I am indebted to Mike for sending these scans of front and back covers and order sheet from the order pads produced by Shire Publishing as an accessory to their range of wargame books, including Arthur Taylor's Rules for Wargames, and John Tunstill's (name spelt wrong on the Shire list) Discovering Wargames.
John Tunstill also produced order pads among the wargames accessories available from Miniature Warfare magazine. The advert from April 1970 seems to sum up one philosophy of 1970's wargaming - "negates all argument". How things have changed (or not).
4 comments:
They do look old.
I have a set of wargame rules called "Rules for wargames" Napoleonic Warfare (third edition) by T.J Halsall & A.M.Roth..also 1970´s...if you want scans let me know.
Cheers
Paul
Arthur Taylor - yes - I used to have the little Shire book. As I recall, Mr Taylor was very strongly of the opinion that dice have no place in wargaming, and he had a set of rules which were, in their way, as rigid as chess. No problem with that - I have myself used chess as a shining example of some of the things which wargames strive to be, but I also recall that some of my scariest involvements with wargames clubs had a lot to do with games where the people who knew the rules best (particular the authors of said rules) always won the battles - or at least they won the arguments which the battles turned into.
In my foolish years I got rid of the Shire book - I'd be very happy to get a read of it now, I can tell you.
Another nostalgia hit - great stuff, Clive - thanks yet again.
Tony
Hi Clive,
Wonderful to see those old order sheets again, I can remember them! Anything connected to John Tunstill interests me as it was a visit as a young teenager to his shop 'Soldiers'in Kennington SE London that got me hooked on wargaming and everything 'toy soldiers' (as John always called them). I visited the shop several times later and once sold a large collection of ECW Minifigs to him. What I recall is that when I phoned him to enquire about the sale he made an offer which I thought was quite acceptable, but when I took them up he looked at them and upped the offer by 50%, I was pretty stunned at his integrity! I also recall that he spoke beautifully, reminded me of Edward Fox the actor!
I had his Shire book 'Discovering Wargames' but sold it about 10 years ago, I can't tell you how much I regret that now. The pictures were wonderful.
Great blog as ever, lots of nostalgia :-)
Cheers,
Lee.
I still have my copies of both books, Arthur Taylor's Rules for Wargaming and John Tunstill's Discovering Wargames; both a bit the worse for wear, but I still go back to them ocasionally for ideas. They were the first sets of 'commercial rules' I ever played with. MsFoy is correct, Mr Taylor's rules did not use dice at all, firing and melee results were based on casualty 'norms', bonuses and results tables, morale was based on unit morale ratings, and distances were all in millimetres - a novelty in the early 1970s. Mr Tunstill favoured millimetres as well, but used dice - average ones, which were difficult to find.
Adrian
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