The History of Wargaming Project
The project aims to make the largest possible collection of wargaming books and rules available to the modern reader. Ranging from second editions of wargaming classics, to professional wargaming rules used by the military and innovations in current wargaming.
|
|
Recreational Wargaming...Donald Featherstone
|
Donald Featherstone’s War Games Battles and Manoeuvres with Model Soldiers:
The Book That Launched Modern Wargaming 10 May
2014
by Donald Featherstone Edited by John Curry |
|---|---|
|
The success of Donald Featherstone's first wargaming book was
responsible for launching the modern hobby of warganming into the
civilian market. It contained an introduction to the hobby, how to set
up a wargames campaign and three sets of rules.
The book contained three sets of classic wargaming rules: Tony Bath's Ancient Wargaming Rules; Donald Featerstones' own American Civil War rules andLionel Tarr's World War II Rules. This revised edition includes: A foreword by Paddy Griffith; The full Lionel Tarr Wargaming rules and a timeline of wargaming.
|
|
|
| Supporting Material Andy Grainger on War Games by Donald Featherstone His comments are reproduced with permission 'The Don (as we know him in my London wargaming circles) is the father of the modern wargaming hobby due to the publication of 'Wargames' and the companions on Naval Wargames, Air Wargames, my favourites 'Advanced Wargames' and 'Wargames Campaigns' and so on. But without 'Wargames' I do not think the hobby would have taken off in the way it did. It showed soldiers and terrain such as those owned by schoolboys such as myself, in action in a wargame with rules and equipment that we could understand. In my case a friend found 'Wargames' in the local library and introduced me to it in 1966. I was about 11 and my life was altered fundamentally! All the other books eg Young's 'Charge' were merely derivatives as, of course, were WRG, Tunstill etc. Wargamers Newsletter brought together many of the individuals who wrote most broadly about the hobby as opposed to remaining on the tramlines of the WRG dominated Slingshot. Miniature Warfare was glossier but did not generate the same spirit of debate. Perhaps this was because the first thing you turned to in Wargamers' Newsletter was Don's editorial which you always knew would send your mind fizzing like the fuze on a Napoleonic howitzer shell! I do not therefore disagree with your comments except possibly to suggest that his achievement was even greater than you imply.' Book review by Bob Cordery Book review by Eamon Honan |