The Evolution of Rules (or rather, my thinking about Rules)

 I was finally tipped over the edge on starting a new blog by Norm Smith and the post on his Battlefields and Warriors Blog here:

http://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2022/07/too-much-stuff.html

which posed the question - are we using simpler rule because we now collect so many periods we don't have time to absorb complex rules?  I made a few replies in the comments and then realised that I was interested in the discussion and it raised some other questions about decisions I had made over the years about the way I now wargame.

I originally started out in 1974 with H G Wells Little Wars rules as they were the only book on wargaming that my local library had.  For two years I happily fired matchsticks at plastic Airfix 54mm Napoleonics and played on a carpet or a patio.  This is simple wargaming, easy to remember rules, plenty of excitement as you fire matchsticks at long range at the advancing enemy and a melee system where every man kills another man until they are outnumbered 2 to 1.

Then we discovered Practical Wargaming by Charles Wesencraft in the library which revolutionised my wargaming and I used a table and dice.  We still played Napoleonics with 1/72nd scale Airfix and were soon rolling for movement and morale and working out firing ranges, etc.

After that, we wanted to play bigger battles so I bought 5mm Heroics and Ros Napoleonics and we fought larger games using G W Jefferies rules which I seem to remember were fairly complex.

I changed schools and moved into 25mm Minifigs with Bruce Quarrie rules and soon adapted to dividing by 33 for casualties and working out exactly how far a French Guard Grenadier could move.  We never managed to finish a game in the after school wargames club as there simply wasn't time to setup and play more than a few moves before everything had to be packed up again. But we enjoyed ourselves (I think).

After that I discovered Roleplaying games and fell out of wargaming until 1995 when I restarted with 15mm Essex Miniatures Napoleonics and Bruce Quarrie again (as those were the rules my opponent and I had used at school).  This time we had longer to play games and actually finished them - helped by scenarios and a fixed number of turns.

Since then I have played probably over 100 different rule sets across all sorts of periods; either with my own collections or at Guildford Wargames Club.  I have enjoyed some of them, hated others and adopted a few as ones that I return to again and again.

The two big influences on my gaming in recent years have been Bob Cordery's Portable Wargame and the books by Neil Thomas starting with his Wargaming and Introduction book.

It is only in recent years that I have started to realise what it is that I enjoy about wargaming and what I want from a set of rules.  I am not someone who is ultra-competitive. I was never like that at school sports and my second Grammar school ruined sports for me as they were extremely competitive to the extent of teaching the first XV to foul on the blind side of the referee.

I like to win but it doesn't matter to me if I don't.  So, working out how rules work in depth, how to break them or get the best from rule mechanisms isn't something that appeals to me.  I just want to play the game and enjoy it.

To me, wargaming is an opportunity to put painted toy soldiers on a table and push them around while enjoying the company of friends. It is, above all, a social experience rather than a competition.

And this is also why I enjoy "simpler" rules such as Neil Thomas's which are elegant in design and are straightforward.  I don't want to have the game mechanisms intrude on the game in such as way that I feel I am playing the rules rather than playing the game of Toy Soldiers.

This is why I have never really got on with Too Fat Lardies rules, I think, though I know many love them and I have tried several sets.  The mechanisms in games like Chain of Command simply make me feel I am playing a dice game rather than pushing figures around a table.

I think perhaps one reason that I am happy with simpler rules is that I have no pretensions to recreating history. I very rarely play refights of historical battles.  I prefer balanced scenarios that give both sides a chance (rare in actual battles) and that produce an interesting challenge.

I sometimes feel that perhaps I am little old fashioned but I am happy with rules that use Charge/Move/Fire/Melee/Morale and UgoIgo turn sequences.  I struggle with games that have interruptions of the other player's turn as I never know when to interrupt. I do play games that use cards for commands or dice for order checks such as Command and Colours or Black Powder but I don't feel that these intrude on the game as much as other ideas can do.

I am still playing new rule sets at the Guildford club - I played Soldiers of Napoleon the other day and thought that it had some interesting ideas but I am not going to spend £30 on a new ruleset which I will play very occasionally when I am happy with a variation of Neil Thomas.

So, I have come to a point in my wargaming that I have a set of rules I am happy with, which work for me and the people I play with and I really can't see me buying any more "shiny" new rules to replace them.

And I am back playing Little Wars again with my own metal 54mm figures and matchstick firing cannon out on the lawn and occasionally on the table and still enjoying it as much as I did for the first time over 40 years ago in a friend's lounge with the furniture pushed back.