THE VETERAN WARGAMER

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The Veteran Wargamer is a wargaming podcast run by Jay

Arnold, a US Army serviceman and wargamer. The podcast is a mix of wargaming content and issues affecting serving and retired armed forces personnel. It’s probably the most fantasy/ sci-fi friendly of the podcasts on this list, but there’s a lot here for the historical wargamer. Arnold has a nice easy conversational style and doesn’t tend to try and shoehorn his material into a pre-determined time slot, so episodes can be anything from forty minutes to two hours and they are varied.

My top picks (in no particular order) for the Veteran Wargamer are:

Episode 23: Campaign Ribbin’ A talk on the nature of Wargames Campaigns with Henry Hyde, who is currently writing a book on the subject, which if it is as good as his previous Wargames Compendium will be a very good indeed.

Episode 66: Dervish in a Skirmish

Craig Cartmell of The Ministry of Gentlemanly Warfare and author of In Her Majesties Name discuss skirmish wargaming and

Cartmell’s own career as a rules author. This episode demonstrates Arnold admirable gift of silence as he lets Cartmell talk, fluently and to great effect, for about forty minutes without interruption. Absolute cracker of an episode - notwithstanding Arnold’s immoral, unwholesome and soon (if there’s any justice) to be illegal affection for 15mm figures.

Episode 67: Wargaming Ethics Roundtable

This is an unusual episode. Arnold hosts a discussion of the ethics of wargaming and it’s worth listening to. Not much I can I say that will do justice to the substance of the episode but I think everyone will find something to disagree with here.