The Don gets mentioned in quite a lot of my blog posts - his was the major influence during my formative years as a wargamer in the late 1960s and early 70s. I also have a bit of a soft spot for old wargaming magazines, so I was very pleased recently to be steered towards a site which has pdf versions of most of the editions of Wargamer's Newsletter, the legendary gaming fanzine produced by Mr Featherstone from 1962 to 1980.
This online collection is a remarkable record, with only the very early magazines from 1962-64 missing. It is fascinating to see how the magazine developed and improved over the years, from the typed, copied and stapled early productions with their barely discernable illustrations to the really rather professional final editions. I have 4 original copies at home, including one from November 1964 which I managed to get on eBay a while back. The other 3 are from 1979, which I actually bought over the counter at the old Tradition shop just off Picadilly when I worked in London. I hated the job but loved to get out in my lunchbreak to places like Tradition and the Charing Cross Market where there was a great record stall.
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| Believed to be from the April 1964 edition, one of those missing from the online collection. |
If you're up for a bit of nostalgia, I'd highly recommend visiting the site. Truth be told, apart from nostalgia, the magazines themselves often have little to offer the contemporary gamer. What I'm usually looking for are scenarios, but they are surprisingly few and far between. This is an area where modern magazines score quite highly over the older publications. But there is always the possibility of finding something really interesting. For example, the January 1966 edition features some Napoleonic wargames rules by a certain Philip Barker - which extend to a magnificent two and a bit typewritten pages. What is clear is that the magazine was a genuine attempt to bring gamers together and give them a voice, in a pre-internet world.
Talking of interesting snippets, I found the following editorial in the August 1964 edition, the oldest in the collection. Rather than quote from it, I'll give you the whole thing. What interested me is the relevance to a post of mine from August regarding the professionalisation and commercialisation of the hobby, and the possible conflict of this process with the hobby's amateur roots. I won't labour the point, but the subject was obviously concerning Donald Featherstone all of sixty years ago.
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| Click to expand and read more easily. |
So, if you have half an hour to fill, dipping in to this resource is certainly worth it. For gamers of my age it's pure nostalgia, and for younger gamers it's a pretty good insight into our hobby in its early years.
'Til next time!
13 comments:
Thanks for this interesting post Keith. I was a reading the Newsletter back in about 1964 and awaited every edition with schoolboy eagerness. Featherstone and Gilder were were my inspirations too and how fascinating that you found those words from Don about his writing changing the hobby"! If only he could see it now - Warlord Epic scale anyone?!
A good resource for sure and the sort of thing to dip in and out of at one's leisure:). Sometimes I find the scenarios in our current magazines too linked to a set of rules, but fortunately they can often be easily adapted to suit similar scale rulesets.
I must admit to having a foot in both camps, or a Bob each way on this topic!
Whilst I am not a big fan of Warlord and what I perceive as their long term goal of hegemony, I would also hate to be back in the times where Hinton Hunt, Minifigs and Hinchcliffe were the only/best figures available able. The ranges we have access to nowadays and the beauty of the figures would not exist without some level of professionalism/ commercialization.....I don't want to have to try and design my own poorly sculpted figures, thanks all the same! A few have the talent to do so but most if us don't.
Yes, I never really saw the point of the whole Warlord Epic thing myself.
Your point makes perfect sense. But I'm glad that 3D printing and digital publishing allow essentially amateur gamers to offer us all more choice, and make us less reliant on the commercial companies.
I am pleased to say that I was able to contribute some of the earlier issues to John's site. Like Chris, I remember waiting for each issue to arrive. Unfortunately my earlier copies became water damaged and were no longer usable.
There is another photo from that ACW game with Peter Gilder at the end of Section Four of "Advanced War Games" by D.F.
...me too, Jim, from that huge bundle of them you passed to me.. :o)
Thanks for the reminder Dave.
Interesting stuff, and maybe a case of 'not much new under the sun'. Don's magazines being available on-line are a lovely resource, fascinating to see how wargamers were thinking back then (before my time, mostly!). It was interesting that he estimated only 500 fellow hobbyists in the UK at that time - he was probably pretty well informed since he must have known the sales figures for his book published only a couple of years before.
Personally I'm happy to see lovely figures for sale, but tend to avoid paying loads of money for glossy rulebooks that try to lock you in to their systems..
An excellent resource that I still take from occasionally - there are very few actual rules in there as I think they were mostly sold by Featherstone in the ads, but I will definitely look into the Napoleonic rules you mentioned!
This is the spirit that inspired me to get into wargaming in the first place when I discovered the old Charge!, Featherstone and Wells books in a university library, and came away with a totally inaccurate impression of the nature of wargaming in the US in the late '90s! I am now trying to recapture it with a local historicals group and the occasional visit to HMGS conventions.
Thanks for posting the link, Keith.
The few copies that I owned were lost in one of many moves in the Army,
Regards, Chris
Thank you so much for reviving old memories. I picked up as many copies of Wargamers Newsletter as pocket money would allow in the 1970s, like you getting some of them in Tradition - about the only thing I could afford there, but it was so good to look at the figures and dream!
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