Fourteen Years of Marching Through History

Fourteen years ago, in September 2012, the Palouse Wargaming Journal (PWJ) began as a place to record my wargaming activities and perhaps connect with a few like-minded wargamers.  At the time, I had no clear sense of where the project might lead nor how long this venture might last.  I certainly did not imagine that, fourteen years later, the blog would have accumulated 1,915 posts, 62,241 comments, and 341 followers.

Those numbers are more than statistics.  Much more.  Together they represent fourteen years of games played, figures painted, and ideas exchanged with readers and fellow wargamers.  The Palouse Wargaming Journal began as my hobby notebook, but it has gradually become something more.  The PWJ records my ongoing wargaming activities preserved one post at a time.  Occasionally, a little bit of Real Life is tossed in for good measure.

The blog is also a record of the dynamic nature of the hobby.  Some periods have been filled with games and painting projects.  Others have been slowed by competing demands, a wandering eye, or simply the difficulty of finding time to arrange a game.  Projects have been started, set aside, restarted, and occasionally (but rarely!) completed.  Armies have marched onto the tabletop, disappeared back into their storage boxes, and returned years later under entirely different rules.  Sometimes even appearing with different basing schemes.  The blog preserves all of those stages, including the false starts, mistakes, and second guesses that rarely appear in a photo or a summarized battle account.

The past year has been a period of both activity and reflection.  I have continued to report games, show painted figures, and describe the projects occupying my painting desk and gaming table.  At the same time, I found myself thinking more often about the wider purpose of wargaming blogs.  What makes such a blog worthwhile?  Does blogging still have a future in an age taken over by social media, video, and artificial intelligence?  Why do wargamers devote so much effort to recording painting, researching, designing, and playing of games?

My continuing interest in analyzing the results of WSS' The Great Wargaming Survey offers one way to explore these questions.  The survey provides useful information about the people who participate in the hobby, the periods and rules they prefer, and the reasons they continue to wargame.  Yet these data also raise questions that statistics alone cannot answer.  Numbers may reveal patterns, but they do not always explain the personal experiences behind them.  Two people may report playing the same rules or historical period while finding entirely different rewards in the experience.

That tug-of-war between information and experience has become increasingly important as the internet continues to change.  I repeatedly find myself asking whether blogs still matter.  The question has been particularly difficult to ignore during a year marked by ongoing frustrations with Blogger’s infrastructure.  Those technical problems are compounded by the growing influence of social media which offers quick publication and immediate feedback.  Video, too, has become an increasingly popular way of presentation.   Artificial intelligence adds another layer to the changing landscape by summarizing information and answering questions without necessarily directing readers to the original source.

Can blogging offer something different to these newer forms of communication?

I believe it can, although perhaps not by trying to compete with them on their own terms.  The Palouse Wargaming Journal is not simply a collection of answers about rules, armies, or battles that can be extracted and summarized by an AI agent.  For me, it is a personal record of a hobby in progress.  It shows the figures and units as they emerge from the painting desk, the battlefields as they are laid out, the games as they develop, and the decisions that influence battle outcomes.

That personal element is important because wargaming is not only about information.  It is also about interpretation.  A battle report may explain who won, but it can also describe how the game unfolded, which decisions mattered, and what made the contest memorable.  Similarly, a painting post may show a finished unit but also the way attention moves from one project to another, from one army to another, and from one historical period to the next.

As I wrote in Has AI Killed the Blogger Star?, those details cannot easily be reduced to a generic summary.  These details belong to a particular hobby journey and to the individual experiences of the people involved.  A blog can preserve those experiences in a way that is more personal and more durable than a brief social-media post.

In that sense, the blog remains both an archive and a conversation.  Each post records a small part of the hobby, but it also invites readers to respond, contribute their own experiences, and even disagree with my conclusions or decisions.  The comments, correspondence, and remote games that have grown from the blog are as important as the posts themselves.  They demonstrate that wargaming is not merely a solitary activity carried out among shelves of miniatures.  Wargaming is also a means of building connections across distance and sharing enthusiasm with people who may never otherwise meet.

When I began blogging fourteen years ago as a challenge, I did not know whether anyone would read the Palouse Wargaming Journal, much less whether it would still exist fourteen years later.  The wargaming blogosphere has changed considerably since 2012.  Many blogs have disappeared, social media has altered how wargamers share their work, and AI-assisted search is beginning to reshape how people find information online.  Yet the fundamental appeal of the hobby remains unchanged.

There is still satisfaction in painting a unit, studying a campaign, laying out a battlefield, rolling the dice, and discovering what happens when history is placed in the hands of players. There is also value in recording that experience.  Not of value because every game is historically significant or every painted figure is a masterpiece, but because each one forms part of my continuing journey.

Blogging remains my preferred way of sharing that journey.  It provides the time and space to explain not only what happened, but also why it mattered to me.  The Palouse Wargaming Journal continues not only because the hobby remains rewarding, but also because sharing my thoughts and experiences with others makes the hobby better.

Thank you to everyone who has visited the PWJ, left a comment, joined a remote game, offered encouragement, or simply followed along quietly.  Your interest has helped sustain the blog through fourteen years of painting, gaming, research, reflection, and occasional technical frustration.

For now, marching through history in miniature continues.

Edit 11 September:  Even with no (or long delayed) Blogroll widget updates, seeing readers find this post despite the hurdles to overcome is very encouraging!