Wargaming Club is my self-initiated project and one of the highlights of my school week. Every Tuesday afternoon about a dozen or so students all meet to play wargames together. Usually we rotate which games we play each week. The three games common to the club so far are Warhammer 40,000, HeroScape and the popular board game Risk. The two major things that tie these games together are their focus on your controlling the forces of a belligerent force during a war, and the use of dice to determine the outcome of the conflict.
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| The regular club members (left to right): Jia Wan, Afnan, Michael, Dean, and myself. |
During the previous school year, a member of staff began a club based around the miniature wargame Warhammer 40,000. I had only ever heard about it in passing, but it seemed interesting and so I attended the first few meetings. Very soon I fell in love with the game and when the teacher left at the end of the 2008-09 school year he left the school’s entire collection of miniatures, rulebooks and assorted paraphernalia in my care. When I began Year 12 I had already decided to continue the club, and when I discovered that another student, Afnan, enjoyed playing a similar wargame, we got together and organised it all.
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| Our very first game of Heroscape |
Warhammer 40,000 (usually shortened to 40K) is a complicated game, with hundreds of available units drawn from more than a dozen factions, all supported by a rich and diverse science-fiction based backstory. The game itself supports features such as different effects from terrain types, vehicles like tanks and hoverbikes, and special abilities unique to each hero or faction. It is played on a tabletop using miniature figures which you buy unassembled and unpainted, with set terrain pieces which can range from professionally sculpted buildings and forests to empty drinks cans and books. Essentially, any imaginable situation where two or even more factions might clash violently can be assembled, fromnarrow winding city streets to rolling plains to blasted moonscapes and even volcanic flows. Naturally, this much possibility means that the rules are complex and sometimes hard to follow, but I have a good grasp of them, and I usually act as a mediator or a kind of ‘lawyer’ for the rules during games.
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| A particularly bad roll of the dice leads to a dramatic defeat. |
HeroScape is another miniatures wargame, and it is mostly Afnan’s domain in much the same way Warhammer 40K is mine. He has a very large collection of miniatures and playing pieces. Unlike 40K, the terrain and board for HeroScape is made almost entirely from small hexagonal tiles which are slotted together to form the battlefield. It has much simpler rules than 40K, but its scope is also far narrower, limited to what can be made with the hex tiles. Still, it is just as enjoyable in 40K in its own way and it is popular with the regular players.
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| Mid-game RISK |
The third game which is regularly played was never designed to become more than a one-off treat for our players: Risk, the game of global domination. Risk is a very popular board game, and almost all the players were already familiar with the rules, meaning we could break them in easily. With the possibility of secret deals and treaties, the interaction between players during games of Risk are often as interesting as the outcome of the game itself.
