Since the curious age of nine I have had a strange addiction. Although this particular compulsion is less troubling then my titanic battle with peanut M&Ms I still can’t get the monkey off my back.

Hi, my name is James and I’m a waraholic.

One morning, not long ago, I woke up in a cold sweat, escaping from a reoccurring nightmare, that I am the captive Ottoman Sultan, betrayed by his men and housed in a sumptuous tent. Here, while I sit in my shame among servants that I am no longer free to have executed at will, I wait for my master, the cruel Tamerlane, who captured me years ago on the battlefield. He doesn’t limp into my tent to commiserate, one ruler to another. Rather he comes simply to beat me again and again at the ultimate game of wits, the head-to-head struggle of one mind against the other over a table of tokens, given life only by our commands…

What does this mean? That I will die of a heart attack while trying to roll a six against Napoleon rather than from a life of M&M abuse? I don’t know. I no longer care. I just want to challenge that smart dude upstairs to a weekend long battle over a tabletop—and cut him out of supply just when he thinks he’s got me boxed in…

Such are the afflictions of the war-geeks among us. I was once an avid war-gamer and even designed a few. For the past decade I have mostly avoided getting sucked into these simulated wars as it impinges on my writing time. But I do occasionally have the odd contribution to make to the hobby, and this is where it’s headed, to the End of the Internet.

It might be the sport of kings, and now presidents. But we can still build our virtual pyramid of skulls with a little opposition from a friend.

-James, 3/29/2012