Another long, hard think about my future wargaming

Back in January, before I was afflicted by axonal polyneuropathy, I took a long, hard think about my future wargaming. Towards the end of that blog post, I wrote the following:

I have been mulling what my future wargaming priorities should be for some time. Until very recently I was still very undecided … and then I read an obituary about the late John Ruddle’s garden wargaming, and things began to fall into place.

In the obituary, the wargaming part of John’s garden was described as being L-shaped, with a long left-hand border that was split into Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, and Italy. At right-angles to this and across the bottom of the garden were sections that represented Africa and the Northwest Frontier of India. At the join of the two section was Turkey, and the lawn represented the oceans. My immediate reaction was ‘I’d love to do something like that, but my garden isn’t suitable.’ However, after some thought, I decided that an indoor version of something like it might be possible.

My current thinking is along the lines that I could create a terrain board for each of my Belle Époque imagi-nations using the game board/map from Waddington’s CAMPAIGN game as a guide. These terrain boards could be stored in my future wargame/toy room and be brought out and used as and when required. It would allow me to exercise my terrain modelling skills (something that I have recently rediscovered and that I really do enjoy!) and become the basis of an imaginary wargaming world where nations – both large and small – are constantly vying with each other.

These ideas were predicated on the assumption that Sue and I would be moving house and that the space I would need to pursue this plan would become available in the form of a large garage or garden building ... but now that my mobility has become impaired, our plans to move house have been shelved and our current house is being slowly adapted to meet my needs.

So, how does this affect my plans? Well, I don't think that it is going to be possible to create the terrain boards that I planned to build, but I haven't given up hope that I might be able to do something along those lines in the long run, possibly using lighter-weight materials than I originally planned to use.

I do still intend to make my Belle Époque project my main one for the foreseeable future, and I have plans to add some more imagi-nations to my collection.