The fourth image is the one I find most amusing. Unless you play ASL, you can’t truly appreciate the level of awe with which ASL players are regarded in the wargaming community, or understand the suspicions which other gamers tend to harbor concerning wargamers. On the one hand, the ability and commitment required to master a game of its encyclopedic complexity is, quite rightly, deemed impressive, bordering on insanity. On the other, there is an idea that the average ASLer is just a little bit too enthusiastic about those 8-3-8 assault troops, especially if he happens to have sprung for those cool black counters provided by Heat of Battle. For some reason, people who grasp that playing WoW doesn’t make you an elf don’t always seem to understand that playing the role of a German tactician doesn’t make you a Nazi.
I tend to find it more than a little amusing that the only site from which I’ve ever been banned was the wargame site ConSimWorld, when, in response to a discussion about the “right-wing” Nazis, I posted the complete text of the Munich Manifesto.
But I was rather proud of Ender this morning. When I showed him the latest version of the forthcoming Selenoth-based game, he immediately identified the 1981 Avalon Hill game from which I’d taken the basic hit-damage mechanism.