Let's get back to Imperialism...

Wargaming can be a very lonely hobby especially if, like me, you don't like to commit yourself to large blocks of time (which is invariably the case when playing a wargame) or else you have few opportunities to play face-to-face against a human opponent.

Besides, my boredom thresh-hold is quite low and I find it very difficult to remain playing at a table for more than a couple of hours.

This is precisely why on-line board games are such an attraction. It is not necessary to play for endless hours at a time and it is an ideal medium that allows you to drop out of a game once you feel you have had enough. The added bonus is that you don't have to spend an hour travelling to the venue and another hour setting up and then clearing a way.

Skype and Team-Talk allow for two-way live communication with your opponent, the board is exactly as you left it or can be started again from scratch at the click of a button, there is no clearing away and you can play from the comfort of your own home even if your opponent lives on the other side of the world!

Discovering Vassal was, for me at least, a real opportunity to participate in and enjoy my passion for wargaming without all the peripheral hassles.

So, having found the appropriate mechanism for playing a wargame (either solo or against an opponent) I wanted to play a game that was absorbing and flexible enough to be protracted should I want it to be.

There was one problem. Most of the modules available for Vassal are based upon published wargames and to play them you require a copy of the rules for that particular module. I own precious few boardgames and had no desire to spend a year learning how to play a complex game. Besides, my interest is primarily in tabletop wargaming and not boardgames. So I had a dilemma. Here was a mechanism ideally suited to my taste but without the type of game-system that I wanted to play.

The saving grace is that you can create your own modules for Vassal and, as the saying goes, 'If you can't beat them, join them', that is the route I decided upon. I would set about designing a module that emulated a table-top wargame but use a boardgaming system to play it.

The question then was what historical time period would I like to play and was the design to be a one-off battle or a design that could be used to portray a much wider canvass than a single battle?

My next post will expand on my choices and the decisions I made...