Garden Wars 

or a Man Before His Time

by Jeff Herbert

Some ten years ago I was standing around Bruce Meyers table when Oliver (JFK) walked in and proclaimed that the future of wargaming was in his hand, whereupon he produced a couple of Playmobil knights.  Oliver is a person who lives for acclaim, dejected he placed his figures back in his bag and the evening continued with ‘real toy soldiers’.  Oliver was (is) a visionary, quite literary a man before his time or at least a man with better intelligence than Bush and Blair, because along came Eric.

It was sometime after joining the club that Eric mentioned that he also wargamed with Playmobil, he did so discreetly in a similar fashion to the spiv that confronts you on a street corner with a, “Psst, do you…..”.  Shortly after he fronted up with a bag of Playmobil soldiers to prove that he really did, to further prove the benefits of Playmobil he shook the bag that they were in and proclaimed, “Look no damage”, followed by, “and they are no more expensive than 25mm”, and “ you don’t need to paint them”.  Wargamers being opened minded people much akin to addicted gamblers who are willing to bet on raindrops running down windowpanes, we agreed to give it all a go.  Shortly later six of us met and played a seven years war game.  The little people looked superb and had an animation all of their own, especially in the way they appeared to turn and glance at each other.  As a result the little group grew and more gave it a go.  We have now fought twice, two times at Eric’s house and twice in the mess.

Garden Wargaming is a wargames site dedicated to using the H.G Wells rules, Little Wars, and large spaces.  H.G Wells gamed in his garden and in his ‘front room’, and although it sounds quite twee to wargame in the garden a large indoor space is preferable (at least the neighbours can’t see and get on to the Happy Farm).

The pictures show the latest in a series of games depicting the Italian Wars.  Prior to these the Forces have met on two previous occasions at Eric’s house, (wife and kids had been sent off at the time and only Eric’s Hound of the Baskervilles was there to greet us).  On the first occasion the French were soundly thrashed but on the second they triumphed over the Italians - mainly as the Polish Chapter of the Knights of St John were a little tardy.  

It was over so quick that there was time for a second game.

This time the Forces were evened up and the terrain set as per DBR 2.0.  

Honours were even which gave a nice result to the day and the ‘campaign’ to date.

Rules used for all games were DBR.  

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