Vintage Wargaming: February 2010

Saturday, 27 February 2010

Paddy Griffith on Napoleonic Siege Wargames: Miniature Warfare & Model Soldiers, August 1972

I have always been fascinated by sieges, first through Christopher Duffy's book Fire & Stone; then inspired by Ron Miles's articles in Battle magazine; and also through reading R C Sherriff's The Siege of Swayne Castle.

Here are the thoughts of the other PG (Paddy Griffith) on the subject, from Miniature Warfare in 1972.

Thursday, 25 February 2010

Pigeons in Warfare

For all the friends of Speckled Jim, an article from Miniature Warfare of November 1970 on this unjustly neglected subject.

Miniature Warfare magazine: year indexes

I thought it might be a useful reference to post the following indexes of articles published in Miniature Warfare. I have only been able to find these for four of the six years of publication. The idea is if anyone remembers an article they may now be able to find it. If you see something in one of these indexes you would like me to post, let me know.

I've not been able to find indexes for year three and four - not sure whether John Tunstill didn't do them, or whether I have just missed them.

Sunday, 7 February 2010

The War Game to End All War Games!

John C Candler reproduced this article in Miniature Wargames du Temps de Napoleon in 1964, having taken it with permission from Don Featherstone's Wargamer's Newsletter for September 1962. In turn the Don was reprinting it from its original appearance in the Bulletin of the British Model Soldier Society for January 1953.

Gerard de Gre and the Model Generals' Club: Melee Deployment Matrix and Artillery Fire Matrix

Included as an addendum in John C Candler's Miniature Wargames du Temps de Napoleon were these two rules meachanisms from the Model Generals' Club. The first (MDM) was adopted in July 1963, and the second (AFM) in October 1963.

John C Candler: Napoleonique

Harry Pearson and Richard Black's Vintage 20mil (to which as always I am indebted) states that in Miniature Wargames du temps de Napoleon John C Candler promised further sets of rules which sadly never followed. I assume this refers to this intriguing page on Napoleonique, which seemed to foreshadow later wargames marketing efforts and would have been very innovative at the time.

If anyone knows any more about Napoleonique, and whether they did indeed see the light of day, or perhaps was even involved in their play testing, it would be great to hear anything you can add..

John C Candler: Miniature Wargames du temps de Napoleon

This famous set of early wargames rules was published by the author, John C Candler, in the States in 1964. They were presented as printed sheets in an A5 size green ring binder. Illustrated with pictures of Scruby 30mm figures, they ran to 120 pages, including rules, historical notes, biographies of Blucher, Archduke Charles, Nelson and Wellington, and notes on suppliers. They include sections on war at sea and international wars. Charmingly it includes the name and addresses of all the wargamers the author knew of, and several items which will be included in later posts.

Wednesday, 3 February 2010

Iwaszko's Terrain, from Miniature Warfare May 1968

John Tunstill's Miniature Warfare ACW Campaign in Ireland Part 4

Sources, permissions and editorial policy

This site uses a range of sources to provide access to information about wargaming, for the most part from the 50s, 60s, and 70s. These sources are mainly paper based, may be ephemeral (catalogues, price lists, painting instructions etc), and in general are not easily accessible elsewhere.

I am particularly grateful to Don Featherstone and to John Tunstill, who have both given their permission for the reproduction of materials from their ground breaking magazines, respectively Wargamer's Newsletter and Miniature Warfare (and later Miniature Wafare and Model Soldiers).

Where possible I have made efforts to obtain permission for reproduction of any material covered by copyright.

Some of the source material is typescript, may be fragile, and in some cases to scan or photograph it may require the removal of staples and the destruction of the integrity of the original publication.

I have tried to deal with this in a number of ways, scanning or copying and adding as an image, or scanning for optical character recognition to provide text based posts. Where the content is more important than the aesthetic look of the original context, I have also taken the opportunity to make minor edits and layout changes to make the material work better on the screen. In these cases I may have edited for sense, corrected spelling or punctuation (including capitalization and the removeal of the wargamer's apostrophe). In doing this I recognise the advantage of working in an electronic format over the original editor working with typescript).

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