From Dave Chandler
I thought I would drop you a line to say how much I enjoyed THE COURIER, Vol. II No. 1 -- just received -- and also to congratulate you sincerely on winning the HG Wells Award. Very well done.
Thank you for coming to my defense on p. 18 against the claims of one Kevin Zucker and the board game designers! I was amused to note that I still am occasionally mentioned in US War Gaming articles: it is all of 14 years now since CAMPAIGNS OF NAPOLEON just appeared, and it still sells on both sides of the Atlantic.
I'm not quite sure what Mr. Zucker means by saying I am "working backwards" unless he feels I start from the established facts and then seek to impose a pattern on them -- which I dare say is true after a fashion as the historian does study facts and then analyze his findings! I'm not sure how else one could proceed -- unless by "inspiration" (which you very effectively described as the means Wellington employed to reach critical points a-la-Zucker).
Keep up the good work of resisting the insidious tide of "Fantasy." I don't manage to play many War Games these days, but when I do, they are historical and miniature based.
Thank you for your kind words. I must point out that it was Ned Zuparko who came to your defense in the article, though I agree wholeheartedly with him. Kudos from you for THE COURIER is praise indeed and more than balances out all the negative letters that we may get for the next several years.
Pleased
I'm very pleased with the resurrected Courier, I recently began gaming with miniatures and the Courier inspired me to expand into ancients I particularlv like your reports of actual games. It makes me feel better to know I'm not the only one who put his foot in it.
Theme
I'm looking forward to this volume's theme of the 7 Years War. Also I'm curious as to whether Napoleonics will be a theme in the near future (perhaps Vol. III?)
Napoleonics is a basic theme throughout all the issues of THE COURIER. The THEME EDITOR, expert in the field, puts together a congruent series of articles intended to introduce the reader to a relatively little-gamed period. - ED.
More and more I feel like a member of an
endangered species. If you are reading this you
are more than likely one also. We are historical
gamers using miniature figures. Everytime I go
to another convention I see fewer and fewer of
us. Instead all I seem to see are the fantasy and
board gainers. When will it stop? Are we going
nowhere in our hobby? Will historical gaming
cease in a couple of years?
I, personally, do not think any of these
possibilities will come about. There will be
historical gaming for a very long time. I'm not
saying that in a year or two wargaming will
surge to the forefront of the gaming industry, I'm
saying we'll still be there.
It is getting harder every year to stay in the
hobby as price increases have become as sure
as death and taxes and the major figure
companies drop more and more lines. Decent
rules and hobby related items are becoming
scarce. Magazines such as THE COURIER are
few and far between and clubs are as hard to
find as are the police when you are being
mugged. It's enough to make most people throw
up their hands and say "To hell with it. I don't
need the grief!"
The thing is that we are not "most" people. If
there is one common denominator in our hobby
it is that we are all passionately in love with our
hobby. It's not just something we do to pass the
time or meet girls. It's a compulsion to know
more and more about certain time periods in
history and its related military events. We are all
fascinated with military history and battles.
The reasons for this fascination vary from
gamer to gamer but the fascination is there just
the same. We all pour over military histories and
battle accounts. When two wargamers get
together you can bet that sooner or later
(usually soonerj the conversation will get
around to the last battle that one or both of them
has had. How many of us have wives or
girlfriends that make us promise on a stack of
bibles not to discuss wargaming if we are
getting together with another gamer and his
wife or girlfriend?
Now with all this enthusiasm in us we just have to try and convert everyone we meet. Don't we all show off our armies to anyone who will look at them? Don't we all talk a blue streak if someone expresses any interest in what we're talking about? Sure we do. There is no denying it. We all act, at times, like priests trying to convert heathens to the true religion. It can't be helped. When you truly love something you try and convince the world that it's fun. And, just like priests when a convert has been made, we feel even more convinced we're right.
The merchants of gloom in the hobby and
even some of the figure manufacturers have
recently been telling us that our hobby is dying
out and pretty soon there will not be any more
historical gamers around. We even witnessed
recently, at Origins 80, cardboard pieces
winning the HG Wells Award as the line of
Miniature Figures. On the surface this looks
pretty bad for us. Maybe we should all sell our
armies, buy a copy of D&D, load up on fantasy
figures and join the crowd. Maybe a cloak or a
suit of armour and a dungeon-master T-shirt so
people will not think we're novices. How does
that sound?
Well, gentle readers, that sounds awful to
me. Why should I give up what love doing or
even get depressed about what's going on.
How many true wargamers have you heard of
lately giving up the hobby? Those that have left
the hobby were never really bitten. Those left in
the hobby really care about what they are
doing. We see no reason to change or yield to
the current craze. Do not forget that we were
around before fantasy came along and we'll
still be there after it has leveled out. Just think
for a second. If everyone is into fantasy why
did THE COURIER win the H.G. Wells award?
Now it's going to be difficult in the coming
months. We'll have to grit our teeth as our
favorite store drops his historical figures and
brings in fantasy figures. The figure companies
will drop lines and cut back on other lines. Paint
and brushes will go up in price as will historical
figures. This is all very hard to take for sure but
that's the way it's going to be. We won't be able
to get the more exotic figures anymore and if
we can we'll have to pay through the nose.
So what? Six or seven years ago we
couldn't get them either so we converted
figures. If figures get expensive do some
comparison shopping. Convert figures or wait
until you can make a deal on second hand
figures. I agree with THE COURIER. Do not pirate
or buy pirate figures. All that accomplishes is
convincing the figure companies they were right
in dropping their historical ranges. Remember
the figure companies are in business to make
money and the money right now is in fantasy.
The figure companies also know that the historical markets are a constant sale. What I
mean by constant sale is that we are always adding to our armies or making new ones. They know that when fantasy calms down the historical market will still be there.
I am not terribly discouraged by all that's going on. When I first started gaming there was
very little available for me and now it's reverting back to where it used to be. I'll get used to it. I'll still play as often as I can and Yes I'll still try and convert everyone I meet to try wargaming. I noted with interest an article entitled "Lead
Prices Continue to Come Down" in "The Courier
Dispatch" column of the July-August, 1980 issue.
As a manufacturer of military miniatures, I
follow the metals market on a daily basis which
enables my firm to buy casting metal at the best
market price. The article stated that the cost of
lead has decreased 35% since the first of the
year and also urged manufacturers to give their
customers a break
I would like to place the quoted 35% decrease
in proper perspective. I know of no quality
wargame miniatures on the market that are made
totally from lead since pure lead gives poorly
detailed castings that bend very easily. Virtually
all miniatures contain tin in varying amounts
ranging from about 20% to 36%. Tin alloyed with
lead provides fine detail and sufficient firmness to
create castings of the quality demanded for
oftenhandled wargame figures.
The price of tin has fluctuated this year from a
high near $9.00/lb. to a low of around $8.30/lb.
with the current cost around $8.65/lb. For the
purpose of this explanation I will not include the
alloying charge, but only the base cost of the
metal. Using the high of $.55/lb for lead and the
current price of tin, a casting alloy consisting of
20% tin/80% lead would cost $2.17/lb. Using the
year's low of $.40/lb. for lead and the current
price of tin, the same alloy would cost $2.05/lb., a
decrease of 5.5% which is significantly less than
the misleading 35% decrease quoted for lead alone.
Thus the cost of metal used in an average 15-20mm figure is reduced less than 1/10 of one cent per figure, making the cost of the figure based on metal price change by itself insignificant. The primary cost factors that have forced figure prices to their current level are the steadily rising cost of labor, equipment, advertising, insurance, fuel for melting furnaces (up 40% this year alone), plastic packaging materials (up 50% this past year), etc. Even minor items are affected - the cost of piano wire used in our spears, ramrods, and flagstaffs has risen over 200% this past year! Until this current inflationary cost spiral is controlled, I seriously doubt that the cost of producing wargame miniatures will decrease in the future.
I hope my letter explains to Your readers the
plight of the miniature manufacturer in holding
increasing costs to a minimum. Many of us are
also hobbyists and wargamers at heart and are
doing our best to promote our great hobby!
I don't want to be unkind to Arnold
Hedricks, but his article "Armor Penetration
Made Easy" shows that a little knowledge
is a dangerous thing. it may seem a little
obvious, but the easy way to find out what
armour a gun and ammunition combination will
penetrate is to set up a sheet of armour and
shoot at it. The results for all the gun and
ammunition combinations of WW2 have long
been published, so attempts at calculating them
seem a little perverse.
On close examination, it turns out that he is
using a formula for APHE ammunition
versus face hardened armour and is
manipulating K as a "fiddle fador" to bring his
results back into line. As face hardened armour
was confined to a few marks of Panzer 3 and
4, and APHE was far from the most common
ammunition type of the war, it is easy to see
why this should be necessary. His table for K
also assumes that the reduction in velocity for
distance travelled varies only with muzzle
velocity.
In fact, the reduction is less for larger
calibre weapons, and very much larger for
APCR ammunition. He does not consider the
effed of armour piercing caps which
became standard very early, and probably
confuses them with ballistic caps, the effed of
which on reducing velocity drop he does not
specify.
Other remarkable errors are that he
thinks that squeeze bore and AP40 shot were
APDS and not APCR, that that APDS is less
affected bY armour slope than APHE rather
than more, that HEP and HESH which are the
standard NATO anti-personnel ammunition for
tanks have no anti-personnel effect at all, that
spin-stabilising a HEAT round reduces its
accuracy rather than its penetration, that nearly
all rather than practically no modern ammunition
uses ballistic guns, and that the British and
Germans are busy designing smoothbore guns,
whereas in fact Britain is sticking to rifled guns
and the German smoothbore is in service.
While full information is now available on
WW2 penetrations, that on post-war weapons
has to be scratched for so it might seem at first
sight that the formula might be the answer
there. Unfortunately, this is not so, since no
post-war ammunition has a low enough velocity
to fit into the K table which extends only up to
3,600 fps. This is about half current muzzle
velocities, and was already well exceeded by
6pdr APDS by the time of the Normandy
landings.
There is also a much easier way of
obtaining results at ranges intermediate
between two known results, the graph. Except
in the case of small calibre APCR, the plot is
invariably a straight line. I am naturally pleased to see anything on
the 7 Year War, it is a favourite of mine as
you know. The article was good and informa
tive but tends to give the impression that
battles in this period were small and those
in the Napoleonic period much larger. There
were as many small engagements in the
Napoleonic Wars as any other and some of
the larger confrontations in the 7 Year War
were quite as big as any large Napoleonic
one.
Now as for all line in 7 Years War, and
no columns, troops all through the 18th
century
and before manouvered in column and only
shook out into line when the battle was im
minent. Except for the French who advocated
and used columns off and on for attack
throughout the 18th century, column was very
little used for attack, except for storming beaches
and similar most bloody affairs.
The reason was, that as soon as infantry
were equipped with a reliable musket and a
decent bayonet, "linear tactics" were introduced
and in fact continued right into the present
century. All that linear tactics meant was that
armies so disposed their troops to get the
maximum effect from the weapon they carried,
and this meant lines -- at first 4. then 2, and so on
until one gets to an American Civil War skirmish
line -- but it is still linear tactics, and as long as
the principal instrument was a man armed with a
weapon which could only be fired in one
direction at a time then it would stay "linear
tactics."
The attack in column was really an
aberration, brought about by the lack of training
of the early Revolutionary infantry, who were
short on drill and musketry but heavy on
adrenalin and patriotism. The Continental armies
that the French ran over had not evolved in
many years and tended to follow slavishly
the Prussian type drill as an end in itself: so
they stood out in plain view were hit by
skirmishers and artillery so that they were
already shaken and disordered and were ready
to run when the column came up to them.
This is why, in our 1685/1845 Rules (Ed
Note: WRG rules) we say that infantry other
than British who are not in column or cover are
shaken if theY have a French infantry column
advancing on them within 100 paces. The
morale effect is all important, apart from any
preliminary softening-up.
The British were generally better trained,
especially in musketry, and were usually not
impressed, and if positioned by Wellington were
kept back until the crucial moment covered by
their own skirmishers who took the sting out of
their French counterparts. In later years when
the Continental opponents of Napoleon had
learnt a few things the French still persisted
with column attacks, now used in a battering
ram fashion and the "art" developed into a
slugging match. That could be yet another
reason why I prefer the 7 Year War!
THE HISTORICAL WARGAMER, AN ENDANGERED SPECIES?
LEAD PRICES MISLEADING
Stone
Mountain Military MiniaturesFORMULA OR FACT?
IT'S ALWAYS BEEN LINEAR
TACTICS
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