Dear Craig, I enjoyed Hurricon 97 so much I cannot wait for RECON. Enclosed find my registration and Game Master form. I wish to run games on 17 & 19 April and participate in the Armati tournament on the 18th. I hope Saturday is the day Armati is to be run just as it was at Hurricon. I wish to run Stars & Bars on Friday and the Avalon Hill board game History of the World on Sunday. Jay Wirth's painting article in REBEL YELL #4 was useful to me. I have found the following paint to be excellent for chain mail and swords/axes/spearheads. It is Accent, CROWN JEWELS, #2531,"Princely Pewter". For mail I use it straight out of the bottle. Dries with a steel color that shines on the high points, simply great. For swords, axes, or spearheads I paint the weapon then use silver to go over the cutting edge. It looks good as the cutting edge stands out just a little but not too obvious. I have had many good comments about the effect. Stars & Bars on Mars is my own rules which my friends and I have been running a Victorian campaign with for the last 5 years. As you have now surmised it is Victorian era with Wells and Verne overtones. I hope this doesn't make the purists gasp. I really don't overpower the game with the Sci-Fi part. Please let me know if you think it is appropriate. The rules actually work with or without the infernal devices. I'd like to inform my fellow gamers about a book titled "The First Golden Age of Rocketry". Published by the Smithsonian Press and authored by Frank H. Winter who is the assistant curator for rocketry in the Department of Space History at the National Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C. It is a simply outstanding work if you are at all interested in military rockets from the Napoleonic era through the Victorian. Rockets have been much maligned in wargame rules and articles. Perhaps somewhat justified but not entirely so. The fact is a freshly manufactured Hale rocket taken to the firing range was quite accurate and reliable. The reason they failed so often in the field is because of the storage and transportation they had to undergo especially in the far flung reaches of the British empire. The poor transportation caused the propellant to loosen which caused irregular burning which of course caused irregular flight. Poor storage caused the saltpeter in the gunpowder propellant to attract moisture which caused poor burning of the propellant and erratic flight. In the first half of the 19th century rockets equaled or exceeded the range of cannon and had no recoil which was very useful aboard ship. Small boats with rocket launchers were used extensively in the Crimea. Rockets were also less expensive than other artillery. Improvements in metallurgy & the technology of cannons during the last half of the century doomed the gunpowder rocket. Their main purpose was to be the artillery in terrain where the guns of the day could not go. The book notes that world wide, commanders again and again requisitioned rockets. They were not the complete and miserable failures as some wargame rules would have you believe. British rockets smashed a Russian column in Crimea. In 1814 at Bladensburg rockets caused the 5th & 24th Baltimore Regiments of militia to run away giving the British a clear march into Washington. The Abyssinian King Theodore watching rockets being fired against his troops stated, "What a terrible weapon - who can fight against it?" Whereupon he watched the rest of the battle in silence. This is the point I am getting to: MORALE. I use morale rules whereby when militia, cavalry or native type armies are first fired on by rockets they must make a check. If they pass then they have no great fear of rockets. If they fail then for the rest of the game they have severe morale penalties when fired on by rockets. Regardless of the accuracy the psychological effect could be great. Countries with Major Rocket Establishments: Denmark, Austria, Poland, Russia, France, Sweden, Switzerland. Countries with Minor Rocket establishments: Germany, The Netherlands, Greece, Portugal, Italy, Belgium, Spain, Hungary. Rockets were also used in the U. S., Latin America, India, China, and the Middle East. I hope this is of some interest and use to my fellow gamers. Thanx for a great convention. I haven't enjoyed myself so much since some of the old Skirmishes. I hope to be attending your conventions for many years to come. Sincerely, Mike Smolik Back to Rebel Yell No. 9 Table of Contents Back to Rebel Yell List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1998 by HMGS South 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