My Other Hobby - a.k.a. "What Shall We Do Tonight, Brain?"

"The same thing we do every night, Pinky.  TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!"

War-gaming
Well, only on a small scale.  I've doubtless bored scores of people away with my musings on creating a hex-and-counter war-game, but I do have quite a collection of war-gaming miniatures: English Civil War, World War One Western Front 1916 - 1918, and North Africa June 1940 to December 1942.  All in 6mm, also known as 1/300th scale.  The benefits of gaming in a small scale like this are that an individual tank or gun or strip of infantry costs about 40p.  Because they're so small you don't need to paint them in great detail, and you can fit a decent sized battle in a small space.

This is all preparation for the battle below, re-basing figures

This is a late 1917 scenario I created and ran two years ago - The Battle of Pilckem Ridge, using "Square Bashing " rules.  The end result was similar to the real thing - an attritional slog with heavy losses to both sides.  Note tin of Chocolate Brownies in lower left corner ...

And here is some of my kit, arranged in the inserts from Really Useful Boxes, which you can drive a car over with no ill-effects.

Each insert has 15 cells, and each cell can hold four based units, and I have 7 boxes - plus another 7 boxes of varying kinds.  Not to mention things like roads, bridges, hedges, fencing, houses, hills, trees, etc etc.

He started it!
     You are reading the above because of an article on the BBC website about H G Wells and his book on war-gaming - excuse me, hobby war-gaming - and here is the link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22777029

Please notice the emphasis here on "hobby" because the real players of war-games in 1913 and for a good deal before then, were the German General Staff.  Their war-games were called "Kriegspeil" and the rules came in two gigantic binders.  As one of these generals stated after playing a game "This isn't a game - it's training for war!".  Quite.  There was also the unlikely named Fletcher Pratt and his very early 20th Century naval war-games rules - but that is another story altogether, Valentina.

The Inevitable Doctor Who Inclusion
     The old Doctor Who, thank you.  There is a 10-parter called "The War Games", which was so protracted, I believe, because Patrick Troughton was trying to re-negotiate his contract during filming.  In the script there is some blurb about not abducting soldiers from after 1917 because they had too much technical knowledge; I rather suspect the real reason is that all the pre-1917 stuff was lying around and not being used by Wardrobe.

"Conrad!  Don't shatter people's illusions!"