New Colonial Editor:
Steve Winter

Dispatch News

by Victor Gregoire

Our new colonial Period editor has been involved in game publishing since 1981, when he gave up newspaper reporting and took a job at TSR, Inc. He stayed there for the next 16 years, editing, developing, and designing role-playing games, paper wargames, and family boardgames. In 1997 he became a full-time freelance writer and game designer. Since then has worked on role-playing and computer games and written magazine articles, short fiction, and nonfiction, including Destination Publishing’s “The War on Terrorism Fact Book.”

In his early years at TSR, some of the old-time heavyweights from the Guidon Games days--Gary Gygax, Jeff Perrin, and others--still gathered in the company basement to play “Chainmail” and “Cavaliers and Roundheads” on the big sand table. The moment when miniatures really cast their spell over Steve, however, came in 1982 when he encountered Yaquinto’s “The Sword & the Flame” and Ral Partha started producing 25mm Zulu War figures. The combination of fun, fast, simple rules and beautiful, affordable miniatures for a war that starred Stanley Baker and Michael Caine was more than he could resist. Before long, he was hosting Zulu War games at conventions all over the Midwest.

Now, Steve’s collection has expanded to the Sudan, Old West gunfights, the Plains Indian wars and Apache wars, the Northwest Frontier, Darkest Africa, and Central America. He also collect WW2 in microarmor and 28mm, 30 Years War, and medievals. DBA is another favorite, his only sortie into 15mm.

No matter what other periods distract him, he says, he always come back to Victorian colonials. The romance, exotic settings, clashing cultures, uneven technology, lopsided forces, and exciting small-unit games are what makes the period his clear favorite. Steve has built a colonial gaming website, The Colonial Angle (http://hometown.aol.com/theangl/ColonialAngle).

Steve asks that you help him in expanding our colonial pages - if you have something to contribute, or even just a colonial suggestion, please send him e-mail or letter. Better yet, if you live in Seattle, as he now does, invite him over for a game!

Courier Dispatch News About the Hobby.

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