Shieldwall

Many years ago, although it seems only recently to me, I bought several titles from the Warhammer Ancient Battles booklist – they included Siege & Conquest – all about the siege; Chariot Wars; the WAB basic rule set itself; The Chinese Warring States and all that plus Shieldwall. A fairly random mix you might say which is correct.

I never really bought into Warhammer or Games Workshop after I returned to wargaming in the late 1990’s. I dropped neatly into 15mm and DBA. The 600mm square tabletop battlefield, relatively small metal mountains that could be painted and a simple ruleset that was popular all fitted my constrained interests and time.

And yet despite plenty of enjoyment 15mm became a compromise and once the restrictions on table size were removed I returned to the idea of 25mm (old style) which I suppose is my roots. Despite buying some 28mm figures that size has failed to ignite my interest.

I have discovered that 20mm/25mm or 1/72 is the figure size that appeals to me: Sufficient in size for each individual warrior, painting repays in the visual look while the table top is of the order 6′ x 4′ or 1.8m x 1.2m which is my limit.

And my 25mm wargaming odyssey has taken me back to the past with 1/72 plastics displacing metals but in the modern style from prolific manufacturers such as Zvezda, Strelets, Hat, Ceasar and the occasional Orion, Mars, Emhar and ok even vintage Revell. But it is not all plastic – tumbling dice miniatures have offered up some really nice figures to compliment the plastics. And so to have SHQ, Newline and Irregular Miniatures.

One thing I have done since returning to the hobby is read and that includes reading rulesets. In fact reading them more than I play them!

You need only one ruleset to play wargames for any one period. So I can’t explain why I have dozens. Yet rulesets are personal statements. In their way they seem to me someones interpretation of history albeit through their take on gaming mechanisms. So they are still history books in a way and thats how I consume them.

I only have historic wargames rulesets – fantasy wargaming is something I left behind in the 1970’s – Sci-Fi I could never get my head round.

And fantasy was for me doing dungeons and dragons in the 1970’s before it all took off. And yet my historical interests have always been tempered by an interest in historical fiction. Not the Sharp novels ilk. More a case of a parallel universe where so much is instantly recognisable yet the story lines, characters, countries have different names.

Each to their own as they say.

Well being inclined to Anglo-Saxons at the moment I dug out the Shieldwall book which I kept because like Chariot Wars it felt like a well researched and back then a well designed package. I never played the WAB ruleset with Shieldwall. Just maybe I might give it a go now.

Of course it is approaching vintage (25 years plus) and oldhammer is probably in the Oxford dictionary as a particular type of old wargamer already.

The constant theme though is to enjoy reading history, enjoy imaginative history and paint miniatures and if with a fair wind play some games. In short it is escapism – taking pleasure in playing with imagination.