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Friday, 21 June 2019

Organising my collection of World War II figures into wargame armies

Over the years I've become a bit of a believer in the concept of synchronicity*, and an example of this has arisen over the past few days.

Just days after Thistlebarrow/Paul Leniston had been writing about how he organises his collection of Napoleonic figures into wargame armies, Chris Kemp wrote a blog entry on his NOT QUITE MECHANISED blog about his new Front Scale Orbat (FSO) that he intends to use for the next stage of his ongoing Eastern Front/Great Patriotic War campaign.

Looking at the accompanying photograph ...


... I was immediately struck by how easily it would work with my HEXBLITZ rules or a modified version of my twentieth century PORTABLE WARGAME rules.

As regular readers will already know, over the past few months I've been renovating my collection of World War II figures, but without any real plan as to how to organise them when they are finished. Having read Chris's blog entry, ideas are now beginning to form that may give me the answer to that conundrum.

Please note that the photograph featured above is © Chris Kemp.

* Synchronicity is a concept that was first developed by the analytical psychologist Carl Jung. He used the word to describe 'temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events'. In other words, events that occur with no causal relationship yet seem to be meaningfully related.

8 comments:

  1. Talking of synchronicity, I've been working off and on upon my own, vaguely similar organisations for Soviet and German Army organisations, with a side order of Western Desert. So far my efforts have been but partially successful. Perhaps Chris Kemp's ideas will kick my own along a bit!

    Houston, we have causal lift-off!

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    Replies
    1. Archduke Piccolo,

      Chris Kemp has been developing mid-twentieth century operational-level games for years. It's well worth reading the older stuff on his NQM blog and website to see how far he has come. Both Tim Gow's MEGABLITZ and my HEXBLITZ evolved from NQM, and what we've developed has fed back into Chris's game design.

      Synchronicity has struck again today as my proof copy of A WINTER-ISH WAR arrived from Lulu.com via courier a few minutes ago.

      Casual lift-off is taking place here as well.

      All the best,

      Bob

      Delete
  2. Reorganising collections is so useful I must reorganise parts of mine two or three times a year. Being me, though, it doesn't real serve much purpose except to make me feel a bit better for a (short) while!

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    Replies
    1. Rob Young,

      Just as long as the sequence isn't organise, reorganise, disorganise!

      I used to have too much of this when I was at work, so doing it for pleasure isn't my idea of fun.

      All the best,

      Bob

      Delete
  3. Of course good old CJ Jung advocated that adults should spend time in playing; he used to divert little streams and make dams. A ideal psychologist for wargamers perhaps?
    Neil

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    Replies
    1. Neil Patterson (Neil),

      I did not know that ... but it would certainly make him the psychologist of choice for wargamers!

      All the best,

      Bob

      Delete
    2. Too right! When exploring the meaning of stories (Myth, legend, folktale and Fantasy in particular) Carl Jung was my favourite approach, treating the story as if it were a dream. (Incidentally, whoever wrote the script for the Bond movie 'Skyfall' not only knew his Jung, but his Freud as well - excellent movie that went beyond its usual 'pulp action' format. Let's just say, en passant, that, from a Freudian perspective, Dame Judi Dench, as 'M', qualifies - in my view - as a 'Bond girl').

      Delete
    3. Archduke Piccolo,

      More stuff that I did not know! (Isn't the Internet wonderful for making this sort of information exchange possible!)

      I agree about Dame Judi Dench being a 'Bond' girl; she made a top notch 'M'.

      All the best,

      Bob

      Delete

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