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| My own troops, inspired by Brigadier Peter Young's own Erbprinz Regiment., the Leib (Grand Duchess Sonja's Own) Regiment. A gift for Christmas 2006, 60+ RSM95 Prussians painted to a clean "wargames standard" during late spring and early summer 2007, here freshly rebased during September 2017. |
Inspired by Big Lee's most recent wargaming vlog on his top 10 tips for newcomers to the hobby, and in response to his own invitation for viewers to add their own suggestions, I whipped up a list of my advice to newbies. Or jaded old hands. In no particular order, here they are:
1) Invest in enough and bright lighting for the painting table and paint your figures to the best of your ability. Wargames Standard (aka at arm’s length) is fine. Painting is great fun by itself, but trying to do so in poor lighting is frustrating and will not produce the best results.
2) Stick to one period. Hard, I know. Variety is the spice of life. The butterflies are many and varied, and fluttering by all the time. But time is finite. . . As is money for most of us come to think of it. Even for those who have retired from the working world, various commitments vie for the time available most days. As hard as it is – And I swat at those nagging butterflies routinely myself – a single era is best in the long term.
3) Making your own terrain is a fascinating sub-hobby of the “The Wargaming Hobby.” Have a stab at making some of your own unique pieces. The wide availability of model train terrain materials, not to mention the cardboard and packaging materials that are part of every Amazon shipment, can be easily repurposed to terrain projects but don’t go overboard on hoarding away piles of the stuff. Your wife or domestic partner will thank you.
4) Don’t be afraid to take a break from what is a hobby after all. Life is a funny old thing (as Bertie Wooster once said), and sometimes it gets terribly busy as work and family commitments take over. It’s easy to dive headfirst into an absorbing pastime, and just as easy to beat ourselves up about not indulging in that pastime when “life” gets in the way. As someone once advised me, “Relax. That unfinished regiment of cavalry will be there when you get back to it.”
5) Find and invest in a few “classic” books on the hobby and your chosen period. Yes, you can probably find everything you need online these days, and for free, but there is nothing quite like sitting quietly with a fresh coffee, or a nip of something medicinal, at hand while paging through one of the seminal works from the 1960s, 70s, or even, at this point, the 1980s. Sure, the hobby has moved on, but that early spirit and enthusiasm that still leaps from the pages of Grant, Featherstone, Bath, Morschauser, Young & Lawford, and others is like nothing else when it comes to ideation, an apparently very popular word at the moment.
5) Speaking of the online world, proceed with caution here. There are very many wargaming blogs forums, and discussion boards out there. And the best make for fascinating reading and participation. But again, our time is limited. And the online world can, without our realization, easily suck up time that might be better spent reading, painting, making terrain, and playing actual games. Strive to find a balance that works for you.
7) That said, there is much that can be gleaned about color theory and painting technique by watching some of the Youtube videos shared by, not only other other gamers, but actual artists who paint onto canvas with acrylics and oils. You never know what tiny new approach might have some application to getting those coats, facing colors, and horses, or even scenic backdrops, painted just so.
8) Now and then, paint a small vignette of command figures to shake things up a bit and keep up your enthusiasm for the hobby. Again, this is a fascinating branch of wargaming and opens up all sorts of possibilities for adding lively scenes in miniature of dashing young aides atop their steeds coming to a full stop before a superior officer to hand him a message with new orders. The odd tree stump, discarded sword, drum, or hat can also add to the small scene you create on that kidney-shaped base of two or three figures shouting to each other over the din of miniature battle and pointing to a distant part of the tabletop where a flank is in danger of collapsing.
9) Likewise, adding a few civilians appropriate to your chosen period is another occasional detail that can turn your tabletop from run of the mill into something special whether your set-up is temporary, or permanent. Sure, the units, flags, and a few well-chosen terrain pieces are already pretty cool already, but a smattering of villagers, farm animals, and a few idle field hands taking a break in some corner of the table as your armies march by? That addition instantly turns your table into a “Wow!” conversation piece.
10) Have a crack at writing your own rules for your own game even if very simple. . . at first. To me, this do it yourself approach is one of the hobby’s strengths and, sadly, something that many in the hobby have moved away from as more and more has become available to us in the retail world. And that phenomenon has only accelerated since online buying and selling took off in a major way during the latter half of the 1990s and early 2000s. It’s easy to bring up Amazon in a browser window, or one’s favorite book-seller, with plastic in hand to order that latest new set of currently popular rules for your chosen period. But I would counter that it is much more fun, thought-provoking, and absorbing to think up your own rules for governing tabletop warfare on your own, unfettered by whatever is happening elsewhere in the hobby. Go on! You know you want to.
And Here's a Bonus Tip:
Finally, don’t forget to have fun with all of this. I don’t know if that is a point unique to the 21sr century, but somehow the notion of “fun” is something that seems to get lost in much of daily life in our current era. Hobbies of any kind are activities that should, ideally, provide a few hours of escape from the pressures of daily life with its constant 24-hour news cycle of sociopolitical doom and gloom. If painting and playing with toy soldiers does not manage to do that for you, there are other activities that might give you pleasure, and there is no shame in moving on. But please do be sure to pass on your figures and books to those who might use and enjoy them more regularly via Ebay, or some other online community with a wargaming focus. It seems a shame for wonderfully cast and/or painted Roman legionaries, medieval archers, or Napoleonic dragoons to be relegated to a box or drawer somewhere, never again to see the light of day.
So, there we are. 10 tips +1 for newcomers to the hobby and maybe even a few old grumblers out there, who seek a way to get back on track. Hmm. That sounds familiar.
-- Stokes
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