domination of the state and I lost my military advantage.

Three turns short of the end, Paris falls to the suddenly unleashed Austrians

My dice then seemed a bit less lucky as the Austrians suddenly pressed through my Belgian puppet state and into Paris. Without my military advantage I couldn´t get them out and I lost, with only three cards to go!

But considering the domination of the Bonapartists and the many enemy troops on French soil, I wasn´t going to score well even if I had made it to the end. No real idea why it all went pearshaped in the end, probably because I don´t know the contents of the deck too well, so I may have focussed on the wrong things. Will try again soon.

Fun solo game!

Exploring Nautilus, Thunderstone and Slavika

On Saturday we played a couple of newly acquired games at Murphy's Heroes. Tom had brought Nautilus and Thunderstone, while I added King of Tokyo and Slavika to the programme.

The underwater base expands, submarines scan the sea bottom for treasure

We spent quite some time at Nautilus, a eurogame with little conflict where the players expand an underwater base. From there they explore the surrounding sea in submarines for the lost treasures of Atlantis.

By adding new labs to the base and staffing them with scientists you can improve your searching capabilities and ability to retrieve treasures. You can even make more money out of finds and increase the number and the speed of subs. In the end these little advantages proved decisive as I was able to score bonus points by being able to ignore the less valuable treasures.

Not a game I´ll be asking to play again.

The heroes of Slavika

After that it was on to Slavika, in which the heroes of each clan take on a range of monsters from Slavic mythology. Apart from overcoming the monsters, the challenge is in dividing the spoils.

That was easier said than done because there are limits to where you can put your heroes and monsters and because the situation changed constantly. The winner was the one best able to profit from these opportunities.

This looks to be a decent but not entirely special eurogame with a reasonable level of interaction but not direct conflict. There were more rule questions than I had expected and we couldn´t solve all of them quickly.

The unique selling point for this game is that it's beautifully illustrated with a cast of relatively unknown mythological characters. I´d like to give this one a few more goes.

The runner´s up kill pile in Thunderstone. The winner scored 19 points

There was some time left for a game of Thunderstone, a deckbuilder in which you either enter a dungeon to kill monsters or spend time in the village preparing for these expeditions.

Like all deckbuilders, the challenge is to balance between the size of your drawing deck and the quality of the cards. In the end two of us had spend to much preparing and were surprised by the end of the game, without having killed enough monsters.

Considering that this was one of the first evolutions on Dominion it is not a bad attempt to cash in on the popularity of the former, but I don't see this one keeping the attention of players for very long. But the range of cards will probably give you enough opportunity to try out differing strategies. Happy to play again.

Things are heating up in downtown Tokyo

We had started the day with three very bloody and quick games of King of Tokyo. You already know I'm quite taken to this game.

I tried to just go for maximum damage and this proved effective in frustrating the build up of strong cards with the other players. It proved tit for tat and all games were decided by last monster standing rather than victory points. Maybe this was part of the three player setting.

This was a good start to the Essen 2012 challenge, with Slavika receiving it's baptism, and King of Tokyo's first play after Spiel.

More zombie stuff at Frontline Gamer

You know you're behind on following blogs when you find out the Frontline Gamer has a zombie week and you only notice when it's done.

This is one I painted myself, actually. Beautiful Hasslefree sculpt

Especially because I had my own zombie rant last week.

FG reviews Zombicide, Last Night On Earth, Munchkin Zombie, and Zombies!!! and a few other board and miniature games, as well as his top zombie movies and video games.

So have a look, you might start here: Frontline Gamer: Welcome to Zombie week

Elastic Retreat

While this blog was set up to document the strategic withdrawal of gaming in my life, there are tactical successes masking the extent of the ground lost.

Last Monday I broke the barrier of 5,000 pageviews, coupled with a daily record of 123 views on the previous Friday. That was a day I didn't post here, but my links from Fortress Ameritrash served me well.

Reaching 5,000 hits in just over four months is an amazing feeling and outstrips what I expected and hoped or even dreamed possible. It's thanks to a few lucky breaks, like Ray and Fran's 20 questions, that I'm slowly finding a broader audience. And I guess I haven't exhausted all avenues for self promotion yet.

I'm very thankful to all you visitors, whether you comment here, or react on Facebook, on Twitter, at the Fortress or anywhere.

While increasing blog stats count as tactical success, a strategic victory for family and gaming is that next year I will go to working four days a week instead of five. This will give me the opportunity to structurally take over some time from my girlfriend looking after the kids, allowing her to work more, as well as giving me more time with the kids which seems to have beneficial effects on how we get along. Of course this also gives me some more time for myself = gaming and military history.

However, it seems this time has been claimed already by two writing and publishing ventures I am very excited about, but cannot tell you yet. Don't worry, you will find out if and when they go live.

The last two weeks have been mainly focussed on Spiel and boardgames, and more will follow as I start playing those games. But I hope to be able to give you some more military history, especially in the Napoleonic era.

As projects go, I'm afraid this means that WWI will take a step back, to the benefit of my other plans for 2013. Dark Ages I hope to see more of, although Dux Britanniarum is higher priority than SAGA. There may be diversions as megagames and holidays interfere with normal programming.

But all this gives me a good feeling. Don't underestimate the rear guard!

Hopping the zombie games bandwagon

Had a big Nooooooooooh! moment yesterday as the great guys of the Shut Up & Sit Down Show came out with a glowing review of City of Horror. As you could´ve picked up from my Essen report, that game didn´t go down well with me at all. So I was disappointed to see these guys, who´ve shown such good taste in the past, come out like this.

Artwork is good in City of Horror

When I made my opinion known in the comments on their facebook page, a wise ass came out remarking:

"Not sure how deciding who gets eaten by Zombies DOESN'T "connect to zombies at all." This game looks fantastic. We'll be picking it up 4 sure."

Well, here is what I replied

"Just like Caylus and many other euros, this game is a mechanism with a theme pasted on. In a good game, the theme and mechanisms are congruous. Just because there are some nicely illustrated cards and zombie tokens doesn´t mean this game connects to zombies.

This is a move around and pick up game, where the zombies limit your ability to move around and pick up. Running across the street roaming with zombies doesn´t feel like dealing with a zombie outbreak. This is just a designer jumping the zombie bandwagon. Fair enough, but as a zombie game it fails"

There's been tons of zombie games, and Zombies!!! even if it's not the best game ever, captures the flavour of an outbreak extremely well. You try to be in the right place at the moment the helicopter arrives to take one survivor away, while obstructing and attacking your opponents with the zombies.

Four pretty different zombie games

Last Night On Earth has some claim to being the best zombie game ever, although the accompanying CD has opinions divided. Two human players attempt to resolve the outbreak scenario challenges, under constant attack from the zombie players.

And All Things Zombie approaches the theme from a wargamers point of view, guiding you through a survivor campaign of anxious encounters with zombies and other survivors. Which reminds me... this one needs playing!

Zombie State takes the outbreak from a global point of view. You have to build up a working strategy in the midst of local outbreaks that wreck you best laid plans. Unaffected population drops, vital resource areas are lost and if you can't find ways to hold of the zombies or cure the disease you're doomed.

Zombie State: two players happy to contain the outbreak in Mexico. Everything seemed under control then 

The magnificent Die2Nite online game that puts 40 players together in a doomed town, with the option of cooperating or profiting from other peoples efforts is a brilliant experiment in small group cooperation and conforming mechanisms. The best bit is to get out the gallows and hang the traitors!


I even liked the Eaten by Zombies race element in deck builder form, and Zombie In My Pocket's free rider and group dynamics approach.

Starting deck for Eaten by Zombies

It all works because the games put the zombies and the human dilemma first, not the mechanism.

There's no doubt zombies are red hot. Recently two games were published based on the popular Walking Dead comic and TV series, also in the survivor genre. One of them seems to be actually quite good.

The Zombicide kickstarter was a great success, but apparently on the strength of the miniatures, rather than the game.

Even Brad Pitt has thrown in his lot with the movie based on World War Z, arguably one of the more interesting zombie books, combining a Studs Terkel interview style with a sensible background story of the outbreak.

Regrettably this also leads to mediocre games being released. But it's the job of reviewers to separate the wheat from the chaff.

The Hero of Waterloo, part II plus Hermitage

Last Sunday we went to the Hermitage in Amsterdam to watch the Van Gogh collection that’s temporarily housed there, as well as a nice collection of impressionist and contemporary paintings.

In the museum shop I picked up a book by Michel Didier, De Ridder en de grootvorstin. Kunst en leven van Willem II en Anna Paulowna. This can be loosely translated as The knight and the Grand Duchess. Art and Life of … The book looks at this couple mainly from an art historical viewpoint, but includes a lot of biography. The advantage is that this also brings a lot of illustrations.

Willem was rarely out of uniform, nor were his sons

For me the interesting bits were how Willem’s actions at Quatre Bras and Waterloo were remembered in Dutch (and foreign) art. It’s not my style of poetry or painting, and its purpose didn’t lend itself well to better characterisations of the man. But it illustrates well how Willem's military successes (deserved or not) served the nation building and legitimacy of the Orange monarchy. 

Didier is not too sure on military details, as even I could spot. It is unlikely that Willem would have received his honours for the battle of Nivelles already in 1814. Willem’s tactical abilities are not questioned but his bravery is highlighted.

The book also glosses lightly over the darker side of Willem’s life, the many scandals, affairs and schemes and his political failures. I think this book (and publisher, from the other books it publishes) is aimed at the loyal monarchist crowd and therefor not too critical. What does get a fair amount of attention is the difficult relationship with Willem’s father and other family relations, as well as dynastic concerns.

So not much to recommend it to military historians, unless you have a particular interest in the artistic expressions rendered in tribute or in commission of Willem. Or if you are a loyal monarchist, of course.

Of course, this book was in the shop because of the link between the Netherlands and Russia, as the Hermitage's home is in Petersburg. 

A interesting combination of two great artists:Van Gogh's 'copy' of a woodprint by Hiroshige

The Van Gogh collection is amazing and charts Vincent’s progression as an artist in detail. From his peasant painter period to impressionism to expressionism, continuously learning and adapting his style. And all this in the span of only 10 years. He must have been an exceptionally driven person.

It's hard to capture the mastery of this painting, as the picture of a postcard dulls the colours, but you can see how the strokework emphasises the lightfall

We also enjoyed the exhibition on the impressionists. I enjoyed how the exhibition opposed the impressionist with the established art from the Academie Francaise and how the impressionist were forced to create their own parallel network of exhibitions. I found it telling to see that many of the impressionist, such as Renoir, still attempted to gain access to the Academie, and thus to the galleries and collectors.

The exhibition really mixed impressionism, conventional artists and contemporary event very well. You get this view from the perspective of Russian art collectors that have wound up in the Hermitage collection.

If you're in Amsterdam in the coming months, I highly recommend you add this to your programme.