Greetings Milord's and Ladies: I do apologize for being gone for such a long time. It seems a trip to the Holy Land, even on paper takes a goodly amount of time. This issue will contain the basic version of The First Crusade. It will be posted on MagWeb and probably printed in The Courier Magazine. This version though of the supplement is not complete. The complete version contains battles and scenarios for all of the major engagements as well as the army lists for the six main countries at war.

Over the last year or so since DOB was released a number of revues have come out on the game. Two out of three were fair and in many cases favorable including Mag Webs. I must however take issue here with the revue in The Courier by Terry Gore, editor of Saga. His words in many cases were fair but in places they carried a double meaning to myself and many others who read it. Mr. Gore implied and (I will paraphrase him) that the game (DOB) would appeal (only?) to Fantasy Role players and Warhammer players, and would make an excellent tool for converting them. Noting the overly large amount of "role playing" in the game and the over emphasis on leadership. I would like to think that the fact that his own game called - "Medieval Warfare" that had just been photo copied for sale at Historicon 97 did not bais of his revue! Incidentally an intermediate photo copied version of DOB was releases in the early 1990's by myself under the name "Medieval Warfare". Hmmmm.

I can only comment to Mr. Gore by saying that a rule set cannot have to much leadership or role playing in it for this period of history. It takes these types of rules to bring out the flavor unique to the period. Otherwise you have the same type of wargame that we have all played for thirty some odd years. These games are all good but none of them have captured the flavor of the period like DOB does. Finally, having watched two games of Medieval Warfare at Cold Wars 98, I can include Mr. Gores in the above statement of same old same old!

There, well I've slung my snowball now I can climb back on my white charger and trundle off into the sunset. I really enjoy hearing from the readers so please drop me a line when you can.

New E-mail Address

Please note the new address: ceparker@javanet.com