What is Wargaming?

What is Wargaming?

Wargaming is an engrossing pastime with many aspects; none of them are in the slightest way militaristic, violent, warlike or political. Wargamers generally have a passionate interest in military history and model making. The hobby involves researching your chosen period or periods of history; collecting or making and painting model soldiers, tanks, equipment and other paraphernalia; constructing miniature terrain and buildings. Finally, you put the whole thing together, meet with like minded individuals and command your miniature army in a battle, using an accurate but simple set of rules and a handful of dice.

The armies involved in the hobby can be whatever pleases or interests you; many players, especially younger ones, prefer fantasy or science fiction games and take their inspiration from Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and many other areas too numerous to list. Whatever your age and whatever your interests wargaming has something to offer you. Some club members enjoy simply building and collecting their models, others are passionate about painting and produce exquisite miniature works of art, and many are ruthless exponents of the various rule systems in it only to win it!

Some games might involve many thousands of model soldiers from the collections of several club members and others may be very small scale skirmish games with just a few characters. Here a group of policemen are deployed in a small scale game based on the Siege of Sidney Street:

And here is an example of a much larger game, a demonstration representing the Battle of Austerlitz and played at one of the shows attended by the Club a some time ago;