Well I suppose an introduction is in order!?

Firstly, I write terribly. Typically I write as a stream of consciousness and then go back and try and make it readable.  My writing tone can sometimes come across as abrasive…. Well thats just how I write. I’m a pussy cat really.

I’m starting this blogging effort really to capture a few key things:

Firstly to capture my experiences in re creating famous and not so famous conflicts using military simulations as a medium, and sometimes drawing a fictional narrative out of that.

This all started a long time ago in a land far away. In fact in Australia. Where I had a crush on Napoleon.  My mother bought me a board game from Avalon Hill called Waterloo.  As I read about that era  I would play the game as a 12 year old and imagine what happened, why it happened and what might have been.

Furthermore how did the leaders make choices? What did the soldiers think? What were the smells, and sounds like? What was leadership, being a General all about anyway? What did courage look like? Who was afraid? Who were cowards? Why did men fight in such conditions?  Well as a 12 year thats what my adult brain now discerns that I wanted to be thinking about!;). Flash forward 30+ years.

My reading lead me to re connect with conflict simulations. My young kids were studying ancient Greece, Roman and other ancient cultures. This leads me to my next reason for blogging.

I had read much of the classics in the past, but not with any purpose or insight. So I started over, Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, Plato…..Got no where fast. So I switched tacks and read books about the books. I had all the source material to reference so reading this other books allowed me to compare and contrast writers assumptions and opinions against my own.

Now I was better armed to help the children, which is another reason for my interest in blogging here. My eldest, Davis then said to me that he was going to be Alexander the Great in a Grade 1 class presentation.  I made a short movie of the battle of Issus for him, for his presentation. A light bulb went off. I wonder if there are still simulations around for all this great history?

Well the rest IS history as they say. So here I will add new content, links to my movies I make on www.youtube.com/hipshot0710 Re post some of my articles or stories from BGG, and keep this as a hub. The final reason for blogging here is that it becomes an archive of my experiences, with sims, with history, with my family etc.  Hopefully I won’t let the dark moody bastard side of my personality out.  We will just keep it fun and hopefully interesting to people with are already in the hobby or exploring the hobby today.

Over on the forums in BGG you can read many of the  After Action Reports (AARS) from my exploration of the 2nd Punic War, I may bring most of them over here eventually.

My children are all starting to expand their horizons beyond Star Wars Lego play, into some of the simpler board games and I can see that sometimes it holds sway over that dam XBOX and Call of Duty (not a bad shooter but nothing like the old Operation Flashpoint).

Well thats likely too much information. Tell me if you like the tagging o’ casual reader, it may be distracting.

Welcome to the Big Board.