How Often Do You Wargame

This question was asked on TMP this week, and I was quite surprised to find that most answered once a week, many once every two weeks and a few once a month or less.

For the past six years all of our wargames have been provided by our PBEM campaign.    There are five campaign areas, so there is always at least one battle waiting to be wargamed, and often more than one.

We have a permanent wargames room and there is always a wargame set up.  Each wargame lasts a maximum of 12 moves, and we tend to have two or three moves at least four or five times a week.

So my answer would be four or five times a week.  I assume that the question meant how often do you move figures around the table, rather than how often do you complete a wargame.

I had always thought that this was not really unusual, particularly amongst those wargamers no longer in full time employment.   So I was quite surprised that not one single answer was more than once a week.

It may, of course, be that many long-time wargamers do not bother to post on TMP.   Indeed it may well be that only a small proportion of the members of TMP bother to post.   Certainly the same user names crop up time after time.   And the “first time” type questions, such as “what rules should I use”, seem to attract the most replies.

It may be that reading such forum as TMP may in fact give a completely false impression of the wider wargame community.   Perhaps there is a whole mass of “silent majority” out there who simply do not post.

I can understand why that might be the case, given the often heated attacks on anyone who dares to disagree with some of the more dominant characters.

Whatever the reason I was surprised that no one had posted that they game more than once a week.   Perhaps I should not be surprised, because I did not post either!