In an episode of Mork & Mindy, Mork is visited by his Orkan superior, who has the body of a 10-year-old boy (for reasons I don’t remember). They divert themselves with a game of Orkan Checkers, which is played on a board of two rectangles, black and red, with a single white piece the size of a saucer. After thinking a long while, Mork opens by moving the piece from the red field to the black. “Check,” he says. Mork’s visitor makes (apparently) the only move available to him: he moves the piece from black back to red and declares victory. [youtube]
Replace the single white disk with a gross of metal figures and you have miniatures gaming in essence. In such a game, strategy, tactics, even luck are irrelevant. The outcome is determined entirely by the initial placement of pieces on the field. Miniatures gamers are animated by the same neural gangleon that motivates bug collectors, not armchair generals. I gather that there are some who would “improve” our favorite passtime by prettying-up the figures; I can’t cotton to such a womanish point of view.
