From: Herb Gundt (hgwalls@michianatoday.com)
Hi Terry,

I wanted to let you know that SAGA came in the mail yesterday and AW about 10 days ago. Very nice work. I was interested in your statement that the FOUNDRY edition of AW will allow gamers to use different types of mounting systems. I am very glad to hear this, as the local group has figures mounted for Warhammer Ancient Battles & WRG and we thought that we might be running into a problem. Good move!

Like I told you earlier, I have not done anything with Ancients for over 20 years, mainly because I did not like WRG rules. Well now I am considering doing New Kingdom Egyptians. I have the Osprey books on 'NKE' & Qadesh as well as some Archaeological and Biblical books that refer to the 'NKE'. Do you know of any 'knock your socks off' reference books that detail the 'NKE' army?

BTW, are you familiar with a series of novels by Christian Jacq about Rameses II? I have read several favorable reviews on the series and I am going to see if our library has them. I know that they are available through the various booksellers for between $12-$15 per book, a bit pricy for me! [Ed. Do any of you have any ideas for Herb? I've seen the Ramses books, four of them are available through Barnes and Noble's latest catalog]

Response with book info (#69)

From Jim Lydon

I love the ruleset. Finally a ruleset that is fun to play, easy to understand and produces historical outcomes (What a concept). I am planning on being at Cold Wars for the first time this year. Are you running any games of Medieval Warfare there? I look forward to hearing from you.

I hope to see you at Cold Wars and I definitely want to participate in the first ever MW tournament at Historicon. Will there be a 15mm MW tournament at Historicon? If the answer is no then it looks like I have a good excuse to build a 25mm MW army. Please give me an update of the armies you already have signed up for the MW tournament at Historicon. I would like to enter an army that appeals to me, yet is different than others you already have participating. Having a variety of armies participating will hopefully appeal to a wide variety of onlookers, and hopefully, future MW advocates. Keep up the good work. [Ed. Glad to have you sign on, Jim! We are having a 25mm only tournament. Armies so far that have tentatively signed up are: Normans, Mongols, Polish, War of the Roses English, Maurikian Byzantine, Viking, Burgundian Ord. and Teutonic Order. We may have a Feudal French player as well, if he gets his army done! Let me know what you decide on. I will be sending all the players the modified rules set for the tournament as well as applicable army lists, so we all know what we are up against.]

Steve Phenow, editor of Strategos, writes:

Got SAGA #68, [Ed. Actually, #67, no thanks to my printer!] thanks so much. With much interest I read "New rules and their Acceptance in the Age of Orthodoxy." I tend to agree with most of your comments except for people want easy game system because they want to interact. I do not think this is true. I think people want a set of rules that allows them to fight their favorite armies against their opponents with minimum hassles. Simple. Barker has been trading on this idea for years. I offer my 22 years as an observing miniature gamer as proof.

In 1985 I came out with my Ancient Rules set, Sarissa & Elephant. It was ahead of its time, many innovations in command, morale, battleline etc. I was one of the first to postulate that Romans fought in lines while everybody else was still hung up on maniples. Arty Conliffe brought out "Tactica" a year before, I believe.

While both rules were ok, Tactica was bought because of the pretty pics, WRG ver.? tournament system simply ruled the market place. One critic wrote about my rules "Cleverly thought out, with interesting ideas and speed of play, but CANNOT (my caps) match out of period armies against one another." That was it. End of review. Dan Carlin, a radio commentator in the Northeast, was a big champion of my rules, but he felt "The inability to allow the matching of Romans against Assyrians, is this set's biggest failing." And Dan was a historian!

Classical Hack is another set that only allows only historical matchups. How is it doing? In fact in Phil's historical module "Scenarios Roman" has a visiting player setting forth a condensed version to be used by beginners in the Punic Wars. Players are encouraged not to be even playing the main rules of game. That cannot be encouraging.

Let's look at all the failed historical sets of commercial rules.

Milgamex "Ancient Warfare"
Fantasy's "Legion"
Gygax's "Classical Warfare"
Gygax's "Chainmail" (Becoming D&Ds main battle system does not count!)
Phenow's "Sarissa & Elephant"
Conliffe's "Tactica." (Arty may disagree with me, but you don't see lots of "Tactica" being played these days. "Armati" and "DBM" have taken it over.
Young's "Shieldbearer"
Empire's "Ancient Empires"
"Might of Arms"

I wish much success on the Foundry's picking up both your sets of rules. BTW, where's my review copy of AW? As for no Armati articles in SAGA, that's about to change. Arty has given me permission to start writing articles as long as I can keep up my workload on Strategos. Since I have written 3 Strategos, and Wargames has only published one, I don't think that's a concern anymore.

From: Jervis Johnson

Thanks for the email. I agree with you about there being 'more than one way to skin a cat' as it were. One thing I've always liked about wargaming, especially miniatures wargaming, is the way that it's possible to change rules to suit one's own taste with 'house rule' modifications, or invent new rules and special scenarios. In the old days such creativity very much the thing, but this seems to be much less the case these days, and players do seem to have a tendancy to 'do what they are told' as it were. But I digress. I'll try to put something together for SAGA soon if I can. I've been working on a new way of running a map based campaign which might make an interesting article, and isn't really 'rules specific' in any way. That's all for now.

Russ Lockwood writes:

Rich recently played Hastings or a portion of Hastings in 15mm using MW. I was all set to go, but at the last moment, had to bow out for some pre-Xmas family doings. I was at Rich's house on New Year's Eve and went down to see the table he had set up. Dave, who played the Saxons, pointed to one small unit of bow in the Saxon line and the large number of Norman bow, and noted that he was being shafted mercilessly [Ed. The punsters of N.J….].

So he charged off the hill, scattered the bow, and mixed it up with the horse with deadly effect. I believe Rich is reworking the scenario to make it more balanced. He's also working on incorporating some of the Day of Battle mechanisms into the MW game he'll be hosting for our monthly group game (upcoming sometime--next one is Franco-Prussian War).

[Ed. I'll let Chris Parker know that our rules systems are actually being used together…that should be really interesting, Russ.]

Dave Bonk writes:

Just got back from the Siege of Augusta convention...I ran a fairly large MW game, Mongols and Russians against Poles and Teutonic knights. I used the fire and move and feigned flight rules, both of which worked very well. They allowed the Mongol player to soften up the Polish lines, inflicting casualties on all the front line units and disordering some...the Poles could see the problem this continued tactic could pose and were forced to move to contact with the Mongols. The Mongols should have just fallen back and waited a couple of more turns, but they got impatient with the seemingly slow pace of the game and decided to engage the Polish cavalry...big mistake, the Polish knights took apart the Mongol light cavalry and the Polish foot was able to withstand the Mongol attacks.

I wanted you to know that I will be putting on a MW game at Cold Wars on Friday night...we're giving the Mongols a rest since Jeff has indicated he might not be there, and we're going to do a Germans vs Polish game, with Russ and Hungarian allies thrown in for good measure.

I also wanted to let you know that I borrowed your book Neglected Heroes from the UNC library and am working my way through it. I have enjoyed it very much and agree with you that historians in general have been too quick to diminish the unique skills and qualities medieval leaders.

As you've probably figured out from my interest in Polish army lists I am particularly interested in that area. Unfortunately I have discovered that for a variety of reasons, in all periods, but particularly the medieval period, that there just isn't much written about Eastern European history. Although I am loathe to put myself into the camp that claims that African or Far Eastern history should be given as much attention as Western European history, I do believe that, again for a variety of reasons, we know far too little about Eastern Europe history.

Response with web site info: Khazaria Info Center (#69)

I find it somewhat amusing but ultimately frustrating to pick up a book on medieval history and invariably there is a section on the Russ, ignoring the Poles, Bohemian, Hungarians,etc and making the Russ appear to have been a major power, when the reality is that western Russia was a basketcase, beginning with the Viking invasions and continuing through the Mongol period. Between those two points Russ was the playground for Polish and Hungarian adverturism, suggesting a impotence that seems to have been ignored by many writers. I suppose most of it is the result of fewer period documents that survived the two world wars and difficulty in the language. Maybe I should write a book, if only I could read latin. Enough of the editorial comment. See you at Cold Wars?

[Dave, my book has been panned by two 'academicians' because "…apparently, Gore only reads English...", as the reviews noted. So what? Most extent Latin texts have been translated, and there are a number of valuable resources on the internet with even more translations. I can get by in German, but not well enough to try to quote sections of German texts! Besides, I do not write for the academic community. Their insulation and exclusivity are not conducive to the kind of study I am interested in anyway. We had the noted Civil War author, McPherson at Brockport last fall and he echoed these same sentiments. People are turned off by the dull, dry tomes of the professional historical journals. When you try to bring history to life you get critisized. Go figure. Write your book, we could use it and I'll be the first in line to buy a copy!]

Mark Bloom writes:

Glad you are on line. I am renewing my subscription to SAGA and I would like to know if you still have any copies of Ancient Warfare left for sale?. Are they $20.00 ? If you could e-mail me in the next couple of days I will get the check off to you as soon as I know. My son, Michael, and I have been playing Warhammer Ancient Battles a couple of times. We are in the middle of a battle between the Sub-Romans and the Picts. (Can you believe it I'm the Picts!) It wasn't easy letting someone else be the Post Romans.) I may write up a short battle report when and if we finish. We usually play and hour at a time every few days so consequently our battles generally last a couple of weeks. If I send it e-mail I'll probably send it in wordpad. I don't have Word, just Works.

I have enjoyed SAGA very much and have greatly appreciated the' Armies for the Medieval period' I don't suppose you would like to do a write up for the Early Feudal German list number 35. From the dates it looks like this army may be the successor of the Carolingian list. I've been thinking about putting together a 25mm army for I believe its Otto I. Of course that will depend on any favorite lists from AW.

[Ed. Surprise... the German list #35 write up is included in this issue. Ancient Warfare is still available for $20.00 postage paid. We have been working like crazy on getting the Foundry edits done, including bringing Herb Gundt (H.G. Walls) on board as terrain designer for the Foundry figures which will be featured throughout and also to write a section on building terrain pieces. What a job this has turned into! I'm going to have to cut back my hours at my 'day' job just to have time to keep up with everything going on here. I'm having a great time, though!]

Ellis Simpson writes:

Congratulations on establishing a web presence. getting one started is the toughest challenge, but close behind is keeping it fresh, interesting and making people want to go back for more.  You have made a great start and I hope it helps spread the word.  Your rules are the breath of fresh air that ancients, in particular, needed.  If only they had been around long ago!

William Jones writes:

Please find enclosed a check to the subscription fee to SAGA. I used to subscribe 10 plus years ago in Texas, but lost interest in ancients because of the tedious and abstract WRG 7th and DB-fill-in-the-blank rules which utterly dominated the ancients scene.

My interest has been rekindled because of the emergence of competing rules systems (yours among them), some really fine new 25mm figures ranges and the computer game "Lords of the Realm II". I look forward to plunging back into ancients again and to receiving SAGA once more.

[Ed. Thanks, Bill. I remembered you were with me from the early beginnings of SAGA. I'm glad you are getting back into gaming the period and hope you will enjoy the rules as much as I do.]