Concerning your comments on the Research Group Rules. Some years ago you divided wargamers into two groups - 'fun' wargamers and 'rules' men, and I feel that it is the 'fun' wargamer in you who objects to these rules. It strikes me that they are designed for smallish battles with at most two people per side, and preferably people who know them well. They do not, unfortunately, cater for the Sgt. York's and Audie Murphy's of whom Neville Dickinson writes, but as these men are the exception rather than the rule this seems quite reasonable to me. After all, I have never seen a set of Napoleonic rules which provided for bows and arrows (as used at Leipzig) and surely no rules can cater for the antics which Alexander got up to from time to time. Most people find the rules they prefer, I think. The W.R.G. rules tend to play themselves, apirt from initial dispositions. This is the sort of thing that a general would expect to happen in a battle. He issues his orders and the rest is in the hands of heaven. You yourself objected to an omniscient cowboy in Bristol, but under most sets of rules, yours included, the general is just that. I am not too keen on the W.R.G. Napoleonic rules, but I certainly would not swap their Ancient rules for any other. For a long time I was very happy with the comparatively simple local rules, based on your own, but the more one learns about a period the more one becomes dissatisfied and tends to quibble about the rules. This accounts for the general satisfaction with the W.R.G. rules, as few people have gone into the subject as the Research Group. My own division is somewhat similar to your own - when I feel like a serious general I use the rules, but when I am a cross between Prince Rupert and Lord Cardigan I use the 'back of a postcard' rules. Back to Table of Contents -- Wargamer's Newsletter #141 To Wargamer's Newsletter List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1973 by Donald Featherstone. 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