My maneuvers within the wargame circle community never earned me the Grognard badge. Still "A Farewell to Hexes" got me a bit misty, even though my favorite "wargame," Supremacy, was a bit more abstract than the detail rich Avalon Hill and SPI products, even if you include the expansion sets that allowed for varying degrees of technology sophistication between superpowers' military capabilities.

However, I think Costikyan's got too small a counter tray in his wargame geneaology. In beginning his history of wargames with TACTICS in 1958, he's ignoring a broader genealogy (although one that I think puts wargaming into closer relationship to pencil, paper, and dice role playing than you yourself are probably comfortable, Gygax's Chainmail being the fulcrum between the two genres, with an interesting return to that fulcrum moment with FASA's Battletech. Today's D&D 3.5 assumes some sort of table top modelling going on during combat, in fact I hear the rules require it.) going back to H.G. Wells's Little Wars pamphlet, and probably reaching up to at X-Com and Command and Conquer.

But yes, cardboard counters, both square and hexagonal, undoubtedly "hold place" so to speak in my intellectual development as well.

Very nice entry, Matt. I was "only" a D&D player for a couple of years. The wargames you describe, which sound fascinating, were not even on my radar.

My dad, however, played "real" wargames as part of his 30-year career in the army. I should ask him about it.

While my brother was more into wargames than I, I do have a great fondness for the hexgrid terrain maps.

My roommate for 2 years of college had what I thought of as a dream job, putting on long hours writing and designing for Iron Crown Enterprises, a fantasy role-playing board game company, which owned the rights to Middle Earth games. It was based in Charlotesville, Va. Wikipedia says it went bankrupt in 2000.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Crown_Enterprises

At 52, I am proud to be an adult grognard, having moved from the hexgrid of my first board wargame (AH"s Gettysburg, received as a 12th birthday present from my father) to the relative ease of letting a CPU take care of all those burdensome, time consuming administrative chores.

I had the pleasure of a "live" opponent in my best friend for a few years, but by sophmore year I became more interested in sports and game complexity no longer allowed finishing a complete game in an afternoon. But, I still played solo and kept the gameboard up for weeks at a time.

When I went to college in 1970, wargaming stopped completely. But in 1983, a co-worker introduced me to wargaming on a Commodore 64 and I eargerly returned to a pleasure of youth.

Now, not only can the computer take care of the 'details", but play by e-mail allows me to have a live opponent. Some yars ago, I played Pacific War e-mail against a history Ph.D student at Johns Hopkins. By the time the game ended 4 years later(!), he had his degree, was teaching in Oregon, and had become a father. I never met him, but we had an interesting online friendship!

Today, I have a few dozen "grognard" wargames and have just bought Matrix Games' "Uncommon Valor", the game Gary Grigsby wanted Pacific War to be but which the technology didn't allow at the time. I find the 61-page (8 1/2" x 11" pages) manual surprisingly brief (where are all the charts?) and am positively salivating at fighting a portion of the Pacific War in 12-hour turns!

I do not apologize for hours spent on a form of "entertainment" which requires me to use analytical skills to solve a problem involving numerous variables, not all of which can be calculated. I don't think I'd be better off doing what the majority of the population apparently does...watch "reality" TV shows!

Can't disagree with that last point, Steve. Thanks for your comments.