Sometimes, the high school education of Australia, as good as it is, leaves you unprepared when entering into the baptism of fire that is tabletop wargaming.

You might complain that Warhammer 40,000 contains no historical elements, but growing up, I knew more about the tragic history of the Fall of Horus and why the Emperor was so mad about the whole betrayal thing than what I knew about, say, the American Civil War, or the Spanish Civil War, sure, they taught us about World War I, II, Vietnam, that kind of stuff, but not really anything that was related to the board games American companies churn out.

There exist multiple board games dealing with World War II and its various campaigns, but it's slanted towards an American perspective I fear. I guess the reason why Risk is so popular is that it's so divorced from what the common man understands as actual history that it's easily accessible - and won't offend even the most hardcore of war history nuts.

Risk is so vanilla in wargaming history that one coloured troop is indistinguishable from the other in terms of cultural customs and theme. Which is probably why people play it as a means of playing out "taking over the world" in their own living rooms. We aren't really given a real context to the conquest, it's just bragging rights.

I want to try Battle Cry. I really, really do. But I know next to nothing about the American Civil War other than Gone With The Wind is set in those times and that the North won. Australians are so uninvested in the whole politics of the American Civil War that by some quirk of fate, a book written by an Australian about the Civil War called March, was a novel accepted by both sides of the argument over there because neither Northern or Southern readers had any reason to mistrust the other's bias.

I am utterly clueless about the whole Civil War thing, because they just didn't teach it to us at school. There's also a bunch of historical wars they did teach us about in minor detail, if you took the Ancient History unit in senior high. But Ancient History to me wasn't really about learning things, it was just about... well, cramming for exams with as much factoids that you felt emotionally divorced from so you'd get a good mark and get into a good university.

But why would somebody like me try a game like Battle Cry if I have next to no knowledge about the historical context of the game?

The answer is simple. If one has no knowledge of a historical war event used in a board game, the board game makes you want to learn more. Stuff you never even knew existed. I'm pretty sure there's quite a bit of World War II and World War I history I don't understand, but I'm completely lost when it comes to the Napoleonic Wars, which wasn't even covered in my syllabus because they taught about that in MODERN HISTORY, smarmy gits and their contemporary analysis of revolutions, think they're so cool because what they're studying seems more relevant to what we're learning about the Egyptians and Spartans - bloodysmart-alecs laughing at how inconsistent 300 was as a movie based on a comic book... 

Ahem. Sorry about that. Now where was I?

Ah yes. Wars they never taught me about in high school.

Essentially the first thing you learn upon graduating from high school, is how much you actually forget. Some might make fun of the historical studies nerds, but by God do they actually retain information about stuff that was actually real, instead of what you digested through exaggerations in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels...

I mean, good LORD. The amount of cramming for exams that happens to children at my age who are only just getting into university now is astronomical - how does the government expect these children to remember anything about what they "learn" in their history classes, no wonder it keeps repeating itself - if history is actually meant to be studied properly you'd get better value learning using a tabletop wargame like Battles for Napoleon or even Axis and Allies or Empire of the Sun than what you expect to have memorised from a textbook in high school.

There's entire bloody epochs of events that people my age were just never taught about - stuff we usually only find out about through the badly researched lens of a Cracked.com comedic list article. I mean... how much of history does the average person actually know, that isn't the entire plot of The Simpsons or the production history of each series of Star Trek?

Board games, particularly ones that deal with real life wars set in a real historical period - that's pretty much some of the best springboards for discussions of historical wars out there eh? Because your kids aren't exactly going to learn all this from their teachers, I know this as a fact because I only graduated from high school a year ago. And I did it longer than most kids. So pity the ones starting kindergarten this year.

I guess this is a case where I'm really asking the older F:AT members who have kids to listen to me on this one. History isn't just a textbook. You have to make it mean something.

I don't know where this thought started niggling in my brain, but round about the time I turned twenty and a half I started to notice that miniatures do not make the game, and if it is it's rather gimmicky in giving you an excuse to play with toys again.

I've already talked about Warhammer 40,000 - one of the greatest satires ever made indeed but it has become in itself the butt of jokes about how expensive the models are, the tournament scene, and most of all - the PAINTING.

But why do we need miniatures in games? Is there something inherently pleasurable about playing with little plastic men?

Yes, and no. It really depends on what level of toys your childhood was used to, as opposed to what you have now.

What I have now is a number of highly detailed anime figures called Revoltechs which are some of the most detailed collectable toys on the market. In order to battle with them you have to use your imagination, as you must discern within your adult mind who would win in a battle of action figures, Superman of The Thing from the Fantastic Four. In a way, the whole premise of needing miniatures to play a game is rooted in a deep, dark, and often male fear - that playing with actual toys is undignified, and the imagination is a scary thing because your wife could catch you playing with Star Wars dolls a la Spaceballs at any moment.

The problem with this logic is, if you honestly need a game rule set to play with toys because it makes you feel more secure, there's a problem right there. Yeah, I saw Toy Story 3 too, and it made me shed more than a single tear, which previously only the films Midnight Cowboy and Mary and Max had achieved. I get the whole childhood innocence manifested in our toys thing, because they hold our memories.

What I don't get however is the immaturity the board game assumes of us if it thinks it needs miniatures for you to even deign to play it. Now I have a lot of respect for tabletop wargames, and the people who paint them or just play war board games, because they invest a lot of time and effort into their hobby. I'll admit my appreciation of CCGs like Magic: The Gathering meets a similar level of commitment in terms of my board gaming hobby.

I'm just saying that in these times, we have grown to expect quality miniatures to play with in our board games because many of us grew up in the house Games Workshop built. But I prefer my cardboard standee version of Talisman to the Revised FFG edition. Why? The cardboard version just has more charm to it, and functions more as a GAME than a playing with grey plastic men exercise.

The miniatures themselves aren't the problem I think. There are some games which NEED the miniatures to build immersion. I'm just saying that there are examples of games like the Revised Talisman who exploit the expensive game = more minis mentality to remove the 2D aesthetic from the playable heroes to give you plastic blobs with no personality. I mean, Warhammer 40,000, you kind of NEED miniatures for that because by its nature it simulates turn based combat between large forces of space men. I don't think that can be replicated with tokens, or maybe it could and nobody really thought of it because those Most Esteemed Scottish Brothers or whatever nationality they were decided "This is going to be a miniatures game, and we're going to make spin offs like it!".

I'm essentially trying to point out here that while playing with a Bucket of Soldiers you can get from the two dollar shop for cheap and setting them up in the yard is fun, it's not necessary to hunt down a copy of H.G. Wells's Little Wars just because you're insecure enough to think a set of rules alone justifies the use of little plastic men in a gentleman's playtime. And this means, that I'm not going to judge you for getting out your Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader figures for a battle in which nary a die is rolled.