Introduction

“Back in those dim dark ages of wargaming when games were few and far between but clubs and amateur magazines abounded, a young man named Don Greenwood published a small periodical called Panzerfaust on his dittograph machine. In those days about the most popular wargame around was Avalon Hill’s Stalingrad, and all the magazines had published lots of good Stalingrad articles. So Don got the bright idea to assemble all the best of these into one Ditto volume he called the Stalingrad Strategy Booklet. It was somewhat of a hit, but not long afterwards Don graduated from college and (the dream of all wargamers of that era) went to work for Avalon Hill. My wife, Julie, and I became the publishers of Panzerfaust, and we also published booklets of reprints, edited by Don Greenwood, called Wargamer’s Guide to Afrika Korps and Wargamer’s Guide to Battle of the Bulge dealing, of course, with two other popular Avalon Hill games. The volumes were, at least, printed on a real press. I know because I did my own printing in those days. We also reprinted Don’s Stalingrad Strategy Booklet in the new format as Wargamer’s Guide to Stalingrad. After that our attention wandered to other things (including the magazine, now called Campaign), but Don again took up the idea of printing volumes of articles dealing with individual games and got Avalon Hill to publish Wargamer’s Guide to Panzerblitz, Wargamer’s Guide to Diplomacy and Wargamer’s Guide to Midway. So, in looking around for something special to publish in time for the Origins ‘81 convention, it wasn’t too hard for me to come up with the idea of a Gamers Guide to Squad Leader -- not when I had all these great articles written by Lorrin Bird.” Don Lowry, from the Introduction to Gamer’s Guide to Squad Leader.

Body

Printed in black and white with colored covers, with 56 pages each 8½”x11”, the guide contained eight articles on Squad Leader and its first two gamettes, Cross of Iron and Crescendo of Doom. All eight articles were written by Lorrin Bird and published previously in Campaign. Some are reviews, some are detailed analyses, and some are variants and modifications, in particular to the AFV Kill Tables. The articles are quite detailed, as befits the Squad Leader cosmos. However, in comparing the articles in the Guide to the originals in Campaign magazine, there is not much value added for the $5.75 cover price. And yet, the Guide was popular with wargamers, which probably says more about the popularity of Squad Leader and the loyalty of its supporters than anything else.

Conclusion

Copies of Campaign magazine are not readily available on the market, and copies of Special Issue #2 are rarer still. Boone does not list the values of wargaming literature in his Internet Guide, so there are few guide lines. The fact is that although wargaming literature is itself a niche within a niche hobby, the few collectors of literature are a particularly rabid lot who seem to be quite willing to part with their first born. If you think prices for old magazines are high now, just wait until the main body of gamers starts to take an interest.