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Against the Normie Invasion
Normal is not necessarily healthy and sane English is a funny language. Sometimes it uses the same word to mean one thing and also its near opposite, like ‘sanction’. ‘Nice’ once meant unrestrained immorality and cruelty, but modern usage now mistakes it as a synonym for ‘good’, but of course, good is not nice. And…
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Fire and Maneuver in Oldhammer
In response to my post on fire and maneuver in Bolt Action, friend, author, and toy soldier enthusiast J.P. Medved alerted me to a page from the Codex: Imperial Guard back in Warhammer 40k 2nd edition that allows Guard squads to split up just as I described. Back in those days, the boxed IG squads…
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Little Men Against Fire
Modifying Bolt Action to capture the essence of fire-and-maneuver My return to regular tabletop gaming in my mid-30s brought with it a new humility and respect for the game designer. The heady and hubris-laden days of rejecting rules that “didn’t sound right” and formulating ‘house rules’ upon the first read through of a manual were…
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Internet Companies and the Blueprint for Postmodern Totalitarianism
Two weeks ago I made an ad on Craigslist looking for more people who might be interested in playing miniature wargames and tabletop RPGs. In the first few hours after posting, I received several emails (some of them pretty strange, but that’s a topic for another time) expressing interest. But after that, complete silence. I…
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Wargaming Inspiration
I’ve been reading a book called The Last Indian War. While I don’t recommend it for it’s horrible betrayal of Christianity, and I don’t recommend it for the stellar writing. It’s actually not a very good book at all. I’ve also been reading Wargames Soldiers and Strategy Issue #27, which is all about wargaming Raids.…
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Stargrunt: King of Hastilude
Having written before about my preference for hastilude over tournament style play, I wanted to point out a lesser known sci-fi rule set that exemplifies this style of play: Stargrunt II by Jon Tuffley. (Yes, the rules can be printed as a free PDF.) Stargrunt so eschews the tournament style that it makes it explicit…
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Playing with Toys
When I was a child, I played with toys. When I was an adult without kids, I collected toys, and that wasn’t as fun. When I became a father, I got to play with toys again and I could even make my kids pick up the mess afterward; double the fun! And I returned to…
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In Praise of Hastilude
or, The Undesirability of Modern Wargaming’s Most Prevalent Format Hastilude is an old word originally encompassing the universe of mock combat, simulated warfare-as-sport. Derived from the Latin words Hasta (whence the Hastati of the front rank of Republican Roman infantry), or Spear, and Ludus, or Play, one may rightly employ it as a hoighty-toighty name…
