The hobby brings war buffs and history enthusiasts together to stage tiny, tabletop battles using painstakingly painted soldier, landscape and weapon figurines. Sometimes players choose to reenact real wars, such as Carman's favored French and Indian War of the mid-18th century, but sometimes fact mixes with fiction, when, for example, dragons get involved in the Battle of Gettysburg or German troops come out victorious at Normandy.
"It helps people step out of character and be somebody they're not," said Carman, a former Army sergeant who was introduced to miniature historical wargaming about 20 years ago. "They can be Napoleon, they can be Genghis Khan … they can be a Roman general. Once people start doing it, it makes them very interested in history."
But no matter the war, winners are determined by a precise system of measurements and calculations based on the severity of the figurines' actions had these actions been undertaken in a real-life battle. Players roll die to determine how far they can move on a "terrain table," the table-top set in which their figurines move.
Last month, for approximately the 14th year in a row, Carman attended Historicon, an annual gathering of the Eastern chapter of the Historical Miniature Gaming Society in Lancaster, Pa.
There, to approximately 4,000 wargamers, he debuted "Our Tomahawks Dripped Blood," a game he invented about the French and Indian War.
"After you game for quite a while you get a feel for what can and cannot work," Carman said. "These are games that are not copyrighted. I took a bit from one game, a bit from another and came up with my own rules."
Carman, who generally uses inch-tall figurines in his gaming and owns several-thousand-dollars' worth of the hobby's paraphernalia, including lead and pewter soldier figurines and miniature weapons and buildings, regularly meets or invites to his Laurel home friends and fellow wargamers for staged tabletop battles that can last anywhere from 90 minutes to eight hours.
"What appeals to a lot of people is … unlike board games, which have a hexagonal grid, or a little bitty piece of plastic, you create your own terrain," said Carman, one of whose terrains at home is an 1850s New Mexico desert town made on a base of tan-colored bed-sheet. "It can be as simple as getting an old Army blanket … and putting a couple trees or houses down, or you can get extremely complicated."
Friend and fellow wargamer Bill Frye said Carman is a master terrain-maker.
"He built the best terrain I've ever seen," said Frye, a Laurel resident who has been wargaming for 37 years. "He built terrain where you can't see what the other person is doing."
In addition to wargaming, Carman, who grew up in Cleveland and moved to Laurel in 1990, enjoys reading historical non-fiction and studying theology. He has three children with wife Rita Carman: Andrew Carman, 24, and fraternal twins Heather and Christopher Carman, both 18.
His eldest, now a sergeant in the Army, said he frequently helped his father paint gaming figurines when he was growing up.
"It got me interested in the military … it was much more social than playing video games," Andrew Carman said. "Some people have things that release stress. They go to the gym or they do [other things]. For my dad it's always been miniatures. Just to sit down in a quiet room with some miniatures and a paint brush … that's his way of relaxing."
E-mail Anath Hartmann at ahartmann@gazette.net
