Here is a bit of nonsense about a period which does not seem to have had the recognition from Wargamers that it deserves. The historical period 1500 - 1650 is admirable grouni on which the ancient and musket enthusiast mig1i meet. There are many interesting wars to study Thirty Years War, English Civil War, and the Turkish Siege of Vienna are three highly diverse ones) and the period has bags of tactical interest, being the time of the pikeman, though gunpowder was beginning to assert itself in the form of the arquebus and better artillery. Troops of this period - heavy cavalry, fully armoured, light cavalry, both with or without lances and/or pistols; archers with long and crossbow, mounted or otherwise; infantry armed with pikes or sword-and-shield men; arquebusiers and musketeers, mounted in some cases, sometimes with body-armour; heavy and ponderous artillery, ox or horse drawn; lots of siege warfare with mediaeval type fortifications beginning to be strengthened by more modern type earthworks, against the more powerful guns of that time. Troops were hired out from one country to another and virtually everybody in Earurope fought for or against one another. Yor could have some interesting rules relating to the bribing of various enemy units to fight on your own side. Regiments would have to be fairly large by our standards -- big enough to have a compact mass of pikes in the centre and musketeers on the wings. The purist will say that I have lumped together two or three historical eras here, but I think this kind of warfare could provide some quite interesting fighting. Finally, for the chap who has just got to be different from everyone else, this is about the only historical period left. There don't seem to be many commercial figures covering the sixteenth century, but this is a challenge to the expert maker and converter. Back to Table of Contents -- Wargamer's Newsletter # 28 To Wargamer's Newsletter List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1964 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