Wargaming Dark Age Britain

[Norm]

A nice find;

The Wargamer's Guide to Dark Age Britain by Martin Hackett

Blog LINK

http://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/a-gem-of-book-for-dark-ages.html

[Steve J]

Thanks for the 'heads up' Norm. Rare to find wargaming books in a shop these days.

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Good find sir

[Matt J]

added to my amazon 'holding bay'.

Thanks

[paulr]

I think most of us have a lot to thank that Featherston chap for

[fsn]

Amen

[FierceKitty]

I think his ridiculous generalisations and bizarre games mechanisms retarded my wargaming development by ten years!

[Norm]

I wonder whether in a pre-internet world, we would ever have had the growth that the hobby needed to become sustained at the commercial level without his significant media output.

Myself and no doubt others may never have met wargaming without him, at the very least he got me from off the floor with the little chaps and onto the table - so my knees would also like to thank him

I was also lucky to have also made a 'by chance' discovery of board wargames in my teens and the shop (a major importer of all things wargamery good at the time) sold figures and a HUGE collection of boardgames side-by-side, so my wargaming (pre-internet obviously)  developed along two tracks for some double goodness and probably a good reason why today I comfortably continue to have a foot in both camps.

[FierceKitty]

For me, fairly serious gaming began when a friend produced from his briefcase a much-Xeroxed set of Napoleonic rules that actually had consistent mechanisms holding them together. They were desperately inadequate by today's standards (control and morale were a joke, and firepower was an Armageddon of mutual annihilation), but they were attempting to make coherent sense.
I have no idea who wrote them, or what they were called, but the monument to the unknown rule set is now on kickstarter.

[Steve J]

My introduction was via the Airfix magazine guides and their wargames rules. I have no idea whether Featherstone et al were sold as well, but those guides were what we could afford. Around the same time we got into Thane Tostig and D&D. At Uni we did some boardgaming as it was cheap, easy to store and worked straight out of the box. Two favourites were 'Guns of August', a WWI game and 'Frederick the Great', a strategic level SYW game. This was when my serious interest in historical wargaming took off.

[Ithoriel]

Don Featherstone was responsible for my move from flicking marbles at Airfix figures to "real" wargaming.

Fletcher Pratt rules, back lawn, 1/600 scale ships - so relief for knees came somewhat later

[Subedai]

A nice find;

The Wargamer's Guide to Dark Age Britain by Martin Hackett

Blog LINK

http://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/a-gem-of-book-for-dark-ages.html

And a nice bloke to talk to as well. Chatted to him several times at the Midlands shows back in the 90's and 00's.

[Leman]

In 1966 I was lent a copy of Don Featherstone's Wargames. I went on to buy some of his rules, subscribe to Wargamer's Newsletter, buy my first metal figures and expand from the ACW into the Crimea, World War One, the Italian Wars and ancient Rome. I might not have always agreed with Don's sentiments - he was very much of the 'our brave British lads' school and I was a teenager in the late sixties - but I think British wargaming has a great deal to thank him for.