I have been playing wargames for a very long time, long enough, in fact, to remember when a rulebook was expected to contain the rules rather than provide the opening instalment in an exciting opportunity to purchase another six books, three supplements, four sets of cards and something described as essential even though nobody had heard of it six months earlier.

Like many wargamers of my generation, well those that still exist anyway, I grew up believing that bigger was generally better and that a proper wargame involved armies, preferably large ones. There should be long lines of infantry, cavalry waiting dramatically on the flanks, artillery occupying every available hill and enough painted lead on the table to make moving the collection a legitimate workplace health and safety issue. If there were only ten figures on the table, something had obviously gone terribly wrong. I still remember playing a game with Wal and having to hold up the table from collapsing under the combined weight of our 25mm metal (28mm was a decade or two later) Ancient Cavalry armies as it gradually tilted sideways. If there were only ten figures on the table, something had obviously gone terribly wrong.

I therefore spent a considerable portion of my wargaming life commanding armies, or at least pushing large numbers of miniature soldiers around a table while claiming to be commanding them. For Ancients, I played my way through every Wargames Research Group set from the Second Edition onwards, following WRG through successive editions, revisions, interpretations and debates before eventually arriving at DBA and DBMM. Somewhere along that long journey I became familiar with weapon classifications, troop types, movement distances, tactical factors and enough modifiers to make me wonder whether an interest in ancient warfare secretly required a minor qualification in mathematics.

There was something wonderfully serious about WRG Ancients because you did not simply have some Roman infantry and expect them to get on with the business of being Roman infantry. They were troops of a particular type, quality and equipment, operating under a particular collection of circumstances, with precisely defined advantages and disadvantages. Somewhere in the rules there was almost certainly a paragraph explaining what happened if they were uphill, disordered, attacked from an unexpected direction and having a particularly bad Tuesday in a German wood.

And we loved it.

Well, mostly.

There were army lists to study, points to calculate and armies to construct, while hours could be spent contemplating whether another unit of something historically appropriate would actually be useful or whether the points would be better spent on something historically dubious but considerably more dangerous. This could then be justified by discovering that somebody, somewhere, at some uncertain date, might possibly have employed troops vaguely resembling the ones you desperately wanted to include.

Then came the game itself, when out came the rulers, dice and charts and the troops advanced majestically across the battlefield while their commanders crouched over the table attempting to determine whether something was precisely within a particular distance. Disputes occasionally arose over angles, overlaps, zones, formations and whether one unit was facing another unit sufficiently to count as actually facing it, and I suspect entire civilisations occasionally rose and fell in less time than some of our rules discussions.

Eventually DBA appeared and demonstrated that an ancient battle did not necessarily require every figure I owned to be placed upon the table simultaneously. DBMM subsequently demonstrated that there was still plenty of life remaining in the grand tradition of carefully considering exactly what a body of ancient soldiers was doing and precisely how badly things were about to go wrong for it. Through all those changes I continued to enjoy Ancients, and I still have a great affection for the sight of two ancient armies deployed across a table, even if I no longer have quite the same affection for carrying all the boxes required to produce that sight.

Alongside all this historical gaming there was, of course, Warhammer 40,000. I started with Rogue Trader, when the game felt less like a tightly controlled competitive system and more like an invitation to rummage through a wonderfully strange science fiction toy box. The universe was weird, funny, grim, occasionally ridiculous and full of ideas that appeared to have been included because somebody thought they sounded entertaining, which seemed to me an entirely reasonable basis upon which to construct a wargame.

Over the years I followed 40K through edition after edition until eventually reaching Tenth Edition. Armies grew, rules changed, miniatures became larger and increasingly spectacular, and things that had once occupied a modest corner of the table gradually acquired enough weaponry to flatten a medium sized European country. Every few years I would discover that something I had finally committed to memory had been changed, sometimes probably for the better and sometimes leaving me staring at the new rule while wondering what had been wrong with the old one.

Nevertheless, I kept playing, because there was always something appealing about 40K and its enormous, gloriously excessive universe. There is still something impressive about seeing two large painted armies facing one another across a table covered with suitably dramatic terrain, although there is also something slightly alarming about realising that the small force you once regarded as an army now appears to constitute approximately the left hand corner of somebody else’s deployment zone.

Nor was it only WRG and 40K. Over the decades there have been numerous other rules covering numerous periods, some excellent, some less excellent and a few apparently written on the assumption that players had direct access to the author’s thoughts through some form of telepathy. Yet through all of this the basic assumption remained remarkably constant: a proper wargame involved lots of figures.

Somewhere along the way, however, I realised that I was increasingly having more fun with games involving far fewer of them.

I had become a skirmish gamer.

I am not sure there was a particular moment when this happened. I did not wake one morning, look upon my armies and announce that henceforth I would never command more than twelve miniatures at a time. It was a gradual change, probably assisted by age, experience and the uncomfortable discovery that carrying several large boxes of miniatures into a club is considerably easier at twenty five than it is several decades later. My back has become a surprisingly influential rules critic, and it strongly favours any game whose entire army can be carried in one hand.

Convenience, however, only explains part of the attraction because the biggest reason I now prefer skirmish games is narrative. When commanding a large army, individual figures are necessarily anonymous because a stand of infantry represents a body of men and the story normally belongs to the unit, regiment or army. I certainly remember units that performed spectacularly well or spectacularly badly, but I rarely find myself wondering about the future prospects of the third miniature from the left in the second rank.

In a skirmish game the camera moves much closer, and suddenly that individual miniature matters. The fellow crouching behind the barrel is no longer Infantryman Number Four but the character who has survived three previous games despite repeatedly being placed in situations that should have killed him. The woman carrying two pistols has a name, a history and perhaps a disturbing tendency to shoot her opponents while everybody else misses, while the supposedly expert rifleman may have developed an equally impressive reputation for being unable to hit a barn while standing inside it.

This is narrative generated through play, and it is one of the reasons I have enjoyed building my Dracula’s America posses so much. I find a miniature, paint it and begin thinking about who this person might be. A name follows, then perhaps a few paragraphs of background, and before long this small lump of metal has acquired parents, enemies, motives, religious convictions, regrettable personal habits and possibly a family cemetery containing relatives who refuse to remain dead. By the time the miniature reaches the tabletop I actually care what happens to it.

The wonderful part is that the game then begins interfering with the background I have so carefully created. I might decide that a particular character is a deadly gunfighter whose name strikes terror into anyone foolish enough to challenge him, only to discover that once placed upon the tabletop he cannot hit anything. By the fourth consecutive miss, his carefully constructed reputation as the Terror of Virginia is beginning to require substantial historical revision.

Conversely, a character who was included simply because I liked the miniature can suddenly perform some extraordinary feat, survive impossible odds and become one of the most memorable members of the posse. I could not have planned that beforehand because the game created it, and the next piece of background I write about that character will inevitably be influenced by what actually happened on the tabletop.

This emergent narrative has become one of the things I value most in wargaming. I enjoy writing background, but I do not want the tabletop simply to reproduce a story I have already written because that would make the game itself largely redundant. I want the rules, players, cards and dice to interfere with my plans, preferably in amusing ways, so that a character’s history develops from the interaction between what I imagined beforehand and what actually happened once somebody started rolling dice.

A good skirmish game therefore repeatedly asks what happens next, and the answer might be heroic, tragic, ridiculous or some combination of all three. Reverend Graves may carry out precisely the daring action I imagined for him, or he may discover that his carefully aimed shot has achieved absolutely nothing while somebody previously regarded as expendable saves the day. Either result gives me something to remember and, more importantly, something to write about afterwards.

Looking back over decades of wargaming, I find that I cannot remember the final score of most battles and often cannot remember exactly who won, but I remember incidents. I remember the unit that refused to break, the cavalry that charged when common sense suggested otherwise, the supposedly elite troops that collapsed at the first opportunity and the insignificant character who somehow killed something enormously more powerful than himself. These are stories rather than results, and skirmish games concentrate those stories into a relatively small number of characters whose successes and disasters become increasingly memorable.

There is also the very practical matter of the club night, which has its own peculiar relationship with time. A game theoretically begins at seven, but seven is actually when people begin arriving, somebody needs a coffee, somebody else wants to see the figures you painted during the week, somebody has bought something new and another person has discovered a new set of rules about which somebody else already has a firm opinion despite not yet having read them. Inevitably somebody has also found something interesting at a bring and buy sale and must explain why purchasing another forty miniatures was actually an act of remarkable financial responsibility.

Eventually somebody remembers that we came to play a game.

With a large battle this can be problematic because boxes appear, terrain is unpacked, armies are assembled and the table is rearranged after somebody discovers that the village has been placed precisely where half an army needs to deploy. More boxes then appear, somebody cannot find the cavalry, and after an increasingly desperate search the cavalry are eventually discovered in the box marked “Artillery”. By the time the first turn begins, the evening is already considering retirement.

A skirmish game is much kinder to the clock because a handful of figures can be unpacked, the terrain arranged and the game started without requiring a logistical operation worthy of a divisional headquarters. More importantly, there is a reasonable chance that the game will actually finish before everyone begins looking at watches and discussing what would probably have happened if we had another three hours.

I would much rather play a complete two hour game than the first four turns of a magnificent six hour battle before negotiating the hypothetical conclusion. There is something deeply unsatisfactory about being informed while packing figures into boxes that my opponent’s cavalry would obviously have destroyed my flank, particularly when those cavalry have spent the previous three turns doing nothing whatsoever. Apparently they were waiting for the right moment, which generally seems to occur shortly after the table has been cleared.

A completed game also has a natural narrative structure because there is a beginning, a middle and an end. Characters have opportunities to succeed and fail, plans develop and collapse, and somebody eventually achieves the objective or discovers that their brilliant strategy depended upon rolling anything except a one. The story has a conclusion rather than finishing with, “We called it there because the caretaker wanted to lock the building.”

Skirmish games also make collecting more manageable, although I would hesitate to claim that they save money because wargamers possess an extraordinary ability to convert any apparent saving into additional purchases. If I only need eight figures for a posse, I have obviously saved a considerable amount of money compared with buying an army, which means I can afford another posse, some civilians, additional terrain, several zombies and perhaps a giant monster that I did not know existed until approximately fifteen minutes ago. Before long my economical skirmish project occupies three shelves and I am explaining to somebody that this is still much cheaper than collecting another army.

Nevertheless, there is a genuine difference because starting a new army can represent months of painting, whereas starting another skirmish force might require half a dozen or perhaps a dozen figures. This allows me to experiment with factions, periods and ideas without committing the next six months of my painting life to producing another hundred broadly similar soldiers.

It also makes the painting itself more enjoyable. Painting forty similar infantrymen has its pleasures because there is something enormously satisfying about seeing a completed regiment lined up together, but the enthusiasm curve can be rather steep. The first few figures are exciting, the next batch demonstrates progress and somewhere around figure twenty seven I begin wondering why historical armies could not have adopted a greater commitment to individual expression.

With skirmish figures, individuality becomes an advantage rather than something that makes the unit look untidy. I can convert weapons, alter poses, choose different colours and add small details because each miniature represents a character rather than another anonymous member of a formation. I find myself spending more time thinking about the miniature as an individual, and even the base can help suggest who that character is or where they have been.

The same applies to casualty figures, which I have increasingly enjoyed adding to my games. In a large battle a casualty marker may simply record another reduction in strength, whereas in a skirmish game a body lying beside a fence immediately becomes part of the visual story. It tells us that something happened there, and if the game involves supernatural forces there is always the additional possibility that being dead represents an inconvenient temporary condition rather than a permanent career choice.

Terrain similarly changes its role when the game moves down to skirmish level. In a large battle, three buildings might collectively represent a village that blocks movement, provides cover or controls a road, but in a skirmish game those buildings become individual locations where doors, windows, alleys and fences matter. The player begins thinking at ground level about whether a character can reach the building unseen, whether the back entrance is safer, whether somebody is hiding behind the wagon and whether standing in the middle of the street while an opponent has a shotgun is really the tactical masterstroke it first appeared to be.

The battlefield therefore becomes a location rather than simply a representation of one, which makes terrain enormously satisfying to build. A well, gravestone, cart, fence, woodpile or ruined wall can affect what happens, while a building can acquire its own history after appearing in several games. The old church is no longer simply a piece of terrain because it is where something terrible happened three games ago, and everyone remembers it even if nobody can quite agree upon exactly what that terrible thing was.

There is another factor that I am increasingly prepared to admit. I have become a grumpy old bugger! Which means that my tolerance for unnecessary complexity has declined. This does not mean that I want simplistic games because I still enjoy difficult tactical decisions, but I am considerably less interested in difficult administration. After decades of wargaming I have consulted enough charts, calculated enough modifiers, cross referenced enough tables, tracked enough unit states and searched enough rulebooks for the paragraph that everyone remembers reading but nobody can actually find.

There must surely be a special circle of wargaming hell where the rule you need is always on the page you have just turned away from.

Complexity and depth are not the same thing, and a game can have relatively straightforward mechanisms while still presenting difficult choices. Some of the best skirmish games achieve precisely that because every miniature matters, meaning that deciding which character to activate, whether to move into cover, whether to risk another shot or whether to attempt the objective can have significant consequences. There is also the ever present temptation to do something spectacularly foolish because it will make a much better story if it works, which has probably cost me more games than I care to admit.

I remember those attempts, however, which rather proves the point.

Alternating activation systems and card driven mechanisms can also keep everyone involved because I increasingly dislike sitting for twenty minutes while somebody moves an entire army, fires every weapon and resolves every combat before allowing me to participate again. When activations alternate, my opponent’s decision can immediately affect mine, which means I am constantly watching the table and reconsidering what I intended to do. Plans change because circumstances change, and that uncertainty is one of the principal ingredients from which memorable gaming stories emerge.

Campaigns provide another major attraction because keeping track of eight or ten characters is enjoyable, whereas keeping detailed records for a large army can begin to resemble unpaid clerical employment. At skirmish level, casualties, experience, new abilities, equipment and injuries can all matter without producing an administrative system requiring its own filing cabinet.

A character who loses an eye has not merely acquired a modifier because he has acquired another piece of history. Someone who repeatedly survives against impossible odds becomes a veteran, while somebody who dies spectacularly becomes part of the group’s mythology. The character who dies stupidly will probably be remembered even longer, particularly if his demise followed a lengthy explanation from the controlling player about why the action he was attempting was actually perfectly safe.

Campaign games allow miniatures to accumulate histories, and those histories create attachment. Once that happens there is something at stake beyond victory points because I want to know whether a character survives, whether an old rivalry continues and whether the supposedly useless gunfighter can finally hit something. The miniature has become part of an ongoing story rather than a playing piece that returns to exactly the same starting condition after every game.

I think this reflects the biggest change in my attitude towards wargaming. When I was younger, spectacle was enormously important and I wanted armies, great battles and tables covered with troops. I wanted to recreate Cannae, Waterloo or some enormous imaginary confrontation involving enough tanks to cause an international fuel shortage, and I still appreciate that spectacle enormously.

These days, however, I increasingly want character as well as spectacle. I want a game that can be set up on a club night, played to completion and packed away without requiring an archaeological excavation of the table. I want terrain where individual buildings and fences matter, rules that give me decisions rather than homework, characters who develop histories, campaigns where casualties mean something and games in which a single improbable event can change everything.

Most of all, I want stories.

After all those years of WRG Ancients, DBA, DBMM, Warhammer 40,000 from Rogue Trader through to Tenth Edition and countless other games in between, I have certainly not rejected mass battle gaming. Those games represent an enormous part of my life in the hobby, and I would not exchange the memories for anything. I still love seeing hundreds of figures on a table, admire beautifully painted armies and enjoy the sight of battle lines stretching from one end of the table to the other.

I still occasionally want to command an army.

I simply no longer feel that I need one to have a great wargame.

Perhaps that is the lesson that has taken me several decades, thousands of painted miniatures and an alarming number of rulebooks to learn. The size of the battle has surprisingly little relationship to the size of the story, and ten individually named characters can sometimes produce more memorable incidents in two hours than several hundred anonymous soldiers manage in an entire day.

Sometimes the best wargaming evening requires hundreds of figures. Sometimes it requires ten. On other occasions it requires one supposedly terrifying gunfighter standing six inches from his opponent and needing almost anything on the dice to hit him.

He rolls.

He misses.

Of course he does.

And twenty years from now, if I have not already moved permanently into that great Wargames Holiday Centre in the sky, that is probably the bit I will remember. Assuming, of course, that by then I can remember why I walked into the room in the first place.

Thanks to ChatGPT for assistance with the pics.