Wargaming Campaigns

I'm living a kind of "vintage wargaming nostalgia" so I started searching and I found the web site of John Curry, a Gentleman and editor who is building the history of wargame project. A place were you can find a lot of wargaming classics of Fathers of Wargaming like Charles Grant, Tony Bath, Paddy Griffith or Donald Featherstone. I purchased this book because I allways have been fixed with the desire of wargaming a true campaign with lines of comunication, attrition, flank marches... all the things you don't have in a "common" wargame.

The book has all this things and much more. It comes from an era where wargamers were WWII veterans (Featherstone fought in the Cassino campaign), teachers or historians: experienced wargamers that played with tie and suits! Awesome! Those gentlemen only had Airfix plastics as a cheap source of miniatures. In some cases they even cast their own miniatures.

Reading the book convinces you that everything is possible and accurate trully simulated with a little of imagination. Really, a good wargame doesn't need to be eyecandy or have a perfect layout. The thing is simulation. Obviouslly is better to have a model road than a chalk road but the budget doesn't have to limit you.

The book was written in 1970 and while some ideas are really repeated or updated in rules, magazines or websites, there are ideas that really thrilled me, like the "Matchbox method" to play a campaign without an umpire or the way in which lines of communication are simulated.

The book is a collection of ideas (and some of them really usefull) to convert a map campaign into a tabletop game. But it doesn't stop here, it also has a collection of 16 example campaigns ranging from a Viking raid to WWII. Especially interesting for me were the Agincourt Campaign (Chapter 15) and the Napoleonic Corps Campaign (chapter 18).

Well, to sum up: 227 black and white pages with few pictures and a lot of good ideas and suggestions for only 12.95 pounds. It's a really good volume for people who don't like to be held by blockbuster rules that "gives all you need" but feel like designed for championship.

Take a look at John Curry website to know more about the History of Wargaming project and to purchase some classics:

http://www.wargaming.co/books/homepage.htm