Wargaming in Calasparra

Spent a few days this week with an old wargame buddy who has just moved to Spain with his wife on early retirement. They have moved to Calasparra, a small town about three hours drive south of us.

He has built an extension for his wargames room, and has just unpacked his boxes of figures and scenery. The table is not yet set up, though he has started work on it. He is using a scenery mat, so it will be completely different from my table. I did consider using a mat myself, but then decided to stick with painted scenery boards. They are not as eye catching as an expensive map and good professional roads and rivers, but the boards are very practicable and the maintenance is very simple. Mine have had pretty rough handling for more than four years, and are not showing any signs of wear or tear. If they do it will be a simple task to get some more squares cut and paint them up.

This is his first permanent wargames table and he naturally wants to make sure that he gets it right. We plan to get together for a day or two each month, so it will be very interesting to see how the project turns out.

It will be good to have someone else we can have regular games with. Jan and I have good wargames together, but it would be true to say that we are perhaps too comfortable with each other's style of play.

We are trying to get his wife interested in Napoleonic wargaming. The four of us have played one game together, which she said she enjoyed. But I am not sure whether she was just being polite. It would be great if she did develop an interest, but I appreciate only too well that wargaming is not for everyone.

It will be interesting to see how things develop.