One of the first wargame magazines to widely circulate in the United States was Table Top Talk, published by Jack Scruby. It was that journal that greatly inspired Dick Bryant and me when we first published The Courier. Jack is probably the person most responsible for the initial development of wargaming in the United States. He has honored us by permitting the use of the name of his journal as our column title. We hope we can, in the column and indeed in all of The Courier, carry on a fine tradition begun in Table Top Talk. The Courier is reborn! Perhaps reincarnated is the more appropriate term. What was a locally produced, multilithed cover stock bound, 6" x 9", handcollated creature now emerges as a nationally distributed, offset printed, glossy covered 8 1/2" x 11" giant. The reissue of what has been called the best wargaming magazine in America, if not the world, is indeed long overdue. The hobby is in dire need of a journal with no product to push or "party" line to espouse. We need a vehicle for two-way communication between the gamer and various groups such as figure makers, rule writers, and convention organizers upon whom the gamer is dependent. In the past, The Courier served this function with its "down-home" approach to gaming as a fun yet serious hobby. So you must be wondering what I am up to now that Dick has all of the hard work to do. He has given me a page or so in each issue (as long as the ratings are high), in which I will try to provide advice to beginners and perhaps now and again to "old hands". Hopefully, not the typical basic training/rookie notebook rehash, but some items which will help a person get quickly into gaming or into a new period. I will also be presenting interesting aspects from the history of our hobby. 1970? All too many gamers seem to think everything started in 1970 and are thus unaware of how we arrived at where we are today. What I hope to do is provide a short history of the hobby and point out ways that some early ideas have influenced the development of gaming to yield the present day situation. And perhaps, make some speculation of where we are going. In this effort, I will limit myself to what I call "recreational wargaming" and avoid discussions of early Prussian general staff Kriegspiel, coast artillery games, and military map rides. Also to be avoided is further mention of the Japanese simulation of the Midway operation and the Defense Department's SAGA division for contingency planning. The task, I assume, cannot be entirely one sided, i.e., from me to you. Rather, I expect to receive wiser advice and counter opinion. It is surely the case that a magazine like The Courier must provide ample opportunity for feedback from its readers. If anything can be considered truth in our hobby it is that nobody has the only truth. Anyone who publishes the "definitive" set of rules for a period, or offers a "complete" line of miniatures, or suggests the "only way" or organizing your army (need I go on). From time to time, I hope to offer my opinion and provide a forum for dealing with some issues facing the hobby. Some topics which we might discuss, concern whether realism and playability in rules are alternatives or only poles of a continuum; does anyone really do historical gaming or are we all playing fantasy (perhaps M. A. R. Barker's article in the October 1978, Wargamer's Newsletter puts this topic to rest), how can board games and miniatures interrelate; the desirability of blister packaging vs. individual figures, what is the value of seminars at conventions, is there a need for a strong national organization of gamers; is a national tournament possible (TV rights anyone?); what is the role of a wargaming magazine, and others as they arise. I expect that most readers of this inaugural issue will be among the more experienced gamers of the hobby and thus not too interested in advice to the newly initiated. What I will do therefore, in this first epistle to reach back into the history of wargaming, to show you that some of the "new" ideas you heard at Origins or might have read of recently were not as new as you first thought. If I were to ask you who was the first person to write about recreational wargaming (in English at least), I am sure most would respond with H. G. Wells and would refer to his seminal work Little Wars (which, by the way, has been reprinted three additional times since the original 1913 release). Those so responding would be incorrect. First Published Account What seems to be the first published account of wargaming is by Lloyd Osbourne and appeared in Scribners Magazine, December 1889. While Osbourne is the author, the article is really about the gaming activities of Robert Louis Stevenson (of Treasure Island fame).. Stevenson has not left us a comprehensive set of rules as did Wells, but a number of ideas are presented in the article which show Stevenson to be a serious gamer, perhaps tending to the more complex side of the hobby. Both Stevenson and Wells began with shooting marbles at figures, but Stevenson evolved to "...an intricate Kriegspiel, involving rules, innumerable prolonged arithmetical calculations, constant measuring with foot rules and the throwing of dice..." Earlier, I mentioned that Stevenson presented some ideas which are being discovered today. Let me cite a few examples. Recently, rules and articles have called for increased attention to the logistics of warfare. Supply trains, limits on fire and movement and supply dumps are but a few ramifications of this line of thought. Stevenson was well aware of the need for supply and thus did not allow his armies unlimited supply. He gave each army a number of carts containing 20 printers "em's". Each volley of fire cost an "em" which was taken from the cart and returned to the base. Empty carts too, returned to the base to be replenished. An army might consume a cart and a half of ammunition in an engagement so supply was critical. "A single cavalry brigade if bold and lucky enough, could break the line at the weakest link and by cutting off subsistence of a vast army could force it to fall back in the full tide of success." Fog of War During one of the seminars at Origins 78, a member of the panel suggested what he thought was an innovative way of simulating the "fog of war". The plan was to represent each unit in an army with an index card, adding in a few extra cards to represent faulty intelligence. As the units came into contact, the actual unit would replace the card. While a useful idea, it is not really new, indeed, it is eighty years old. Osbourne writes of Stevenson's game, "numerous numbered cards dotted the country wherever the eye might fall, one perhaps representing a whole army with supports, another a solitary horseman dragging some ammunition, another nothing but a dummy that might paralyze the efforts of a corps, and overawe it into ruinous inactivity." Cavalry scouts would attempt to unmask the true identity of each card and such endeavors might consume a dozen turns. These labors often revealed, according to Osbourne, "but the dimmest outline of the enemy, nothing more than could reasonably be gleaned with a field glass." When each side began to fire, the correct strength was revealed and even then it was possible to withhold fire in order to continue to mask one's strength. Stevenson also introduced morale checks with dice into his games to compensate for the "unshaken courage of troops who faced the most terrific odds and endured defeat upon defeat rarely seen on the actual field." This innovation was short-lived, however, as Stevenson and his opponents were unable to face the "dice box panics" of their heroes and troops were permitted to fight to the bitter end. Yet another device introduced by Stevenson to capture the true scourge of war was sickness. Certain sections of the playing area were deemed unwholesome, in particular rivers and lakes. Men in these areas had to dice for their state of health. But disease, like morale, did not respect the generals' favorite troops, so it too was discarded. Stevenson kept extensive records of his games in the form of mock newspaper accounts in the press of various countries involved in the campaigns. These included the one most associated with Stevenson, The Yallobally Record. In later issues of The Courier (if readers express an interest in that direction), we will print some excerpts of those first battle reports, full of the adventures of Generals Potty, Pipes, Piffle, Stevenson (corpulent with solder, whose frame gave evidence of countless medings), Delafield ("with folded arms, originally a simple artilleryman but destined to reach highest honors"), Napoleon (with flaming clothes, whom fate had bound to a fragile horse-readers note that artillery in these games was with shooting pop-guns) and others. Until next time, good gaming! Back to Table of Contents -- Courier Vol. 1 #1 To Courier List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1979 by The Courier Publishing Company. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com