Sunday Sermon: What is a proper wargamer?

Surely if we say somebody isn't a proper wargamer, it's the same as calling them a fake.

I'm sure many of you have watched this meme develop on various Blogs over the past fortnight or so. It was all started by Phil Broeders over at The Wargaming Site Blog. The idea being that to call yourself a proper wargamer you must have ticked off a list of things you have achieved or done before you could be considered a proper wargamer. I think, and I hope the article was written in a fun and tongue firmly in cheek way, and indeed many have taken it that way. However, Phil stared his article by saying that "One does not simply claim to be a wargamer by having a couple of games of 40k. No, no,no." and while I agree with that sentiment to an extent, I really don't think there is much more too it for me. To call someone a wargamer I'd like to see somebody buy, assemble and paint their own army first, and then play a few games of whatever their game of choice is. You know what, for me I don't think the threshold for being a proper wargamer is set very high.

Obviously there have been many people who have risen to the challenge of answering Phil's original questions, I myself attempted it here. Then Lee over at the fabulous Blog Big Lee's Miniature Adventures added a huge amount of extra questions, as Phil originally asked others to do, but yet again I'd suggest many of them focus on the historical side of the hobby too much to be generally applicable. But, some of the others are actually more general and actually hint at things many experienced and long in the tooth wargamers will have felt, like hobby burnout and purchasing shame. However, as a researcher by trade it is two articles by J de Jong over at Rear Guard Action that have interested me the most, mainly because they involves graphs, and researchers love visual representations of statistics, it's like stats pr0n to us... now if only he'd included an SPSS output sheet, phwoar! You can read J de Jong's articles here and here, and if this meme has interested you then you probably should.

Some think to be considered a proper wargamer I need to do ^this^.

To call ones self an expert or indeed a veteran requires different and varying amounts of experience or skill I would suggest. Expert for example implies a level of knowledge about a subject, that might require a considerable amount of time to acquire, but not necessarily. Whereas veteran is all about the amount of experience you have, either a lot crammed into a short space of time, or over a longer period with less cramming. But, for me to be considered a wargamer, or a proper wargamer, doesn't take much. If you've invested your own money and time to this hobby and stuck with it to get your own painted army on the tabletop, and play a few games in my humble opinion you are part of the fraternity. I'd much rather stick to my inclusive methodology than the exclusive one put forward by Phil. The other problem I have with the idea that Phil put forward is that although I'm sure it was a joke, 'many a true word hath been spoken in jest' and I think it does speak to a problem that we have in our 'community' at large. We all think the way that we personally approach the hobby is in some way the 'correct' way to approach things. Often at the exclusion of other points of view and experience.
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