My own wargames have reached a significant point, I think. Being short of time, space and money for the hobby I have finally decided to stick to one period and one only, and not keep chopping and changing. I have settled on the 18th century, my era starting shortly after Marlborough and ending just before the American and French revolutions. This is a span of history that fascinates me, coming as it does after the highly emotional and bloodthirsty religious wars of the 17th century and before the fervent nationalist and revolutionary feelings of the 19th and late 18th century. The mid-18th century was the Age of Reason and logic triumphed over emotion, producing the only wars (with the exception perhaps of the Italian wars in the late middle ages) ever to have been truly "gentlemanly" and decent. The strictly formal wars of western Europe (the East, of coui,se remained somewhat less formal) fought by armies of professionals, are, I feel, the most ideal for wargames, because they are so ordered and limited. Before all those ridiculous "liberty, equality and fraternity" people started swarming all over Europe screaming the "Marseillaise" war was something almost worth having for its decency. Troops actually paid for provisions! The Netherlands are supposed to have benefited from the wars fought in them because of the good prices paid for supplies by the armies. At present I am building up 20mm (more correctly 25mm I suppose) French and Prussian armies, with the nucleus of an Austrian/Imperial force just materialising. I hope eventually (in about ton years time I guess) to have troops of every major European state, including Turkey (where I'll obtain Turkish janissaries etc., I really don't know but I'll think of something). My own rules are formed along the idea that everything must be kept simple without deviating from realism. For us the concept of twisting realistic facts of war in order to produce a good game does not hold true; we find a wargame becomes more enjoyable the more it corresponds to the warfare it is trying to represent. Altering historical fact produces a game that is not a wargame; you might as well play chess! While I am discoursing on such things I might as well ramble on to another of my pet hate in wargames: special rules for special situations. The one that often seems to crop up, for example, is "Defence of Defiles". Extra rules to cover the particular instance of troops attacking defenders in defiles seem to me completely unnecessary and artificial complication of the already existing rules. Surely the basic rules covering woods, steep hills or rivers, whichever form the defile, should be sufficient in any situation? To make a special rule to work out actions in areas defined as "defiles" seems to me to be an admission that the basic rules of the game are at fault and fail in their object. Back to Table of Contents -- Wargamer's Newsletter # 101 To Wargamer's Newsletter List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1970 by Donald Featherstone. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com