Jackson Gamers' Russian Civil War Game As reported in
Capturing the Dragon
|
Members of the Jackson Gamers stage a Russian civil war encounter on a table in the back of teh Hobby Town USA retail outlet in jackson. The club gathers at the store one or two Saturdays a month to play games based on either imaginary or historic conflicts ranging from battles of the Middle ages to Civil War and Old West clashes.
Small figures make for big battles in
War Games
By Jack Bertram
Clarion-Ledger Staff Writer
It's not that Jay Stribling lacks respect for the rules of engagement. Far from it.
Still, the gamer has been known to tweak the regs of war and improvise.
Like during the Russian civil war last week.
This was his battle, his scenario in which a Soviet armored train called the Hammer of the Proletariat had broken down in a small valley near the scenic village of Doldelbein in a pastoral, rural landscape, on a table at the back of the HobbyTown USA store in Jackson.
So no one objected when Stribling ruled that a bomb dropped by a Russian airplane would destroy units of the opposing army within a radius of approximately 2 inches, or more accurately, the are enveloped by the lens cap of Stribling's camera.
In table-war terms, this is a damage air strike: When your forces are fitted out in a scale of 15mm, any hit the size of a 35mm camera lens can be devastating.
The Russian battle was the most recent in a series of monthly games stages, or played, by members of the Jackson Gamers.
The group gathers to fight imaginary public battles on or two Saturdays a month at Hobby-Town, as well as "whenever we feel like it" at private residences, says Stribling.
The scenarios are often elaborate and always designed with a dedication to historical accuracy.
The figure from the tiny combatants to the battlescape terrain and accoutrements of warfare, are constructed and painted in fine detail. But the mood of the fight is light.
It's a game," says 34-year old Larry Reeves of Pearl, and ex-marine who says he developed his passion for the hobby during his tour of military duty, 1986-92.
Ask him if he sees any irony in the playing of a game of war while the real thing rages on the other side of the globe, and he'll react to the question with an expression of puzzlement.
 | The essential ingredients of war-gaming include a table-top battlefield, miniature soldiers and armaments, dice for determining the success of the player's strategic moves, an imaginary scenario for the combat and a book of rules which might get "tweaked" during the heat of battle. |
The battles staged by the Jackson Gamers are so far removed from glorification of violence that, for Reeves, the war games are "no different than playing Chinese checkers or Monopoly." Mostly, he laughs, he enjoys the games because, "I always liked playing with toys."
Not that the hobby doesn't have it share of fanatic players, says Fred Diamond, 35 of Wesson. "If you want to find anal wargamers, go to (city in Louisiana that shall remain nameless)," he says.
Indeed, the aura around the war-gamers' table would be strikingly similar to that of a quilting circle if sewing ladies would only laugh more loudly and occasionally rise to high-five one another on completion of a successful stitch.
"Sure, there's a social aspect to it," says Stribling. "If you don't care about the social aspect, you might as well stay home and play video games."
Tim Latham, 40, also of Wesson, agrees. He has been war-gaming since 1983 and says, "a lot of the appeal is the camaraderie."
Jackson Gamers, says Stribling (only half-jokingly), is a group for which "there is no organization." As game master of last week's Russian revolt game, he created several single-spaced typewritten pages of scenario and instruction.
This is the serous part - the setup.
While winning or losing the game may eventually be shrugged off, the details of the battle, both physically and scenario-wise receive plenty of attention.
Striblng and gamer Jim Pitts are putting together and Italian Renaissance game in which more than 500 figures will eventually be hand-painted by the two.
Pitts, 50, a U.S. Army veteran and state archives department employee, has also assembled hundreds of Revolutionary War-era figures that are brilliant in their tiny detail.
And other members of the Jackson Gamers have put together miniature forces for the staging of games from the Civil War, Napoleonic wars, Old West shootouts, Middle ages and Crimean War. As a 20-year Army veteran, Pitts says he does not have much interest in the more modern-era games, World War I and beyond, as "I did that with the real thing."
He says war-gamers have had their images problems in the past. Some people, Pitts says, wrongly think of the players as "a bunch of crazy warmongers," but he echoes Reeves' assessment that "this is just a game."
While other gaming groups may hold more seriously-fought tournaments with the goal of crowning a champion at the end of the year, the jackson Gamers "are playing for fun," he says.
In addition to 15mm miniatures, the gamers also utilize 25mm figures. For Pitts, Stribling and pal Robert Whitfield, the gaming goes back 30 years. The trio met at Mississippi State University in the early 1970s and discovered a mutual interest in history. "Jim Pitts and I had a history class together." Says Stribling, in which the two spent a lot of time "correcting the professor."
That obsession with historical accuracy has served them well as gamers, especially when developing fictional battles that are also true to the era in terms of logistics and weaponry - and the capabilities of those weapons.
The gamers stage both fictional scenarios and historical battles although the later are less popular as few players have much interest in rewriting history. Plus, despite the small scale of the figures, the larger, more significant historical battles are impossible to re-create on a table top..
"We can't stage the Battle of Gettysburg, so we might just do Little Round Top (one of the pivotal Gettysburg battlefield clashes)," says Stribling. One unique game featured a scenario from the Civil War's legendary act of ultimate secession, Mississippi's Free State of Jones.
 | These Russian Army figures are 15mm, but the jackson Gamers also stage battles from other historical eras in 25mm. |
While the rules of tabletop warfare can get pretty elaborate, essentially, once the game master'' scenario has been set up (Jackson Gamers take turns hosting battles), much is determined by the roll of the dice. A dice roll is even used to establish the "mood" and morale of the troops after an encounter, as well as to assign personal characteristics to individual unit leaders prior to the start of the game.
"The morale level can make a big difference," says Latham. "Roll high, and the troops will charge like the Marines. Roll low, and they'll be saying, 'I'm not dumb enough to make this charge.' "
"It's what they call chrome," says Stribling. Other accents might include a taped musical soundtrack, playing low in the background.
But while much is left to chance, strategy still plays a part, says Bill Estes, 41, of Madison. As he explains it, the individual gamer will decide what tactic his troops will employ during the engagement, then the roll of the dice will determine how effective that decision was.
Latham calls the games "a good brain exercise," but ultimately, even the distance that troops advance on the battlefield is determined by the dice roll, so that each game is punctuated by the layers' frequent laying down of a metal tape rule to pinpoint the exact spot to which, for example, a cavalry unit may advance.
Games can last several hours, and, during the course of the action, the movement of the figures can generate a subtle dramatic flow. "Yeah, it does have a sense of motion, a sense of move-like action," says Estes, 41, and insurance adjuster and history buff.
He believes one of the reasons for the low-key, competitive nature of the players is that there is no individual winner of a game. Each player is essential a part of a team (army), and victories belong to the team members collectively.
In that sense, "some games might get pretty competitive," says Reeves. "Its more fun to win."
The group welcomes interested newcomers but does not actively recruit players, says Stribling. "we very seldom convert anybody," he says, "but it's not like we discourage people. They're always welcome and, if it's fun, they come back.
During the games at Hobbytown, store customers will often stop to observe, especially when the fight is spirited and laughter rolls like cannon fire from the back of the shop.
But the, the uninitiated may also do a little head-scratching if they stumble onto the scene before the start of a game when, around the table, the dice click and tumble and come to rest to reveal the numbers that establish personas for the fight to come.
Shake, roll. Stribling checks the corresponding numbers in his rule book and tells the roller: "There's nothing special about you."
Shake, roll. Stribling to gamer: "You're a fanatic. You must lead heroically at every turn."
The charge is to be taken seriously. It's a Rule and, improvisation aside, not all is fair.
Jack Bertram is a photographer and reporter for our local newspaper, The Clarion Ledger which ran this article about the game and our group on Friday, November 23, 2001, in it's Southern Style section. The photographs which were very nice in the paper did not reproduce too well here.
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