Why so little outdoor Garden Wargames coverage?

Ross
What a fantastic snowy picture, staged or not. My part of the UK rarely sees a snowflake.

The red hats versus green helmets game in 2013 shows me there are more garden Wargames riches to be found out there in the blogosphere.

You raise some very interesting points.

I wonder if the same situation exists with garden railroading or railways? They are "outed" with / have high street magazines, forums, products, the respectable veneer of engineering and model village gardening.

Is it weather?

Is it our collectively ageing and creaky knees?

Is it the increasingly tiny to non existent gardens of modern British houses?

Is it too close to boyhood "playing with toy soldiers" without the "beard" or cover of children and grandchildren? My neighbours and friends know that I collect and make / cast old toy soldiers as they cover my desk, pop up in odd display places in our house etc.

It is of course all H G Wells' fault.

Mark, Man of TIN blog

I try to play outside as much as possible; the terrain's more realistic.

I think it's a combination of thing's, with our busy lives it's hard enough finding an opponent for games in any scale and 54mm is a marginal activity in the hobby so players are even harder to find unless you belong to a club where some of the members are prepared to give it a go. Even then, garden games need to be played during daylight hours and most club's meet in the evening's so unless you're retired then games are further restricted to the weekends when there is more pressure to spend time with the family.

So, having coordinated players with a venue you're then at the mercy of the weather, i think maybe 50% of my garden games get called off or taken indoors at the last-minute due to rain. At the other end of the scale, it's not too pleasant to play in the searing heat of the mid day sun.

I'm fortunate to live in a Victorian house in West London with a reasonable size garden which I've landscaped over the years to provide a compromise between planting areas for Mrs C and wargame areas for me but all the new building development around us these days seems to be empty office blocks being converted to apartments. My neighbors all know that I collect toy soldiers and game with them, they appear to find this quaint and vaguely interesting but I don't know what they really think and frankly I couldn't care less.

I've tried wargaming in parks but in addition to the difficulties already mentioned you need to find a spot where people and dogs aren't likely to wander through, also you need to carry all the figures and paraphernalia you need from wherever you've managed to park the car so it's a bit of a pain.

Despite all of this I still think outdoor gaming with like minded friends is the best there is.

Arguably Mike, playing with these in your garden is merely advertising or marketing your excellent figures.

I look forward to reading the Little Wars Commemorated article in the last Henry Hyde edited edition of Miniature Wargames with Battlegames no 402. when I get into my nearest town.

I wonder if this will mention H G Wells' garden games on his immaculately mown lawns that must have kept his garden staff busy if they were close mown enough to stand figures up on them!

Mark, Man of TIN blog