Introduction
What is wargaming with miniatures all about? Believe it or not, it’s about pacifism. If you’re not already a pacifist when you start, it certainly turns you into one. With miniature wargaming you get to see how deadly, destructive & horrible war is. It’s not just about exploring the horrors of war however, that’s just a by-product that you learn to appreciate over time. There are many aspects to wargaming with miniatures, from researching diverse cultures, creative hobby & craft work, building model terrain, building models, appreciating engineering, socialising with like-minded individuals & groups, exploring history & fashion, friendly competition or, if you’re that way inclined, competitive tournament gaming, pitting your intellectual skills against an opponent. Wargaming sounds aggressive, but it isn’t.
Pacifism
Wargamers spend a lot of time painstakingly painting their miniatures (or pay to have someone like me paint them for them, but that’s another topic). Invariably your most recently painted miniatures, figurines unit or vehicle is the first one to be destroyed or killed in a game. You stay up all night the night before a game painting a fresh set of miniatures to use in your battle only to have them knocked out in the very first turn. That’s infuriating but it gives you sense of what it’s like in the real world when fresh troops are sent into battle, especially if they are unprepared or poorly trained.
Another aspect of wargaming is taking losses, whether it’s with freshly painted troops or a long standing army. At the end of a game when you see how many losses you’ve incurred it makes you realise that they represent real life losses of real people in the real world. That really makes you realise when you see conflict on the news the serious loss of life that it entails and that politicians should avoid war at all costs. To be fair to politicians, most of them do try to avoid conflict (because they know their voters don’t like it) but there have been some famous & disastrous cases, certainly most recently (& many, many times in the past) where politicians have lead society into unnecessary pain & suffering through destructive & unnecessary or avoidable war.
World War One
Which brings me to the topic of the First World War; a wargamer would never have allowed that conflict to happen, or certainly would have stayed well out of it. The causes of the First World war are quite complicated but essentially France & Russia caused Germany to take an aggressive foreign policy stance because of the alliances they formed against Germany, which, ironically, where created because they feared an aggressive German foreign policy. In other words, they were worried about Germany starting as war so they created the circumstances that caused Germany to take an aggressive warlike stance. It was almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Then, once the war started, France basically bullied Britain into entering the war. The United Kingdom was worried about Germany’s intention of building a naval fleet & possibly competing with England’s vast overseas empire. However, England had the world’s greatest navy with a fine tradition of seamanship stretching back hundreds of years all the way back to Elizabeth I & possibly even earlier. Even with Germany’s efforts to build an intercontinental fleet it would have taken them years, decades & maybe a century or more to catch up to the might of the British navy. Sure, they would have been a competitor but Germany would never have been able to seriously challenge the vast & enormous British Empire. A wargamer would have understood that & would not have been so insecure about the rise & growing prosperity of the German Empire.
A wargamer would definitely not have allowed themselves to be bullied by France & dragged into a huge continental conflict that would cost the lives of millions of its citizens. A wargamer would have said “No way! I’m sending off my men & women to die in some conflict in Europe that could easily have been avoided or resolved through diplomacy!”
Once the war started France continued to further bully Britain into taking on more & more of the workload, taking over greater sections of the front & doing the bulk of the heavy lifting when it came to the fighting. Once again a wargamer would have refused (though that would be easier said than done once Britain had allowed herself to be dragged into the conflict in the first place). A wargamer would have asked: “Why am I doing the bulk of the fighting? Why are my people dying for a war that doesn’t really make sense?” A wargamer would have stayed out of it altogether out of concern for the saving the lives of a country’s precious citizens.