Until recently, I had never read any of H. P. Lovecraft’s work. I knew the name, naturally, and had a passing familiarity with Cthulhu, ancient cults, forbidden books and a variety of unpleasant creatures equipped with more tentacles than any respectable animal should require. Like many people, I knew Lovecraft largely through the things that had been built from his ideas rather than through the stories themselves.

Strangely enough, it was the Dracula’s America series of wargaming rules books that finally sent me back towards the original source material. Those books mix Gothic horror, supernatural creatures and nineteenth century adventure into a setting designed for the tabletop, and they reminded me how much modern gaming owes to older horror fiction. Lovecraft is not the direct source for everything found in Dracula’s America, of course, but the books encouraged me to investigate the writers whose monsters, cults and supernatural conspiracies have become such a familiar part of gaming.

I read the Kindl3 Unlimited version available on Amazon.

I therefore approached The Complete Works of H. P. Lovecraft as someone who knew the scenery but had never visited the original location. I recognised the ancient ruins, sinister villages, suspicious locals and unfortunate scholars, but I had not previously encountered them as Lovecraft first presented them.

Reading the complete works was both more interesting and more difficult than I expected.

Lovecraft is also one of those writers who seems to leave very little room for a middle position. There are readers who absolutely love his work and regard every swollen sentence as part of the atmosphere, while others find his writing almost unbearable. His prose, ideas and prejudices make him a deeply polarising figure, and after reading the complete collection I can understand both reactions. At his best, he is original, unsettling and enormously influential. At his worst, he is repetitive, overwritten and difficult to defend.

At his best, Lovecraft is capable of creating an atmosphere that remains genuinely disturbing. His horror does not usually depend upon a monster jumping from behind a curtain and eating somebody. It develops slowly, often through letters, journals, newspaper reports, local rumours and the discoveries of narrators who would have been much happier had they remained at home and taken up gardening.

H. P. Lovecraft

The characters gradually discover that humanity is neither important nor secure. The universe is ancient, enormous and entirely indifferent to whether people survive in it. The creatures are not necessarily evil in the conventional sense because they barely recognise humanity as something worth hating. People are simply in the way, much as insects might be in the way of a road being built.

This remains Lovecraft’s strongest idea. The horror comes from knowledge rather than violence. His characters discover something about the universe, history or their own ancestry and immediately wish they had not. Survival is rarely the same thing as victory. At best, the narrator escapes with enough sanity remaining to write a warning that nobody else will believe.

Stories such as The Call of Cthulhu, The Colour Out of Space, The Dunwich Horror, The Shadow Over Innsmouth and At the Mountains of Madness make it easy to understand why Lovecraft’s reputation has endured. They have memorable settings, powerful ideas and a steadily increasing sense that something is very wrong. The reader is given fragments of information and invited to assemble them, although the finished picture is rarely one that improves anybody’s day.

For anyone who does not feel the need to read every surviving piece, the stories most worth the effort are:

• The Call of Cthulhu
• The Colour Out of Space
• The Shadow Over Innsmouth
• The Dunwich Horror
• At the Mountains of Madness
• The Whisperer in Darkness
• The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
• The Shadow Out of Time
• The Rats in the Walls
• The Music of Erich Zann

That selection contains most of Lovecraft’s strongest ideas and enough ancient horror, suspicious ancestry and doomed scholarship to satisfy anyone without requiring them to read the entire collection.

Unfortunately, reading the complete works also makes Lovecraft’s weaknesses impossible to ignore.

Lovecraft was not consistently brilliant, and a complete collection naturally includes stories, fragments and experiments that would probably receive far less attention had they been written by somebody without his reputation. Some pieces are excellent, several are interesting, and others feel like preliminary attempts at ideas that were handled much better elsewhere.

The plots can also become repetitive. Another educated narrator discovers another ancient document before travelling to another isolated location where the locals are plainly behaving suspiciously. There are hidden tunnels, unpleasant family histories and warnings that are ignored because no character in horror fiction has ever benefited from listening to the person who tells them not to open the locked door.

After reading enough Lovecraft, it becomes advisable to avoid old houses, remote fishing villages, archaeological expeditions and relatives who refuse to discuss the family tree.

His prose can be equally exhausting. Lovecraft was clearly a man who distrusted the idea that one adjective might be sufficient. Buildings are not merely old. They are ancient, decaying, unnatural, oppressive and architecturally offensive to the entire structure of reality.

He also spends a great deal of time describing things as impossible to describe, usually immediately before describing them at considerable length. After several hundred pages, this begins to lose some of its impact. If everything is beyond human understanding, the reader might reasonably wonder how the narrator managed to fill three pages explaining its shape, colour, smell and probable ancestry.

This overwriting does sometimes work. In the strongest stories, the language contributes to a feverish and dreamlike atmosphere. The narrators sound like men struggling to explain something they barely understand, and the excessive descriptions help create a sense of panic and instability.

In the weaker stories, however, it feels as though Lovecraft is standing behind the reader repeatedly announcing that everything is extremely horrible in case the point has been missed.

There are also stories that can be safely avoided unless the reader is determined to see everything Lovecraft wrote. Among the least rewarding are:

• The Street
• The Horror at Red Hook
• The Moon Bog
• The Beast in the Cave
• The Alchemist
• The Tomb
• The Transition of Juan Romero
• The Very Old Folk
• The Festival
• He

Some of these contain interesting ideas or flashes of atmosphere, but most are weakened by repetition, crude characterisation, excessive prose or attitudes that have aged very badly. They are more useful for watching Lovecraft develop as a writer than for providing much pleasure on their own.

There is also no sensible way to discuss Lovecraft without addressing his racism. It is not limited to one unfortunate passage that can be quietly stepped around. Fear of foreigners, immigration, racial mixing and supposed human degeneration appears repeatedly in his work. These attitudes sometimes form part of the basic structure of the horror rather than merely appearing in the background.

His cultists, outsiders and supposedly corrupted communities are often described through prejudices that were Lovecraft’s own. These passages are uncomfortable, and they should be. Literary influence does not require us to pretend that offensive material is harmless simply because the author has been dead for a long time.

Lovecraft was undoubtedly a product of his period, but he was also extreme even by the standards of that period. Recognising the importance of his work does not require excusing everything within it. A reader can admire the imagination behind the stories while remaining critical of the fears and prejudices that helped shape them.

In some respects, reading the complete collection is probably the worst possible introduction to Lovecraft. A carefully selected anthology would provide the strongest stories while avoiding much of the repetition and many of the weaker pieces. The complete works provide everything, including material that demonstrates why editors normally select.

On the other hand, the collection allows the reader to watch Lovecraft’s ideas develop. The recurring themes become clearer, as do the connections between ancient civilisations, forbidden knowledge, inherited corruption and humanity’s insignificance. It also shows that the modern version of the Cthulhu Mythos is often more organised than Lovecraft’s original fiction.

Games and later writers have turned the Mythos into something resembling a catalogue. Creatures are given names, categories, powers and relationships. In wargaming terms, they acquire movement rates, combat values and points costs.

Lovecraft’s own stories are far less tidy. His universe is vague, contradictory and only partly explained. This uncertainty is one of its strengths. The reader is never given a reliable field guide explaining which creature belongs to which faction and what weapon is required to defeat it.

This creates a problem when adapting Lovecraft to the tabletop. Games require rules, measurements and outcomes. A creature that is supposed to exist beyond human understanding must eventually be given a profile and placed on a table. Once an ancient cosmic horror has a points value and a clearly defined saving throw, some of the mystery has inevitably wandered away.

Even so, Lovecraft provides excellent material for gaming. Isolated towns, secret cults, archaeological expeditions, ruined cities, nervous academics and sailors who have seen too much all offer possibilities for scenarios. The most successful games would not necessarily involve defeating the monster. They might instead require players to discover what is happening, prevent a ritual, recover a document or escape before the entire expedition becomes a footnote in somebody else’s investigation.

This is where the influence of games such as Dracula’s America becomes particularly interesting. The rules translate Gothic and supernatural horror into something that can be played, fought over and resolved on the tabletop. Returning to Lovecraft demonstrates how difficult that process can be. The game requires answers, while the fiction works best when the reader is denied them.

Having completed the collection, I cannot claim to have become a devoted Lovecraft enthusiast. There is too much repetition, too much inflated prose and too much objectionable material for me to accept the whole body of work without criticism.

I can, however, understand why the best stories have survived. Lovecraft created images and ideas that have escaped their original setting and spread across fiction, film, roleplaying and wargaming. Most people now encounter his influence long before they encounter his writing.

That was certainly true in my case. The Dracula’s America books encouraged me to go back to the older horror traditions that helped shape modern supernatural gaming. Lovecraft was only part of that tradition, but he was an important part, and reading the original stories has made me look differently at the games that borrowed from them.

The complete works contain moments of genuine brilliance, stretches of frustrating repetition and enough adjectives to supply several ordinary writers for life. It is an uneven, difficult and frequently uncomfortable collection, but it is also the foundation for a remarkable amount of modern horror.

I am glad that I finally read it.

I am equally glad that I have now finished it.

If you’ve been wondering why there haven’t been many book reviews appearing lately, the answer is quite simple. I have been far better at buying and reading books than I have been at actually writing about them. The “to be reviewed” pile has now reached the point where it is beginning to look less like a stack of books and more like a minor geological feature that has toppled over quite a few times already! If left much longer, I suspect it will require its own contour map.

So, over the next few weeks, the blog is going to have quite a few book reviews while I attempt to regain control of the situation. There will be military history, Australian history, frontier conflict, wargaming, memoirs, and probably a few books that have been sitting patiently on the review shelf wondering if I had forgotten they existed. I haven’t. I’ve simply been distracted by reading the next one before finishing the review of the previous one.

As always, these won’t be just star ratings or “I liked it” summaries. I’ll be looking at the quality of the research, the arguments the authors make, how well they support their conclusions, and, of course, whether the books are worth your time and money. With any luck I’ll reduce the backlog before I buy another armful of books… although history suggests that’s about as likely as leaving a bookshop empty handed.

As always thanks to ChatGPT for help with the image.

Not much done today due to running around for an event we have on this weekend.

Was able to base and undercoat the additional Dagon posse blisterpacks I found.

The three that I have already started.

The blister pack with the two extra hybrids and Priest of Dagon

The blister pack with two pistol armed cultists and a rifle armed cultist

Now nine instead of three to go!

With the Dagon cult well underway, my attention has turned to the second gang for my growing Dracula’s America collection, the Dark Confederacy. Nothing has reached the painting table yet, but the planning is in full swing, and this is often where the character of a force really begins to emerge.

Rather than building the gang from a single range, I am planning to combine figures from several collections to create something that feels unique. The core will come from the official Dark Confederacy miniatures, but they will be joined by Quantrill’s Raiders from North star Miniatures. The mix should produce a force that looks less like a uniform military unit and more like a band of cursed veterans, outlaws, and restless dead who have gathered beneath the same tattered banner.

Among the characters waiting to join the gang are a sinister Stitch Doctor, whose gruesome talents ensure that even death is not always permanent, and a grim Gravedigger, a figure who seems perfectly suited to a world where the dead rarely stay buried. Both add plenty of narrative flavour and reinforce the Gothic horror that sits at the heart of the Dark Confederacy.

There are also two more additional blister packs providing me with heaps of option/

Visually, I am aiming for faded Confederate greys, worn leather, rusted weapons, and equipment that has seen decades of hard use. The basing will contrast with my Dagon cult, replacing swamp mud with dry earth, dead grass, broken fencing, scattered gravestones, and abandoned homesteads. I want the gang to look as though it has marched straight out of forgotten battlefields and neglected churchyards, carrying the bitterness of the Civil War into the supernatural frontier.

One of the great strengths of Dracula’s America is that every faction tells a different story. The Dagon cult represents ancient cosmic horror lurking beneath the swamps, while the Dark Confederacy embodies a nation haunted by its own past, where old loyalties, old hatreds, and old ghosts refuse to die.

For now the project remains firmly in the planning stage. The figures are assembled, ideas are coming together, and the gang is beginning to take shape on paper. Before long, these undead veterans and their macabre companions will be riding out across the Weird West, where every lonely crossroads and abandoned cemetery offers another opportunity for darkness to rise once more.

The real centrepiece, however, will be the Pale Rider. Cloaked in dark, weathered clothing and mounted on a ghostly horse, he is the very image of death riding the frontier. Whether viewed as a supernatural gunslinger, an immortal Confederate officer, or one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the Pale Rider radiates quiet menace rather than theatrical horror. He does not need to shout or threaten. His presence alone suggests that someone’s final reckoning has arrived. I am looking forward to painting him in muted tones, with an emphasis on cold greys, faded black leather, and a spectral mount that will stand apart from the rest of the gang while still tying into the army’s sombre palette.

Ever thought about writing your own tabletop wargame rules?

I’ll be at Victorious 2026 this year, and one of the books I’ll have available in the Indie Games Hall is A Wargamer’s Guide to Writing Rules.

At 378 pages, it is a practical handbook written for gamers who have ideas but are not always sure how to turn them into a playable and enjoyable set of rules. Rather than focusing on a single period or scale, the book explores the principles that underpin good game design and shows how to apply them to your own projects.

The guide covers everything from identifying what you want your rules to achieve, through movement, combat, morale, command systems, scenario design, campaign systems, probability, playtesting, balancing mechanics, writing clearly, and presenting a finished set of rules that other people will actually enjoy reading and playing. Whether you are creating your first rule set or refining one you have been working on for years, there is something here to help.

To celebrate Victorious, the book will be available for:

RRP: AU$32.94
Victorious Price: AU$20.00

That’s a saving of almost 40%. Email me at guru@gurupig.com to reserve your copies now.

If you’ve ever found yourself saying, “I’ve got an idea for a set of rules,” this book was written for you.

For information about Victorious 2026 and to purchase tickets, visit: https://nwa.org.au/victorius26/

I look forward to catching up with old friends, meeting new gamers, and talking all things history, miniatures, and game design.

Progress continues on my Dagon posse, and this session saw the Priest of Dagon completed alongside three pistol armed cultists and a rifle armed cultist. I also finished the basing, giving the whole group the appearance of emerging from a forgotten swamp rather than standing on gaming bases. Mud, stagnant pools, reeds, and patches of decaying vegetation have brought the warband together into a force that already has plenty of character, although there is still more to come.

There are places where the marsh never truly sleeps. The locals avoid them after dark, speaking only in whispers of strange lights over the water and voices carried across the reeds on nights when the mist hangs low. Fishermen who stray too close sometimes vanish without a trace, while those fortunate enough to return refuse to speak of what they found beneath the black water.

At the centre of the growing cult stands the Priest of Dagon. He is not simply a leader but a preacher of ancient truths, proclaiming that mankind’s dominion over the land is only temporary. His followers believe that the sea remembers everything, and that beneath the quiet surface an ancient power waits patiently for the faithful to prepare the way.

The three pistol armed cultists form the priest’s closest followers, fanatics who protect him with unquestioning devotion. The rifleman provides a watchful eye from the edge of the swamp, his silhouette barely visible through the reeds as he guards the approaches to whatever forgotten shrine lies hidden beyond the marsh.

The swamp basing has probably been my favourite part of the project so far because it helps tell the story before a single die is rolled. The dark earth, wet ground, reeds, and murky pools suggest a landscape that is slowly surrendering itself to the sea. It feels like the sort of place where every ripple on the water deserves a second look, and where every patch of mist might conceal something that should never have left the depths.

The posse is not quite complete. Still to join the cult are the mysterious Emissary of Dagon, a scaly hybrid whose humanity has almost disappeared beneath the marks of the Deep Ones, and a tentacled hybrid whose very appearance hints that the transformation is far more advanced than anyone would willingly imagine. Together they should give the force an even stronger sense of creeping corruption and cosmic horror.

With those final three figures still on the painting bench, the congregation is steadily growing. Soon the Priest of Dagon will no longer be preaching to a handful of devoted followers but to a gathering that marks the beginning of something far older and far more dangerous than the unsuspecting world above the swamp could ever understand.

The swamp bases

Also Crooked dice have some excellent figures to fit in.

3 Sets of Townsfolk, cultists, Deep Ones, a priest, and Dagon himself! I am sorely tempted! I am still hunting for a figure that might suit Robert Olmstead, the narrator of The Shadow Over Innsmouth. It is remarked that his eyes have the same strange quality seen in all descendants of Obed Marsh. In the story’s final pages, he learns he himself is the great-great-grandson of Obed Marsh and a Deep One, and in time will become one of the amphibious monsters he witnessed in Innsmouth.

Maybe this one from Crooked dice.

I’m looking forward to returning to Victorious 2026, one of Australia’s premier historical tabletop wargaming conventions. If you’re attending, be sure to drop by the Indie Games Hall and say hello.

To celebrate the event, all five of my Australian Frontier Wars books and rulesets will be available for just AU$80.00 for the complete collection.

Recommended Retail Price: AU$108.26
Victorious Special: AU$80.00

That’s a saving of more than 25% and a great opportunity to pick up the complete Australian Frontier Wars series in one bundle. Email me at guru@gurupig.com to reserve your copies now.

Whether you’re interested in Australian military history, the Frontier Wars, or historical tabletop gaming, I’d love to have a chat and show you what’s new.

For more information about Victorious and to purchase tickets, visit: Victorious 2026. The convention brings together historical, fantasy and science fiction tabletop gamers from across Australia.

I hope to see you there!

Some military histories seek to explain campaigns. Others catalogue operations, equipment, or command decisions. The finest, however, remind us that wars are ultimately fought by individuals whose courage, endurance, and quiet professionalism give meaning to events that might otherwise be reduced to maps and statistics. Mark Baker’s Buckham’s Bombers belongs firmly in this latter category. It is a work that combines meticulous historical research with the instincts of a gifted storyteller, producing a narrative that is at once intimate and expansive. Through the experiences of Flight Lieutenant Bruce Buckham and the men who flew with him, Baker illuminates not only the hazardous world of RAF Bomber Command but also the character of a generation of Australians whose contribution to the air war has too often been overshadowed by more familiar campaigns.

From its opening pages, the book establishes that this is not merely the biography of a decorated airman. It is the story of a crew, for no man flew a Lancaster alone. Seven men entered the aircraft before each operation, each carrying responsibilities that could not be surrendered or shared once the wheels left the runway. Pilot, navigator, bomb aimer, wireless operator, flight engineer, and air gunners formed a single fighting organism whose survival depended upon discipline, competence, and absolute trust. Baker understands this implicitly, and his narrative never allows the reader to forget that every successful mission represented a collective achievement. The bond between these men, strengthened by shared danger and sustained by humour that often masked exhaustion and fear, forms the emotional heart of the book.

Bruce Buckham emerges not as the conventional wartime hero of popular mythology but as something altogether more convincing. Baker presents him as an intelligent, modest, and quietly determined Australian whose greatest qualities lay not in flamboyance but in consistency. There is no need to embellish his achievements because the record itself is remarkable. His leadership is measured in calm decisions taken under extraordinary pressure, in the confidence he inspired in those around him, and in the professionalism that enabled his crew to survive missions from which many others failed to return. The absence of self promotion in Buckham’s own recollections only strengthens the reader’s admiration, allowing his character to emerge naturally through his actions rather than through heroic rhetoric.

One of the book’s enduring strengths lies in the quality of its research. Baker spent many years recording Buckham’s memories while supporting those recollections with operational record books, squadron documents, official reports, and a wide range of archival material. This patient scholarship gives the narrative considerable authority. More importantly, it enables Baker to move confidently between the personal and the operational without sacrificing either historical accuracy or narrative momentum. Individual memories are anchored within the documentary record, while official reports acquire warmth and humanity through the voices of those who actually lived the events they describe.

The operational chapters are among the finest in the book. Baker possesses the rare ability to explain the complexities of aerial warfare without allowing technical detail to overwhelm the narrative. Navigation across occupied Europe, the constant battle against weather, the demands of maintaining formation in darkness, the deadly effectiveness of German night fighters, and the ever present menace of anti aircraft fire are all described with admirable clarity. The Lancaster itself is never romanticised. It becomes what it truly was, an extraordinarily capable machine carrying seven vulnerable men into one of the most dangerous combat environments of the Second World War. Baker reminds the reader that every mission demanded not moments of courage but hours of sustained concentration during which the smallest error could prove fatal.

Underlying the narrative is a profound appreciation of the psychological burden carried by Bomber Command crews. Unlike many forms of combat, bombing operations required men to confront danger repeatedly with little opportunity to influence the larger course of events. They could fly perfectly and still fail to return through mechanical failure, weather, enemy action, or simple chance. Baker captures this relentless uncertainty with remarkable restraint. He does not rely upon melodrama because none is required. The knowledge that every take off might be a final departure hangs over the narrative with quiet persistence, lending even routine preparations an atmosphere of subdued tension. The cumulative effect is to reveal not only physical courage but also the extraordinary emotional resilience demanded of young men who accepted such risks as part of their daily existence.

The final sections dealing with the destruction of the German battleship Tirpitz provide the narrative with both historical significance and dramatic resolution. Few warships exercised such disproportionate influence upon Allied strategy. Sheltered within the Norwegian fjords and protected by formidable natural and artificial defences, Tirpitz tied down Allied naval resources for years and became a symbol of German naval power out of all proportion to the number of occasions on which she actually entered combat. Baker patiently traces the succession of unsuccessful attempts to destroy the battleship before bringing Buckham and his crew into the story’s climax. By this stage the reader fully understands why the operation mattered and appreciates the immense difficulties confronting those tasked with carrying it out. The successful attacks therefore possess a satisfying sense of inevitability born not of certainty but of perseverance. Victory is achieved because countless airmen continued to fly missions despite repeated failure, and because crews such as Buckham’s possessed the skill and determination required when the decisive opportunity finally arrived.

Perhaps the book’s greatest achievement is that it refuses to separate individual experience from historical context. Baker understands that the strategic bombing campaign was neither an abstraction nor simply a series of operational orders issued from distant headquarters. It was lived one sortie at a time by young men whose world contracted to the interior of a bomber aircraft suspended in darkness over hostile territory. At the same time, he never loses sight of the broader campaign. The Battle of Berlin, preparations for the invasion of Normandy, the campaign against German industry, and the hunt for Tirpitz all appear not as disconnected episodes but as interconnected chapters in a vast struggle whose outcome depended upon thousands of individual acts of endurance. In doing so, Baker achieves the difficult balance that distinguishes the finest military history, allowing the strategic and the personal to illuminate one another rather than compete for the reader’s attention.

His prose contributes greatly to this success. Baker writes with clarity, confidence, and admirable economy. There is an understated quality to the narrative that perfectly suits its subject. Heroism is never proclaimed because it reveals itself naturally through the actions of ordinary men confronted by extraordinary circumstances. Moments of humour sit comfortably beside episodes of tragedy because that is how veterans themselves so often remembered the war. Conversations are reproduced with authenticity, operational detail is woven seamlessly into the story, and the narrative moves forward with the steady assurance of an author who knows both his subject and his audience.

If the book invites one criticism, it is only that readers interested in the continuing historiographical debates surrounding the effectiveness and morality of the strategic bombing offensive may wish for greater engagement with those wider questions. Baker touches upon them only lightly, choosing instead to concentrate upon the lived experience of those who carried out the campaign. Yet this is less a weakness than a conscious decision. Buckham’s Bombers is not intended to resolve every debate surrounding Bomber Command. Its purpose is to restore the humanity that can too easily disappear beneath arguments over policy, tonnage, and statistics, and in that purpose it succeeds admirably.

In recent decades Australian military history has increasingly sought to recover the stories of individuals whose service has been overshadowed by larger narratives. Buckham’s Bombers stands comfortably within that tradition while setting a standard that many similar works would do well to emulate. It is founded upon careful research, written with sensitivity and restraint, and driven by a genuine respect for the men whose experiences it records. More than simply recounting the career of one distinguished airman, Baker offers a meditation on courage, comradeship, duty, and survival in one of the most demanding theatres of the Second World War.

When the final page is turned, what lingers is not the destruction of a battleship or the success of a bombing operation, significant though those events undoubtedly were. Instead, it is the image of a crew climbing once more into the familiar confines of a Lancaster, checking instruments almost by routine, exchanging the quiet banter that concealed apprehension, and disappearing into the darkness with no certainty of return. It is that profoundly human perspective that elevates Buckham’s Bombers beyond conventional operational history. Mark Baker has written not simply an account of air operations over Europe but a fitting memorial to the Australians who flew them, and in doing so has produced one of the most compelling works on the Australian experience of Bomber Command to appear in recent years.

An excellent read.

There are many memoirs of Australian soldiers who served during the Second World War, but relatively few combine frontline combat, imprisonment, escape, and survival into a single compelling narrative. Dangerous Days: A Digger’s Great Escape by Ernest Brough is one such book. It is both an adventure story and a deeply personal account of an ordinary Australian whose determination and resilience carried him through some of the most difficult experiences imaginable.

Ernest Brough enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force as a young Victorian and served with distinction in the North African campaign. He experienced the brutal fighting that characterised the desert war, including the long siege of Tobruk and the battles that ultimately turned the tide against the Axis forces. Like so many Australian soldiers, he endured relentless heat, dust, shortages of water and supplies, and the constant danger of artillery fire and aerial attack. Brough’s descriptions of frontline service are vivid without becoming melodramatic. His writing conveys the uncertainty and exhaustion of campaigning in the desert while highlighting the quiet professionalism and humour that sustained Australian soldiers under extreme pressure.

The memoir takes a dramatic turn following his capture by German forces. Rather than allowing captivity to define the remainder of the story, Brough presents prisoner of war life as another test of endurance. He writes candidly about hunger, boredom, uncertainty, and the psychological strain of imprisonment. His observations remind the reader that captivity was not simply a pause in military service but a continuing battle against despair and the gradual erosion of hope.

The centrepiece of the book is, of course, the escape that gives the memoir its subtitle. Escaping from a prisoner of war camp was never simply a matter of climbing a fence. It required planning, patience, courage, and an extraordinary willingness to accept enormous risks. Brough and his companions travelled through occupied Europe with few resources beyond their determination. They relied on improvised navigation, avoided German patrols, crossed difficult terrain, and depended on the kindness and bravery of civilians and resistance fighters who risked their own lives to assist escaped prisoners.

What makes these chapters particularly effective is that Brough never presents himself as a fearless adventurer. He readily acknowledges uncertainty, fear, and moments when success seemed almost impossible. This honesty gives the narrative considerable credibility. The reader comes away with the impression not of an action hero but of an ordinary Australian soldier whose perseverance proved stronger than his circumstances.

Brough’s writing style is direct, uncomplicated, and refreshingly modest. There is little embellishment or unnecessary drama. Instead, he allows events to speak for themselves, a quality common to many of the finest Australian wartime memoirs. His understated prose often makes the most dramatic episodes even more powerful because they are presented without exaggeration. The humour that occasionally emerges, particularly in interactions with fellow prisoners and soldiers, also reflects the distinctly Australian character of the narrative and provides welcome relief from the constant tension.

Beyond the excitement of the escape itself, Dangerous Days offers valuable historical insights into the experiences of Australian prisoners of war in Europe. It illustrates the organisation of German prison camps, the ingenuity required to prepare an escape, the importance of resistance networks, and the uncertain relationship between escaped Allied servicemen and the civilian populations who sheltered them. For historians, the memoir provides a useful firsthand perspective that complements official histories and archival records. For general readers, it offers an engaging account that never loses sight of the human dimension of war.

One of the book’s greatest strengths is its emphasis on mateship. Throughout the memoir, survival depends not upon individual heroics but upon cooperation, trust, and shared sacrifice. Brough repeatedly acknowledges the contribution of others, reflecting a humility that enhances rather than diminishes his own achievements. This focus on collective effort captures an important aspect of the Australian military tradition and explains why the memoir continues to resonate with readers decades after its first publication.

The memoir also serves as a reminder that the effects of war did not end with liberation or victory. Although the escape concludes successfully, the physical and emotional consequences of prolonged combat and captivity linger beneath the surface of Brough’s narrative. His experiences reflect the resilience of a generation whose hardships often remained understated long after the war had ended.

For readers interested in Australian military history, prisoner of war experiences, or stories of courage under adversity, Dangerous Days: A Digger’s Great Escape is an outstanding memoir. It combines historical significance with an engaging narrative and offers a deeply authentic account of endurance, resourcefulness, and survival. More than an exciting escape story, it is a testament to the character of ordinary Australian soldiers who faced extraordinary circumstances with quiet determination and remarkable courage.

Highly recommended for readers of Australian military history, Second World War memoirs, and anyone interested in true stories of endurance, escape, and survival.

Wargaming communities are built around knowledge, but not all knowledge at the table is equal. A club night, campaign weekend, convention game, or online rules discussion brings together many kinds of expertise: tactical experience, historical reading, rules familiarity, painting skill, probability, scenario design, modelling practice, and social judgement. These skills overlap, but they are not the same. The best figure painter in the room may not be the strongest tactician, the loudest rules lawyer may not understand the design purpose of the rules, and the player with the largest collection may not possess the clearest historical judgement. This makes tabletop wargaming especially vulnerable to misplaced confidence, because the hobby rewards strong opinion while often lacking formal ways to test whether that opinion is sound.

The problem is commonly described as the Dunning Kruger effect, although the phrase is often misused as a general insult for stupidity. In its more precise form, the effect refers to a pattern in which people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their own ability because they lack the knowledge required to recognise the limits of their performance.¹ The issue is not ignorance alone. It is ignorance combined with confidence. This combination can be disruptive in any field, but it becomes particularly visible in wargaming because the game table invites players to make decisions, explain outcomes, criticise rules, correct others, and present themselves as authorities.

Kruger and Dunning’s original study argued that poor performers suffer from a “double burden”: they perform badly, and the same lack of competence that produces poor performance also prevents them from recognising the poor quality of that performance.² David Dunning and his colleagues later developed this point by arguing that the skills needed to produce correct responses are often closely related to the skills needed to recognise correct responses.³ In wargaming terms, the player who does not understand command friction may not realise why a command rule is working as intended. The player who has never designed a balanced scenario may not recognise why a simple points total cannot solve an asymmetric historical battle. The player who has not studied probability may mistake an unlikely die roll for proof that the system is broken.

Wargaming gives this pattern an unusually rich field in which to operate because the hobby is both technical and interpretive. A player may need to understand written rules, distances, timing, probabilities, army composition, historical organisation, terrain effects, unit capabilities, morale systems, and the intentions of the scenario designer. At the same time, the player must read the social situation at the table, deciding when to press an argument, when to accept a ruling, when to offer advice, and when the pleasure of the game is more important than proving a point. Gary Alan Fine’s study of role playing games described gaming groups as social worlds, sustained by shared understandings and repeated interaction.⁴ Wargaming clubs are similar social worlds, but they add the weight of material display, tactical judgement, historical argument, and public performance.

The Dunning Kruger problem often appears first in rules discussion. A player reads a rule once, applies it badly, loses a game, and then announces that the rules are flawed. Sometimes the criticism is justified, because rules can certainly be badly written, badly edited, poorly tested, or internally contradictory. Yet sometimes the player has not understood the design logic. A morale rule may seem too severe if the player assumes the game is measuring physical casualties, but it may make sense if the rule is measuring cohesion, willingness to advance, and the psychological effect of fire. An activation system may appear unfair if the player expects perfect control over every unit, but it may be central to a design that seeks to represent uncertainty and lost opportunity. A command radius may feel artificial until the player recognises that the rule is trying to prevent the godlike control that tabletop commanders otherwise possess.

This is particularly important in historical wargaming, where players often treat themselves as interpreters of the past. Philip Sabin has argued that simulation games can help students and researchers understand conflict by forcing them to confront decision making under uncertainty rather than merely explaining events after the fact.⁵ That strength is also a danger. A player may believe that reading about a battle is the same as understanding how to model it. Another may know uniform details while misunderstanding doctrine, logistics, training, morale, command culture, or the political purpose of the campaign. Historical knowledge at the wargames table is therefore uneven. It may be deep in one area and shallow in another. The Dunning Kruger effect becomes damaging when narrow knowledge is mistaken for general authority.

One common form of this misplaced authority is the “fact collector” problem. The fact collector knows weapon ranges, armour thicknesses, unit names, battlefield dates, and the correct colour of facings, but may have little understanding of why armies behaved as they did. This does not make factual knowledge unimportant. Accuracy matters, and careful research can enrich a game enormously. The problem arises when isolated facts are used to overrule broader interpretation. A player who knows the theoretical range of a rifle may insist that troops should fire effectively across the whole table, while ignoring smoke, stress, terrain, poor visibility, command control, ammunition limits, and the difficulty of battlefield identification. A player who knows that cavalry could move quickly may miss the wider tactical problem of when mounted troops could move safely, when they could exploit disorder, and when they were vulnerable to fire.

The issue also appears in tactical self assessment. Newer players often explain defeat through bad dice, bad balance, or an overpowered opposing army, while stronger players are more likely to examine deployment, timing, movement, objective choice, concentration of force, reserve use, and risk management. This does not mean experienced players are immune to excuse making. Veterans can be just as defensive as beginners, and long experience can harden into arrogance. Yet tactical competence usually involves seeing decision chains rather than isolated moments. The beginner sees the failed morale test. The better player sees the exposed flank, unsupported advance, poor timing, and unnecessary risk that made the morale test decisive.

This is where overconfidence research beyond the original Dunning Kruger article becomes useful. Moore and Healy distinguish between different forms of overconfidence: overestimation of one’s actual performance, overplacement of oneself relative to others, and overprecision in one’s beliefs.⁶ All three appear in wargaming communities. The player who believes they played better than they did is overestimating. The player who assumes they are superior to most opponents after limited experience is overplacing. The player who insists that a unit, rule, army, or tactic is definitely broken after two games is displaying overprecision. These distinctions matter because each form requires a different response. A player who misreads their own performance needs feedback. A player who ranks themselves too highly needs stronger opposition. A player who is too certain needs evidence, repetition, and exposure to alternative interpretations.

Confirmation bias further deepens the problem. Raymond Nickerson defines confirmation bias as the tendency to seek or interpret evidence in ways that favour existing beliefs, expectations, or hypotheses.⁷ Wargamers do this constantly. A player who believes artillery is too powerful remembers every devastating barrage and forgets every game in which the guns were late, ineffective, badly placed, or irrelevant to the objective. A player who believes cavalry is useless remembers every failed charge and forgets every moment when cavalry shaped the enemy’s movement by threat alone. A player who dislikes a ruleset notices every awkward result while overlooking every occasion on which the design produced exactly the intended uncertainty. The table becomes an evidence machine, but the player collects only the evidence that confirms what they already think.

Probability is another area where confidence often exceeds understanding. Wargamers speak frequently about odds, averages, modifiers, and likely outcomes, but many rely more heavily on memory than mathematics. Extreme events are remembered because they are dramatic. Ordinary probabilities disappear because they are ordinary. A player may claim that a rule is absurd because a unit failed three morale tests in a row, even though unlikely sequences are inevitable across enough games. Another may insist that a weapon “never hits” because several misses occurred at a memorable point in a campaign. In reality, random systems produce clusters, streaks, and anomalies, and a small number of emotionally charged examples is a poor basis for design judgement.

There is a social dimension to this as well. Pierre Bourdieu’s idea of cultural capital helps explain why some forms of knowledge carry status within hobby communities.⁸ In wargaming, authority may attach to age, collection size, tournament record, painting awards, historical reading, rules mastery, or simply length of membership in a club. These forms of capital are not meaningless. A long established player may indeed have valuable experience. A tournament player may understand competitive balance. A historical researcher may see errors others miss. Yet cultural capital can also protect overconfidence. If a club has always treated one player as the authority on a period, that player may continue to be believed even when they are wrong. If a tournament winner speaks on historical design, others may mistake competitive success for broad expertise. If an older member dismisses a newcomer’s correction, seniority becomes a substitute for evidence.

Commercial gaming can intensify this problem because army choice, list building, faction loyalty, and online commentary all become part of identity. Carter, Gibbs, and Harrop’s study of Warhammer 40,000 army construction showed that much of the game occurs before the battle itself, through collecting, modelling, preparation, list design, and engagement with the wider hobby culture.⁹ Once a player has invested money, time, emotion, and identity in a faction or style of play, criticism of that army or rule system can feel personal. Confidence then becomes defensive. The player is not merely arguing that a rule is fair. They are defending their purchases, their taste, their preparation, and their status within the community.

Online spaces magnify the Dunning Kruger problem because they reward speed and certainty more often than caution and method. A confident claim that a game is broken, a faction is unbeatable, a historical interpretation is obvious, or a rule is mathematically absurd can travel further than a careful explanation. Battle reports, tier lists, short videos, and forum arguments often remove the local context that makes a result meaningful. Was the table too open? Were the objectives poorly designed? Did one player forget a rule? Was the army list suited to the scenario? Did unusual dice distort the outcome? Without this context, one game becomes evidence, and repeated retelling turns it into doctrine.

Artificial intelligence now adds another layer to this problem. AI tools can help wargamers draft scenarios, calculate probabilities, summarise historical material, write campaign notes, and generate playtest questions. Used carefully, they can be valuable assistants. Used carelessly, they can produce confident nonsense. The danger is not only that an AI system may be wrong, but that a player may accept its output because it looks organised, authoritative, and complete. Recent research on human reliance on AI has examined how self assessment and overconfidence shape whether users rely appropriately on AI systems.¹⁰ For wargaming communities, the lesson is straightforward: AI can assist judgement, but it cannot replace tested knowledge, play experience, historical checking, and common sense.

The Dunning Kruger effect also interacts with the culture of house rules. House ruling is one of the great pleasures of wargaming. It allows groups to adapt games to local taste, historical interest, campaign needs, or neglected periods. Many excellent systems have grown out of dissatisfaction with existing rules. Yet premature house ruling is often a symptom of overconfidence. A player who does not yet understand a ruleset may begin altering it after a single game, removing friction, weakening morale, increasing movement, adding special rules, or changing combat results without recognising the consequences. The result may be a worse game, not because house rules are bad, but because the player has changed the machinery before understanding how it works.

Scenario design shows the same pattern. A confident but inexperienced designer may believe that equal points produce a fair game, that historical forces automatically produce historical interest, or that adding more special rules creates more realism. In practice, good scenarios depend on objectives, time pressure, terrain, force asymmetry, information, reserves, morale, and victory conditions. A small imbalance may create drama. A perfect points match may create boredom. A historically accurate force may need carefully written objectives to avoid becoming a simple massacre. Good scenario design therefore requires humility because the designer must ask not only whether the forces are correct, but whether the players will face meaningful decisions.

The community cost of misplaced confidence can be high. A player who is inexperienced can usually be taught. A player who is inexperienced and certain is much harder to help. They may reject advice, dominate conversation, correct others incorrectly, challenge umpires, derail campaign planning, or insist that every defeat proves a flaw in the rules. Over time, this can damage the generosity of a club. Experienced players stop offering advice because it is ignored. New players receive bad guidance from the loudest voice in the room. Rules discussions become performances of certainty rather than attempts to understand the game. The table slows down, not because the rules are too complex, but because confidence has become detached from competence.

The opposite problem also exists. Some genuinely competent players underestimate their ability, especially when they compare their own uncertainty with the apparent confidence of others. This is important because the popular version of the Dunning Kruger effect often imagines a simple world in which fools are confident and experts are humble. Reality is more complicated. Moore and Healy’s distinction between forms of overconfidence helps here, because confidence varies according to the task, the comparison group, and the kind of judgement being made.¹¹ A thoughtful player may be cautious because they understand complexity, while a shallow player may be certain because they do not. A community that rewards certainty too strongly may therefore silence some of its best thinkers.

The answer is not to suppress argument. Wargaming would be poorer without argument, theory, enthusiasm, after action debate, and strong views about rules and history. The answer is to connect confidence to evidence. Clubs can do this by encouraging post game discussion that begins with decisions rather than excuses. Campaign groups can record outcomes over time so balance claims are tested against patterns rather than memories. Scenario designers can ask players what choices felt meaningful rather than merely who won. Umpires can distinguish between genuine ambiguity and disappointment. Experienced members can model uncertainty by saying, “I may be wrong, but this is how I understand the rule,” which invites correction without surrendering authority.

Friendly rigour is the best community response. A club should welcome enthusiasm, but test claims. It should encourage newcomers, but not allow confident misunderstanding to become doctrine. It should respect veterans, but not treat seniority as proof. It should value tournament experience, but not mistake it for historical expertise. It should use AI tools, online commentary, and published reviews, but not accept them without checking. The important questions are simple: How do we know? Have we tested it? Does the rule actually say that? Did the scenario create the result? Is this a repeated pattern or one memorable game? Are we criticising the design, or objecting to losing?

In this sense, the Dunning Kruger effect is not merely an individual flaw. It is a community management problem. Every gaming group creates incentives for how knowledge is displayed and rewarded. If the loudest player gains authority, volume becomes expertise. If the most confident player is always followed, certainty becomes evidence. If the best painter is treated as the best historian, skill in one area becomes false authority in another. If online opinion is repeated without testing, popularity becomes proof. A healthy wargaming community resists these shortcuts by making room for correction, reflection, experiment, and humility.

The deeper issue is the politics of expertise. Who gets believed at the table? Who gets corrected? Who is allowed to be wrong? Who is encouraged to learn? Who is dismissed before speaking? These questions shape the life of a club as surely as rules, armies, and terrain. Misplaced confidence can damage games, but well managed uncertainty can strengthen them. A good wargaming community does not require everyone to be an expert. It requires players to know that expertise is partial, earned, and always open to testing. When players learn to distrust easy certainty, the games become better, the history becomes richer, the rules are read more carefully, and the community becomes less dependent on whoever speaks first, loudest, or longest.

Footnotes

1. Justin Kruger and David Dunning, “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self Assessments,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77, no. 6 (1999): 1121–1134.
2. Kruger and Dunning, “Unskilled and Unaware of It,” 1121–1134.
3. David Dunning, Kerri Johnson, Joyce Ehrlinger, and Justin Kruger, “Why People Fail to Recognize Their Own Incompetence,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 12, no. 3 (2003): 83–87.
4. Gary Alan Fine, Shared Fantasy: Role Playing Games as Social Worlds (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 1–16.
5. Philip Sabin, Simulating War: Studying Conflict through Simulation Games (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012), 1–18.
6. Don A. Moore and Paul J. Healy, “The Trouble with Overconfidence,” Psychological Review 115, no. 2 (2008): 502–517.
7. Raymond S. Nickerson, “Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises,” Review of General Psychology 2, no. 2 (1998): 175–220.
8. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 1–7.
9. Marcus Carter, Martin Gibbs, and Mitchell Harrop, “Drafting an Army: The Playful Pastime of Warhammer 40,000,” Games and Culture 9, no. 2 (2014): 122–147.
10. Gaole He, Lucie Kuiper, and Ujwal Gadiraju, “Knowing About Knowing: An Illusion of Human Competence Can Hinder Appropriate Reliance on AI Systems,” arXiv, 2023.
11. Moore and Healy, “The Trouble with Overconfidence,” 502–517.
12. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), 199–208.
13. Thomas Gilovich, How We Know What Isn’t So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life (New York: Free Press, 1991), 29–48.
14. Philip E. Tetlock, Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 1–20.
15. Donald Featherstone, War Games: Battles and Manoeuvres with Model Soldiers (London: Stanley Paul, 1962), 9–24.
16. Tony Bath, Setting Up a Wargames Campaign (Worthing: Wargames Research Group, 1973), 3–18.