Looking backwards to go forwards

I spent this morning – and a chunk of this afternoon – at my father’s house helping my brother to remove some items of furniture before the house clearers arrive. This meant that it was not until quite late in the afternoon before I was able to complete the transfer of my blog print-outs to their new storage folders. (Yes … I am that anally retentive … and yes, I do have printed copies of all my blog entries filed in date order!)

This has been a time consuming process … and not just because there are so many pages of A4 paper to file! I keep finding myself stopping quite frequently to read and review what I have been writing about since I started this blog. After a time one begins to notice certain themes that have reoccurred and developments that have taken place.

Most noticeable is the fact that almost from the beginning I was designing and fighting wargames that used some form of gridded playing surface. It is also noticeable that the rules that I have been writing seemed to have been becoming less and less complex, and that with the growth of simplicity has come greater enjoyment.

Another trend has been the increasing use of imagi-nations in my wargames. Over the past four years I have taken part in historically-based battles, but all of these have been organised by other people. Mine have been firmly placed in an imaginary world that is similar to our own … but not an exact replica. To date I have used the following imagi-nations in the wargames I have written about in my blog:

• Morschauserland (and its colony, New Morschauserland): a quasi-Germanic country located somewhere in Central Europe.
• Eastland: a country in Eastern Europe that resembles Soviet Russia during the Stalinist era.
• Fezia: a country that bears a resemblance to Ottoman Turkey.
• Laurania: Winston Churchill’s invention, it is located on the Mediterranean coast somewhere in Southern Europe.
• Cordeguay: a South American country that has similarities with Chile and Peru.

In addition I have created several other imagi-nations – some of them a long time ago – that could be used in wargames:

• Upsland: a Nordic country located somewhere in the Baltic area.
• Opeland: similar to Upsland – its great rival – and also located in the Baltic region of Europe.
• Zubia: an Arab country that has similarities with Egypt … and may, therefore, be a former vassal sate of Fezia.
• Maldacia: Laurania’s neighbour and archrival in Southern Europe.

Finally, there are the imagi-nations that I have used – or been associated with – in my Colonial campaigns, both in the distant and more recent past. These include:

• Madasahatta: an island in the Indian Ocean, it was the setting for Eric Knowles’ epic and long-running World War I Colonial campaign.
• Dammallia: a British East African colony.
• Mankanika: a German East African colony.
• Marzibar: an island nation that bears a passing resemblance to Zanzibar.
• Deutsches Sudan: a short-lived German colony on the Red Sea coast.
• Chindia: a sort of amalgam of British Indian and Indo-China.
• Gaziristan: China’s north western neighbour and home to a number of warring and very warlike tribes, in has similarities with Afghanistan.

As I wrote this list I realised that the imagi-world that I have been trying to create – on and off – for the past few months is already populated by a series of countries that I need to include. Furthermore, their locations were already roughly fixed, but as yet I had not taken that into account.

So keeping file copies of my blog entries does make sense … as long as I re-read them once in a while!