Wargaming Tomes Collection: Part One

I recently moved house (well actually about 10 months ago – but it was inter-city to be fair), and I am only finally getting around to properly starting to unpack and sort my wargaming books, figures and terrain, and my somewhat extensive library of history books. Initially, on the book side, I’m focussing on my wargaming related titles and rulesets as these have the most immediate potential use; and as I have a particular fondness for old classic wargaming books (you know the ones by Donald Featherstone and Charles Grant and the others of their generation) I have quite a few of these; and thought I might post a few lists of titles to jog people’s memories and nostalgia…

So as part of my unpacking I am making an effort to catalogue all my wargaming books and rulesets – as I have lost track of them and have had a few embarrassing cases of buying something a second time when I already had a copy of it! And as above I thought it might be a nice bit of nostalgia to post parts of this list here, to share and elicit the warm fuzzy recollections of everyone who got into wargaming or was inspired to by one or more of these books!

I’ve listed them simply in roughly chronological order and with the occasional comment or image from my experience. These are all titles from my collection.

Charles Grant’s “Battle: Practical Wargaming” [1968-1970 – 32 part “Battle” articles] as it first appeared in serialised form in Meccano Magazine was highly influential – it was also technically the first official formal set of rules I knew about (as many of Don Featherstone’s books and similar I only really discovered in the later 1970’s). Ironically my father had a large collection of Meccano Magazines but I only discovered the Battle articles in them in them several years after it came out (I was 10 or 11). I never actually saw the [1970] book form of Battle until the early 1980’s, and didn’t eventually own my own copy until the mid-90’s!

Terry Wise’s “Introduction to Battle Gaming” [1969] was an early favourite and possibly the third most influential book for me – and it was only the second (vaguely) comprehensive set of wargaming rules I had seen as an early teenager (after Charles Grant’s Battle series in Meccano Magazine). It had rudimentary rules for Ancients, Horse & Musket (ACW), and World War Two.

1883 to 1970

• Stevenson at Play [R. L. Stevenson 1883]
• Little Wars [H.G. Wells 1913]
• War Games [D. Featherstone 1962]
• Donald Featherstone’s War Games – [D. Featherstone 1962 / 2008 HWP* expanded reprint]
• Joseph Morschauser’s How to Play War Games in Miniature – Early Wargames Volume 3: A Forgotten Wargaming Pioneer [J. Morschauser U.S. 1962 / 2010 HWP* expanded reprint]
• Charge! Or How To Play War Games [Brig. P. Young & Lt.Col J. P. Lawford 1967]
• Bowmen of England – a 100 Years War history [D. Featherstone 1967]
• At Them with the Bayonet – an Indian Mutiny history [D. Featherstone 1968]
• Introduction To Battle Gaming [T. Wise 1969]
• Advanced War Games [D. Featherstone 1969]
• Battle – original Meccano Magazine serialised version [C. Grant 1968-1970]
• Battle: Practical Wargaming [C. Grant 1970]
• War Game Campaigns [D. Featherstone 1970]

Donald Featherstone’s “War Game Campaigns” [1970] was one of the very first of Don’s books I read – in fact it was before I read The War Game or Advanced Wargames; and in the very late 1970’s when it had already been out for 10 years. It was another book I reread repeatedly and I especially loved the D-Day Landing game (which I tried to recreate on at least 2 occasions), and the ACW and Indian Uprising games. This is one of my core nostalgic books of my early wargaming as a teenager.

The items marked HWP* are books purchased from John Curry’s excellent History of Wargaming Project and are reprints of classic works typically with expanded extra material and or additional commentary from the original author. In some cases the HWP publishes new titles that have collated a lot of material from separate places from a single original author and often previously unavailable in book form. Where 2 dates are given (e.g. 1962 / 2010) the first is the original publishing date and the second is the date of my copy, either a later reprint or later edition from the original – or one of John Curry’s HWP reprints described above.

Charles Grant’s “The War Game” [1970] was the book that most inspired and influenced me as a young teenager – it was not my first wargaming book by a long stretch, but by the time I started High School, at age 13, I was getting it out of my school library nearly every week for a couple of years! Because of The War Game and Battle Charles Grant is in many ways for me the ‘grandfather figure’ of my wargaming experience rather than the usual Donald Featherstone that most people relate to when being nostalgic (‘The Don’ is however still a close second).

David Nash’s “Wargames” [1974] was my very first official wargaming book. It came out in as a small paperback in 1974 and my father got me a copy not long after that; I was something like 8 or 9 years old (maybe almost 10). I must have read it a thousand times, and I still have that same book, with the spine almost completely disintegrated and the pages all well thumbed!

1971-1975

• The War Game [C. Grant 1971]
• The War Game Companion [C. S. Grant 2009 expansion)
• Rules for Wargaming – multi-periods, land sea & air [A. Taylor 1971]
• War Games through the Ages: 3000 BC to 1500 AD [D. Featherstone 1972]
• The War Game [Young, Grant, Chandler, Featherstone, Lawford 1972]
• Solo Wargaming [D. Featherstone 1973]
• Colonial Small Wars: 1837-1901 [D. Featherstone 1973]
• Discovering English Civil Wargaming – George Gush and others [J. Tunstill 1973]
• Setting Up a Wargames Campaign – Revised 3rd Edition [T. Bath WRG 1973 / 1986]
• Tony Bath’s Ancient Wargaming – including Setting Up a Wargames Campaign & The Hyborian Campaign [T. Bath 1978, 1973, 2005 / 2009 SOA & HWP*]
• (Bellona) Battles For Wargamers: World War II Tunisia [T. Wise 1973]
• Practical Wargaming [C. Wesencraft 1974]
• Charlie Wesencraft’s Practical Wargaming – [C. Wesencraft 1974 / 2009 HWP* expanded]
• The Ancient War Game [C. Grant 1974]
• Napoleonic Wargaming [C. Grant 1974]
• War Games through the Ages: Volume 2 – 1420 AD to 1783 AD [D. Featherstone 1974]
• Battle Notes For Wargamers [D. Featherstone 1974]
• Wargames [D. Nash 1974]
• Charlie Wesencraft’s With Pike and Musket [C. Wesencraft 1975 / 2e 2009 HWP* 2nd Edition]
• Skirmish Wargaming [D. Featherstone 1975]
• War Games through the Ages: Volume 3 – 1792 AD to 1859 AD [D. Featherstone 1975]
• Wargaming Ancient and Medieval Periods [D. Featherstone 1975]
• Renaissance Armies: 1480-1650 – 2nd Edition, which had a green cover [G. Gush 1975 / 1982] – the original 1st edition had an orange cover

David Nash was one of the original modern wargamers, and much like Joseph Morschauser and to a lesser degree Charlie Wesencraft he seems to have been largely forgotten – but his 1974 book kept me constantly interested in wargaming. He may not have written any other wargaming books but he did publish books on the Prussian Army of the Napoleonic Wars and the German Army of the Great War; he was also one of the founders of the London Wargames Club; and did publish a respected series of wargaming articles – you can read more on him in “A forgotten pioneer? David Nash and his World of Wargaming” at the Vintage Wargaming Blog.

Gavin & Bernard Lyall’s “Operation Warboard: How To Fight World War II Battles In Miniature” was something I came across quite late (early 1980’s) but a friend had had it earlier and it was quite influential for him I believe – and it did very much influence me to some degree in the early 1980’s (although I was always comparing it to Charles Grant’s Battle). However this timing was just as we had started to settle into using more commercial rulesets regularly, rather than home grown ones, so Operation Warboard has a bit less nostalgia and history for me than the other titles I’ve mused on above – as by the mid to later 1980’s my wargaming had moved on…

1976-1989

• Operation Warboard: How To Fight World War II Battles In Miniature [G. & B. Lyall 1976]
• Airfix Magazine Guide 20: 8th Army in the Desert [J. Sandars 1976]
• A First Book of Wargaming: How to play wargames with 54mm scale model soldiers [F.E. Perry 1977]
• Wargaming Pike and Shot [D. Featherstone 1977]
• Wargaming Airborne Operations [D. Featherstone 1977]
• Donald Featherstone’s Wargamer’s Handbook of the American War of Independence 1775-1783 [D. Featherstone 1977 / 2010 HWP*]
• Table Top Teasers [full set from C.S. Grant serialised in Battle & Military Modelling Magazines 1978-1982]
• Alexander the Great’s Campaigns: A guide to Ancient Political and Military Wargaming [P. Barker 1979]
• PSL Guide to Wargaming [B. Quarrie 1980]
• Paddy Griffith’s Napoleonic Wargaming For Fun [P. Griffith 1980 / 2008 HWP*]
• Scenarios for Wargames – 1st Edition [C. S. Grant WRG 1981]
• Fantasy Wargaming [B. Galloway 1981
• Wargaming: A New Zealand Handbook – 2nd Edition [A. Hatt 1981 / 1991]
• Programmed Wargames Scenarios – 1st Edition [C. S. Grant WRG 1983]
• Battle in the Civil War 1861-65 [P. Griffith 1986]
• Battle in Africa 1879-1914 [H. Whitehouse 1987]
• Military Modelling Guide To Wargaming [S. Asquith 1987]
• Featherstone’s Complete Wargaming [D. Featherstone 1988]
• Wargaming World War Two [S. Asquith 1989]

As noted books marked HWP* above are from John Curry’s “History of Wargaming Project“, which is a fantastic initiative. There are now over 100 titles available I believe. And he also has a blog where he documents (or has documented) interactions with the original authors and wargaming ‘royalty’, and talks all things wargaming – well worth a read.

So that’s it for this post – all the vintage and classic wargaming and related books currently in my library. If you are old enough I hope it brings back some memories, some nostalgia, and rekindles interest in those old classics. Feel free to comment, and I will post a follow-up in the near future with more classics (incl. the WRG Armies & Enemies series).

Continue Reading: Wargaming Tomes Collection: Part Two.