By Way of Introduction

Welcome! I've been meaning to start a hobby and history blog for some time now and after a friend asked if I've been doing any writing since leaving graduate school, I figured now was as good a time as any.

But first, a little about me....

I was born and raised on the East Coast of the United States, where I developed a love of history and wargaming. My very first miniatures game was Alternative Armies' fantasy Napoleonic skirmish game, Flintloque (which combined my love of the Sharpe series and Lord of the Rings). Over the next few years, I picked up a variety of rulesets and figures, but never enough to actually get a new game going. It was also around this time that I started getting into historical reenacting. Though the period between the Seven Years War and the American Civil War was always my favorite era in history, I decided to dive into something different and began portraying a Canadian infantryman in World War II.

Me (on the right) with some comrades at the D-Day Ohio reenactment (2014)

That all changed when I went off university and eventually found myself as part of a regular gaming group, The Williamsburg Legati. Before I knew it, I had a large collection of 20mm modern British and Afghan figures for use with Force on Force and Skirmish Sangin, Anglo-Danes and dark age Scots for SAGA, and some Native Americans and Wayne's Legion figures for a brief foray into Muskets & Tomahawks. Having weekly meetings with a great group of gamers definitely spoiled me and I owe a lot to those guys for really getting me into the hobby.

A shot from a Force on Force game we played in Williamsburg back in 2012

All that changed when I headed out to California for a MA/PhD program in 2013. Time and money were both in short supply, and even when I did find gaming buddies they usually lived just far enough away to prevent regular meet-ups. As a result, my hobby went  temporarily by the wayside. Then came my fiancee's relocation for work to my home state of Pennsylvania, which, combined with a number of other factors, convinced me to leave grad school after earning my master's degree and join her back east. So in July we packed up a moving truck and her car with all of our stuff and our 85-pound dog and moved to the historic town of Hanover, PA (just a little east of another small, historic town called Gettysburg).

Me (center of the rear rank) at a Napoleonic Wars reenactment last month

So now I find myself back within an easy drive of some of the country's largest historical wargaming conventions, in the epicenter of reenacting in this country, and with the opportunity to take tons of day trips to historical sites and museums. Oh, and until I can get settled in a full-time job, I'm working at a friend's bookstore which specializes in military history and wargaming. Needless to say, it's a pretty good place to be.

To top it all off, my fiancee, Becca, has been gracious enough to designate the family room of her townhouse as my "man cave/game room." Here it is in all its glory (well, most of it at least; I've since gotten a set of larger tables):

The Zulu shield is a souvenir from my semester abroad in South Africa

This blog has several purposes. For one thing, it will serve as a much needed creative outlet from the monotony of working two retail jobs. It will also allow me to share stories and photos from reenactments and my historically-themed excursions (my California-raised fiancee has not seen much of the East Coast). Most importantly, it will allow me to chronicle my progress on future gaming projects and share after action reports of those games once my plans are realized.

Currently, I'm acquiring miniatures and scenery pieces to run the Scottish Corridor (Operation Epsom) pint-sized campaign for Too Fat Lardies' Chain of Command rules and just picked up a copy of The Men Who Would Be Kings colonial rules published by Osprey, for which I am debating running campaigns for the Transvaal War (1st Anglo-Boer War), Northern War (1st Maori War), or the hypothetical "Pig War Goes Hot", but more on that later.

I'm excited about this new endeavor and look forward to the discussions the posts will facilitate.

Becca and I are planning a trip to Antietam National Battlefield and some boardgaming this weekend, so I'll be sure to have another update soon.

'Til Next Time,

Andrew