A few weeks ago I almost lost all my slaves. And the home we have lived in for generations.
The British came in from the south: cavalry, infantry, well-drilled with their murderous rifles. Two gunboats, with a full contingent of their naval troops. We took up position on the rooftops and used our primitive muskets to do what damage we could.
The enemy was fought off, for now. Even our local tribal levies were more effective than we had hoped, taking on those well-drilled troops on the open desert ground. The British retired, several of their regiments severely mauled.
Welcome to my odd hobby. I paint and play with toy soldiers, have been doing it for four decades now, and I have amassed a huge collection of metal and plastic figures of various scales and sizes, plus a massive range of buildings, roads, rivers and other terrain. Who knew?
The game in question was a British attempt to wipe out a colony of slavers on the east coast of Africa.
The game behind the story
Understandably, I don’t talk about my hobby much. You wouldn’t, would you? As I am sure you know, people like me get together, togged up in Waffen SS uniforms, to sing the Horst Wessel song while watching the panzers sweeping, with General Guderian, over the plains of north Europe again. Fascists all.
Actually, no. The people I play with are pretty ordinary, often retired like me, but with a shared interest in military history. Our games, normally refights of historic battles using the appropriate figurines, are social affairs, with a lot of banter and fun.
No one really wants to win. That isn’t the point. The point is spending a day with people who want to have fun and play a game. And move metal and plastic figurines across a landscaped table. Not a Waffen SS uniform in sight.
Finding my people in Suffolk
I have belonged to several clubs, meeting regularly to play games, for those four decades. I moved to Suffolk more than five years ago, and my first task was to find like-minded folk.
It’s a bit like wife swapping. You move to a new area, and you have an unusual, somewhat esoteric interest. How do you find people similarly inclined, given it seldom comes up in normal conversation?
(Just to make it clear, I am not into wife swapping.)
I gradually managed to put together a collection of those like-minded folk, often connecting by using social media, who meet at each other’s houses a couple of times a month to play with toy soldiers. There are about eight or nine of us now, about a half an hour’s drive away, on average, in our area of Suffolk.
What is the appeal? Setting aside the social aspect? Some years ago I did a course of what is called mindfulness. You are encouraged, for your mental wellbeing, to focus on the now, what is happening in the moment. Not to shift off into uncontrolled thoughts.
When I am painting a French Napoleonic light cavalryman, I am focused on just that. On the tiny figure in front of me, to get the uniform straps, the eyes, the sword, just right. The outer world drops away. It is all about the now. I am in the now.
Mindfulness with a paintbrush
I think it is, mentally, very helpful. Like any hobby in which you are entirely focused. Carpentry, knitting, golf – I just happen to paint toy soldiers. A bit like Airfix aircraft, which I did for rather longer into my twenties than some might think appropriate.
My day-to-day job in journalism was about words, screens, talking, writing. To be able to be so concentrated on the physical, the tactile, instead…
Some think we must be warmongers, glorifying in the horror and destruction of war. Far from it. Several of the people I have known in the hobby are ex-servicemen. They know the reality. And, interestingly, one of the scenarios very little played is the First World War. There is a sense that that particular conflict is not something you would game over.
Still, I have figures from second century Rome, the legions of Septimius Severus, one of the better emperors, plus Celtic warriors to fight him; through what we are no longer allowed by historians to call the Dark Ages; then through the medieval period – we recently re-fought the battle of Pavia, 1525, the French against pretty well anyone else in northern Italy and Europe. Pike blocks, gorgeously costumed knights, Swiss arquebusiers, fabulous flags…
(Spoiler alert. The French didn’t do terribly well against the Holy Roman Empire, the Spanish, the Kingdom of Naples and the Italian city states. All on the same side.)
Then through to the American War of Independence, the American Civil War, my first love, any number of colonial campaigns including Rorke’s Drift, the battle in the film Zulu, which we have refought several times. The British did not always win.
Refighting history
The Russian Civil War, the Chinese warlord years: great fun because you can use WW1 planes and early tanks, beautiful models to make, and back to those Airfix kits, though the scale is a bit larger. And more modern stuff, including Black Hawk Down, the 1993 conflict when the Americans went into Mogadishu to combat a warlord. As in the film. The Americans were on the right side then.
When I went into the hobby, I found there is an entirely unknown but huge ecosystem of firms and individuals making paints, rule sets, terrain, buildings and figures. The Grand Chaco War? (No, me neither.) 1805 Austrian lancers, with the exact right uniform? Tibetan cataphracts, heavily armoured cavalry, from the early Medieval period when Tibet was an expansionist, imperialist kingdom? All out there.
A hidden industry
Hundreds and hundreds of firms, some quite large, some operating out of someone’s garage. All enthusiasts, with a fascination with getting those 1805 epaulettes right. You can meet them at the various big exhibitions that take place around the country, with games, trade stands, bring-and-buy sales and the like.
I should say this is nothing to do with Warhammer, or Games Workshop – one of the most successful companies on the stock market, but specialising in science fiction or fantasy figures and battles. Though there is some overlap.
Welcome to my world. And my weird hobby. Most of those who know me will have had no idea. Now I have come out. Is it weird? Killing large numbers of figurines on a computer screen is now relatively mainstream. And odd hobbies are, I think, now much more acceptable, as we focus more on our work-life balance.
Good thing, then.
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