“You shall not pass!” The wonderful Jim Getz channels Gandalf on the bridge at Khazad-dûm!
One of the joys of producing Battlechat is that I get the chance to invite onto the show people from far and wide, some of them familiar faces at shows I attend, and others whose names have been known to me for years but whom I have never had the pleasure of actually meeting.
Today’s guest is just such a person: Jim Getz, who first got bitten by the wargaming bug back in 1961, the year I was born. Not only was his introduction to the hobby dramatic, as you will hear, but he also went straight to the top of the wargaming crowd as it existed in the USA at the time, befriending the great Duke Seifried, a renowned figure in American wargaming who transformed the hobby there almost single-handedly over several decades. In his circle of gaming friends he counted all the top luminaries in US historical gaming and some who went on to earn top reputations in fantasy gaming too, and several British legends including Don Featherstone, Paddy Griffith and David Chandler.
As well as talking about his great friend “Uncle Duke”, who sadly passed away in 2018, and learning a great deal about the development of the hobby on the other side of ‘The Pond’, I quiz Jim about his own wargaming passions which centre primarily around the Napoleonic era and rules writing. Jim has an engineering background and loves to crunch the numbers and understand the detail, though we learn some surprising things about his own gaming preferences!
Jim has written rulesets that have had a big impact on gaming in the USA and beyond, including Napoleonique and, with Scott Bowden, several editions of the monumental Empire rules which have a place in wargaming history as some of the most highly detailed and, as far as players are concerned, ‘Marmite’ rules ever created. We also discover that he admires TooFatLardies, which will delight some of my patrons!
So, join me in the delightful company of this highly intelligent and quick-witted gentleman of the hobby, as wonderful an ambassador as you could hope for representing the hobby as it is conducted ‘over there’, brimming over with anecdotes and information that will, I am certain, be an eye-opener for the majority of gamers ‘over here’.
Henry
Duke Seifried and the Development of American Miniature Wargaming, Ed. John Curry and Jim Getz
Empire v.3 on BoardGameGeek forum
The History of Wargaming Project
The War Room video on World of Chaldea featuring Duke Seifried
Eureka’s Toy Town Soldiers range
What A Tanker from TooFatLardies
Jim shows me one of the original packets of ‘Napoleonettes’ 25mm miniatures in a bubble pack, as marketed by Duke Seifried back in the 1960s and 70s.
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