A Week of Wargaming

Regular readers of this blog will be aware that our gaming group, that can trace its history back to the 1970s, has been holding an annual wargames event at a location in the centre of New Zealand’s North Island since 1985. We call it the Tarawera Weekend, because it is hosted at one of our member’s holiday home on the shores of Lake Tarawera. The event started as a weekend, driving down on the Friday night, gaming all day Saturday and on Sunday morning, before driving home on the Sunday afternoon. Some people have come and gone over the years, but four of the original six still attend and four others have joined.

Eventually the weekend became a long weekend, heading down on the Thursday with full day games on the Friday and Saturday. Then we extended it another day and finally today we have extended into to four full days and the half day Sunday. It is the highlight of our gaming year and it has a fairly well settled schedule with one person, sometimes with another assisting, undertaking to organise a game on a particular day from the catalogue of historical periods we play. Typically a game will start around 9:00 AM and finish around 5:00 PM, with time for lunch in between. Evenings revolve around dinner and sometimes a board game, but more often than not watching a DVD.

Originally the weekend was held in the middle of winter. This was convenient because it was outside of school and public holidays which meant that the venue was more readily available. It also brought a little brightness to the dullness of winter.  Often it was cold and wet and we would spend the day in the garage freezing our butts off and then in the evening would retire to house for drinks, a hearty meal and warm fire. But in recent years the event has crept deeper into spring, perhaps a reflection of our aging as much of the fact that a few of us target the mid-winter as a time to head off shore to warmer climes. In truth the later event is often better because daylight saving has kicked in and we can make better use of the deck for evening drinks.

So today at 8:00 AM four of us gathered at our regular gaming venue, packed armies, terrain, boxes of food and wine into two vehicles and headed south at around 8:30. An hour and a half later we stopped for our traditional coffee stop (a late breakfast for one) at Matamata – also known as Hobbiton because it was one of the locations for the Lord of the Rings movie. From there we headed to Rotorua, the nearest city to Lake Tarawera, where we stopped for lunch, another tradition, then moved on to a local supermarket where we stocked up on all the food and alcohol needed for the next few days. From there we headed out to the lake, arriving a little after 2:00 PM, and around 4:00 PM set about setting up the gaming table in the garage and laying out the first game.

During the evening others of the group arrived. We caught up with our host, who most of us had not seen since the previous event, had a few drinks on the deck, enjoyed dinner - her indoors provided a cracking Boeuf Bourguinon (a well established tradition for the first night) that was washed down with a couple or three bottles of red - and good conversation. Meanwhile the first game, and English Civil War battle, was being set up in the garage.