MODELING THE ANCIENT AND WONDERFUL ARTWORK OF METAGAMING  - CLICK ON ANY OF THE ILLUSTRATIONS TO GO TO THAT SUBJECT. -

I won't get into the history of Metagaming (or more properly, Metagaming Concepts) except to say that when I was but a wee lad, I cut my tactical wargaming teeth on the various "Microgame" offerings by Howard Thompson and his Austin, Texas based wargame company.  Metagaming was responsible for such great little sword and sorcery games as "Melee," "Wizard," and "The Fantasy Trip," all rivals to TSR's wildly popular (at that time) "Dungeons and Dragons" series of fantasy role playing games ... but what endeared me to Metagaming were several little science fiction tactical wargame offerings like "OGRE" and "GEV" (produced by Steve Jackson who would later take his toys and start a very successful gaming company of his own in the early 1980's).  Other intellectual offerings were "Rivets" (a whimsical game where the robots continued to fight the third world war long after the humans had died out) and "Artifact" (Man's discovery of an alien artifact on the Moon and what happens when the extraterrestrial owners eventually show up to claim what belongs to them).

These games were small in format, about the size of a paperback book and roughly as thick as a folded travel map.  Each game came with a simple 30 page (more or less) rule book, a sheet of cardboard playing counters and a map.  Most of the early stuff was severely limited in its color offerings due to the limitations of price and printing technology at the time.  It wasn't until Steve Jackson offered "OGRE" and "GEV" through his own company that we got beautiful, painted full color maps.  Still, the concepts were interesting and the artwork, limited to black and white artist drawings, often worked hard to invoke the imagination to the core of the game.

Looking back now on these games and reviewing some of the artwork, I found that I wanted to build some of the science fiction offerings that once graced the pages of Metagaming's little rulebooks.  One of my favorite Metagaming artists was Winchell Chung who drew the concept art for "OGRE," "GEV," and other greats like the often overlooked "WarpWar."  Winchell's designs are beautiful yet simple ... a description given more as a compliment than anything derogatory ... and as such, his designs lend their selves well to modeling and scratch building as you will see.

What a strange subject ... modeling designs first published as simple two color line drawings over 30 years ago in the rulebooks to almost forgotten wargames.  Well, that's me.  I like to do what no one else has done before and as far as I know, no one has ever built the "spindle" ship from WarpWar or a classic "G.E.V." from the game of the same name.  Now, let's see if my mediocre modeling skills, tarnished by two decades worth of rust and atrophy, can breathe new life into these ancient designs.

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