Armaments Chapter Two Verses Nine to Twenty-one:

And St. Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying: “O Lord, bless this thy hand grenade that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.” And the Lord spake, saying: “First thou shalt take out the Holy Pin, then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it.” Amen.

I have a copy of the original game (Avalon Hill’s Gettysburg) -- fifth printing, August 1959 (first printing, August 1958). It has the original game, complete with both the basic game and the tournament game. There was a second version of this edition, the Junior Set of the game, which sold for $2.50 (the version I have went for the awful price of $4.95), had an unmounted map on heavy paper like most SPI games, and did not include separate copies of the order of appearance, and other, cards. The cards were in the battle manual. In the regular version, one got them on separate cards, too, while in the junior set, one got them only on the back of the manual.

I have seen the Junior Set on sale only once, in Gettysburg PA circa 1960. The Junior Set was sold in part to give people a pretty map of the battlefield, the game aspects being rather secondary. I didn’t get one then, and haven’t seen one since. It would appear that Junior Sets of first edition Gettysburg are about the rarest items around except, of course, for the original Charles Roberts game, Tactics. The above is a mildly edited excerpt from a letter to the editor, Don Lowry, of Panzerfaust (later Campaign) magazine. It was written by George Phillies and appeared in issue number 77, dated January-February 1977.

George Phillies is, without question, one of the first true grognards, and has been an active part of the hobby since shortly before the extinction of the dinosaurs. He is a collector emeritus with one of the three to five largest board wargame collections in the known universe. This makes him admirably suited to be editor of Pimper’s All the World’s Wargames, which he has been ever since Jeff Pimper gave up his collection to play real war games with the Pentagon.

Avalon Hill’s Gettysburg Junior Set appears in Pimper’s All the World’s Wargames Volume I (1953-1977), of course, and nowhere else that I have been able to determine. Although it does not appear in Boone’s Internet Wargames Catalog, all that means is that the game has not appeared for auction or sale on the Internet since Mark started to keep his records.

But there is no mention of it in any of Jim Dunnigan’s books, nor in Nicky Palmer’s books, nor Jon Compton’s book, nor Tom Slizewski’s. There is no mention of it in any of the mainstream wargame magazines, nor in the early Avalon Hill Generals, nor in Avalon Hill’s advertising literature of which I have a nice selection.

The motto of this column is: “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”. It would appear as though the Junior Set of Avalon Hill’s Gettysburg makes a perfect Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch. As usual if you have a copy of this or any other HHGoA, please contact the editor.