Colours

So its Colours on Saturday. The return of a show that was previously two days long but has dropped the Sunday. I suspect that this is the way to go having experienced the grave yard atmosphere of Triples earlier in the year.

Not much done over the last week due to work and family commitments. We did get a game of PBI in at the club on Friday. No pictures, but Dave N and Dr Fear playing PzGrens took on myself and Jase H playing the U.S. Apart from myself no one had played it before but being veteran gamers all three players got into the spirit of the thing. Unfortunately for Jase and I, it was a disaster as the Germans strolled on table and steamrollered the US defending a small town somewhere in Northern France. We were all but wiped out with very few German losses. Really enjoyed it though despite being somewhat rusty with the rules.

Our club is a smorgasbord of genres, scales, periods and rules sets. Epic 40k is big at the moment. Battleground WW2 is popular. To Defy a King is being played by Dave S and the crew in one room to refight Edgehill in glorious 28mm. A home grown set of rules for Sengoku era Japan is being used in another room. We have Flames of War going on downstairs. Role playing going on in the room next to ours. Our room has played probably over a dozen sets of rules this year alone. Hence when I come to put on a Peter Pig game, I tend to be a bit rusty on the rules. Not sure what I'm putting on next, but whatever it is I'm sure I'll be scratching my head to remember how things work.

Its a funny old hobby in that way. Golf or chess are the same (pretty much) the world over. But wargaming has never reached a point where there is one set of rules to rule them all. I guess WRG came closest but that was really only for ancients with the various editions of culminating in the DB'x' series. With wargaming you can go from a game with virtually no written rules at all as in 'Kriegspiel' style games, to the ironically titled 'Newbury Fast Play Napoleonics' with pages of factors and modifiers for every aspect of the game. We have had a trend for 'back of a postcard' rule sets. Irregular Miniatures still produce their rules boxes on this theme. We have coffee table style books that look great but for some have questionable content ala Black Powder. We have sets of rules produced on a dining room table, photocopied and then stapled together. And of course my own favourite, the RFCM stable of rules which evolve and grow over the years. In between there are dozens of other styles and formats. There is even a website chock full of free wargames rules seen here

Long may it continue. I think its great that there is so much variety out there. One things for sure, theres something for everybody if you look hard enough.