View from the Veranda – Episode 3
Download Episode 3
Welcome to Episode 3 of View from the Veranda, with Neil Shuck & Henry Hyde.
In this show, we discuss our inspirations for wargaming – but with typical verbal diversions into the realms of British school history curriculum, Michael Bentine’s Potty Time and the mysterious disappearance of the Battle of Bosworth diorama.
Tales of The Brummie Dwarf 
Well worth the wait. What can I say? GOLD. This chat needs to be bottled and savoured. You’ve captured what’s best about wargaming, esp in the first half of the discussion when detailing your inspirations. They parallel my own in many ways. What an absolute joy it was to listen to such things and revisit some of the best times this great hobby has provided.
I also found the insight into wargaming’s shortcomings and challenges particularly ‘sharp’.
Well done to you both.
I’m going to listen to it all again tomorrow!
Neil – if you want to refresh your memory re. Battleground then there is an article on my blog:
http://unfashionablyshiny.blogspot.com/2009/03/pg-on-tv.html
cheers.
its great to see that you have recovered your health and are back on track with the pod casting.
i really like this show and the meeples and miniatures pod cast.
you are very inspiring and i love to spend my hard earned cash on miniatures and rules sets ive dicocered thanks to you guys!
for the moment its 28mm WWI that has my attention. western fron, here i come!
Just as good the second time.
🙂
I wish these were more regular. Excellent stuff.
Another TV series that certainly influenced me was Model World, which I am sure had a wargaming episode.
The desire for regimentation of figures was interesting. I certainly had it, and I remember going to buy ten boxes of Airfix British Line, with unheard of pocket money leverage, to achieve it. I think my inspiration came from the club, which would have been Minifig driven, and a little later Bruce Quarrie’s Napoleonic Wargaming that was full of units with identical figures.
Of course all that went out the window later on!
I loved the mix of nostalga and insight into our collective inspirations that went into the mix making up this show. My only regret is that maybe incoming and the proposed vidcast might make the rich vein of material in “Veranda” & the podcast a less regular “feast” for avid listeners.
I couldnt agree with Henry’s comment that Sci Fi and Fantasy gamers are more spoon fed. That may be the case with the major miniatures companies, but hardly for the independents that M&M covers. So much imagination and creativity goes into creating sci Fi games in particular, just look at the overflow of ideas/projects on the TMP message board. So many players are creating “universes” with their own backgrounds and quirks in which to base their campaigns and/or doing research into subjects as diverse as Hammers Slammers to Barsoom and flash Gordon, and often having to convert figures to do so.
They also have to create their own rules modifications to model what they want to incorporate of their particular choice of universe.That is a major difference from a D+1 house rule based on the interpretation an ancients player (for example) gives to a particular rule are having read a particular interpretation of history.
Here is a thought that stemmed from a game we played at Maidstone club on 10/9 just before i listened to “Veranda 3”, and was kind of alluded to in the show: To what extent are we in the business of re-creation through a set of rules, or are rules mechanics which cannot truly recreate/model, but just give us a game with a flavour?
All your good work is so appreciated! Thanks so much!
I loved the little section on dioramas.
I always loved a good diorama as a kid at museums and such – even more so than any multi-media display. I suspect it is because dioramas are static, and allow you to take in all of the details, plus the 3-D aspect means you can get down and check it out from the model’s perspective.
Not so sure my kids would agree.
Another comment now that I am done listening…
On inspirations, you can add podcasts, or in a larger sense fan-generated media. Enthusiasm is a big inspiration, although someone ingesting this type of media is probably already involved somewhat.
A big inspiration for me is other games. I got into miniatures gaming as a way to act out army battles in our DnD world, and there have been other cases where one game inspires me to try a deeper game in the same theme.
For books, movies, etc, I am more likely to get into a gaming period, and then want to read and view more on the subject. Like Henry, movies rarely get me wanting to game a particular subject.