Sunday Sermon: The games that define us.

My hero!!!

I was thinking the other day while reading about famous American Presidents and the many horrid and brutally difficult choices they've had to make from their oddly shaped office, that in everyone's life there come moments that define us. Often we aren't aware of what they are until they've long since passed. Standing up to a school bully, standing up to a CEO bully, and calling out to a friend you've not seen for a few days at totally the wrong moment... things that define us and those around us. Some might seem inconsequential at the time, while others... well you feel their impact right away. So life has a way of turning these moments into life affirming, or devastating situations, while we blithely go about our business.

It's very rare that we get the opportunity that many of the great Presidents I've read about have, of knowing that our decisions are of monumental importance to ourselves and the lives of others. Nor that I would necessarily want to know, as I'm not so sure I could bear such a burden. We bumble along doing the best we can, making what we think are the best calls at the time. How easy it is to get things wrong and to wander about the path not taken then? Well very easy for some people, while others just accept the decision as taken and get on with it. But what of our hobby careers? What individual games have defined us? What games have defined who I am and how I approach the hobby nowadays? What games missed have defined us, and what game systems not played still haunt you?

Well as is the case with me when I get to thinking I normally end up in trouble. Could I define the wargamer I am today, by the games I've played and indeed the games I didn't play? Could I pick out ten examples and show where it all went so horribly wrong... or depending on your viewpoint, so gloriously right? Well it was a challenge, so I was bound to take it on now wasn't I? I'm a bit like Marty McFly, call me chicken and I'd jump out of a space shuttle with no parachute! These aren't necessarily the game I fondly remeber either, or indeed the games I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat over, asking what the hell went wrong and why did I roll so many 1's!!! As I say many of these games sort of passed me by at the time, their significance lost on me, it's only now after looking back that I'm aware of the influence on me as a gamer. So here goes, the ten games that defined me:
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