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A Tale of Two Fusiliers.
The Kapiti Fusiliers owes its existence to an online YahooGroup known as the Friday Night Fusiliers. Roly Hermans describes the connection between the two Fusiliers groups.
The Friday Night Fusiliers began in 2000 as an online discussion group between several New Zealand wargamers who lived in Wellington and Paraparaumu. I belonged to some other YahooGroups at that time, and saw how easy it was to set one up. This seemed a good way to organise our occasional games (mainly SYW with Piquet rules at that time), and also have a bit of light-hearted discussion between games.
The name "Fusiliers" was selected because it matched with the words "Friday Night", as it was usually on a Friday when we played our games. Over this period we began using fun ranks prefixed with the word 'Fusilier' (Peter Haldezos began that when he named me Fusilier-General).
In April 2001 we came up with our "logo" using a still shot from the movie "Barry Lyndon".
Above: Logo of the Friday Night Fusiliers -
the same picture was later adapted for the logo of the Kapiti Fusiliers.
Our first non-Wellington member, thus the first who was not able to take part in our actual games, was Michael Barnard, an Australian, who joined us in June 2001. I'm not sure how he came to know about the group, and sadly he seems to have lapsed since. Anyway, he earns the distinction of being our first "virtual" member.
A month later Scott Stensland from Chicago became our first American Fusilier. Again, I'm not sure how he came to hear of us. But I suspect Scott (and Michael before him) found us through YahooGroup's search engine. Another American, Aphilla the Hun, joined us in September, and is still one of our very active virtual members. And in November of that year Chris Packer became our first New Zealand Fusilier who was not based in the Wellington area.
Over time, a few more wargamers from around New Zealand and from overseas countries joined our group. So we were going truly international! Discussion tended to follow two formats - general wargaming discussion involving all Fusiliers, running alongside organisational discussion amongst the local Wellington-based Fusiliers.
We first hit the big-time with several demonstration games our members put on at the Wellington Warlords' "Call To Arms" wargaming convention in 2002. In particular, a reenactment of the AWI Battle of Guilford Courthouse caused a stir in international gaming circles when it was published on the Internet. As a result, we gained some very high-profile wargamers and painters as new Fusiliers.
Above: The Founding Fathers of the Fusiliers,
at their first meeting in June 2003, held in Steve Sands' wargames room
at his Paraparaumu home - Fusiliers Brian Smaller, Bruce Cairns, Steve
Sands, Craig Watterson, Micheal Ellwood, Peter Haldezos, Roly Hermans
and Paul Crouch.
Up till June 2003, the name "Fusiliers" applied only to the online group. However, Fusilier Steve Sands had long harboured a desire to re-establish a proper wargaming club in Parparaumu. So several Fusiliers met at his house and the Kapiti Fusiliers Historic Gaming Club was born. Although this club got a new website of its own - the one you are now looking at - the Fusiliers YahooGroup remained as the discussion venue for the members. However, with the number of non- Wellingtonians on the group by this time, we carried on with our general wargaming discussion as before, rather than restricting it to club business.
The Fusiliers have never been formally organised. With our online group, we did play round with forming national companies, but that was purely for fun in signing off our messages. Ranks are totally fun as well (everyone picks their own rank, and can change it to suit the content of each message). As the founder of this group, I got the sobriquet of Fusilier-General, and my two fellow group moderators became my Fusilier-ADCs. Other than that, no membership forms, fees, AGMs .... just FUN!
