Relax, you haven't been redirected to a tabloid, this is merely a post about the convoluted and intertwined background to the matter at hand.
Now, where to start?
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Actually I suppose this article in a Scouting magazine from '69?.'70? was my first look at Colonial Gaming as well as homecasting. It gave me hope but no rules. |
Time passed, friends came and went and eventually in the late 80's Ron, a fellow alumni of the Montreal Wargaming Club from my college days, arrived in Nova Scotia. We've been gaming ever since in various scales and periods but of interest here was his collection of Ral Partha Colonials. The rules he had brought with him from Montreal were a sort of mashup of Space 1889 and TS&TF which sort of worked. Ron was trying to tweak them and I started painting up Frontier 25mm British and Mahdists and then...ummh..... offered to help with the rules. The result was With MacDuff To the Frontier.
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One of the few pictures I have of Ron's 25mm figures on his old table, full of Geohex terrain. |
Why MacDuff? Blame my roommate who I shared my first real apartment with after graduation. We had spent 7 weeks in the summer of '74 backpacking around Europe by rail pass and thumb, sleeping at youth hostels and sometimes, in the open air; like the night we crept through the hedge and slept at the foot of the Lion Mount at Waterloo. (That summer was also the closest I came to attending a British Wargame Show when I took an impromtu sidetrip upon seeing an add for a Wargaming tent at some sort of Aldershot military show on the coming weekend. It was the best weekend of the trip, even over the co-ed hostel in Copenhagen, the two Swedish girls and..well, never mind. I mean I walked in and there was Peter Gilder playing a WRG Ancients game with figures I'd seen in a book, and there was Phil Barker and a Minifigs stand! It was also the only time I have slept in a jail cell, not locked I hasten to add. There was not a hostel, hotel or motel bed to be had. An old feller in a pub told me to find a copper, show him a shilling, tell him I couldn't find a bed for the night and ask if he could direct me to somewhere to sleep, and he'd let me sleep in a cell. It worked like a charm but on the next night I found better accommodations by being invited to join the gamers in the Wargaming tent for supper, join in a test run of a chariot racing game, and roll out my sleeping bag there but now I'm really off topic.) Anyway, on that trip Eric would often say to me "Lead on MacDuff" and he kept it up when we were roommates later on. I guess that misquote stuck in my head.
By the mid 80's I was working in the regional IT department of Canada Post where mainframe terminals and new mini-computer terminals were mixing with the even newer microcomputers, so I was learning as much as I could as fast as I could. At college my exposure to Cobol programming and punch cards had not been inspiring apart from the ability to go have a beer at the mess in between feeding in the cards and getting the output. When I did an exchange tour on the USS WV Pratt in 1976, a tour of the Ops room with CRT displays, keyboards and trackballs was like something out of StarTrek. Now some of that handy stuff was spreading rapidly and I was learning fast. So it was that in the early 90's we bought a home computer so I could do the books for the Kennel that Kathy & I were then running, 365 days a year, on top of my day job, travel, overtime, call ins....... OK now I'm just whining; apart from the accounting and wordprocessing, my brother had been urging me to try bulletin boards and email as a way to keep in touch, so we also bought an acoustic coupler modem, you remember, the type where you take your analog telephone hand set and plug it in to the cradle on the.....OK, never mind.
Now, at last, the threads are starting to come together. It didn't take long to find 'rgmh', you know, that old internet bulletin board: rec.games.miniatures.historical. You could make posts and could browse through, reading posts and replying to other posts. Later you could even upload small grainy pictures. It was amazing to connect to gamers around the world. I still remember posting a question about Yugoslav partisans when I was building a 54mm force to face Ron's Germans and I received an answer that started "When I joined the partisans..".
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A few of my 54mm Partisans, all conversions. |
I also remember a younger Yugoslav wargamer whose father had been a partisan. He sent me pictures from the war, scans of illustrations from books, with some translations, and pictures of his 25mm minis. For someone who had been a kid during the Cuban Missile crisis and who had enlisted in the Canadian forces while the US was still at war with North Vietnam, it was amazing. The last time I heard from him was 1995 when NATO was bombing his home city but he and his friends were not going to be intimidated and he was going out despite the raid to play an ancients game. Every now and then I wonder what became of him.
Anyway, around the same time, someone who was writing a set of rules posted a question about something and I responded and offered to send him a copy of my in progress MacDuff rules for him to pick over. It was a surprise to get a response from Dick Bryant asking if I would send him a copy for possible publication in The Courier. I did a quick edit, formalized them a bit and sent him both the Colonial version we had been using and the French & Indian version which hadn't even been play tested yet!
OK, now we are approaching the last steps on this long trail. B this time, rgmh was being supplemented by email lists like Onelist and since Ron and I were playing the new Armati rules, I signed up to the email group. In 1996 I had to suffer through not being able to join in the first Armati "Arena" at Cold Wars and I decided that I would make the 4,000 km round trip next year to join them. That Armati event was a complete success for me, the format had allowed not only for tournament games, but also for scenario games, as long as you brought both armies, terrain etc and gave the other player choice of sides. I brought two 25mm Scots armies, Lord of the Isles vs Lowland Barons and wrote up two fictional scenarios set in the 1411 Red Harlaw campaign. It turned out that I was the only one used to scenarios but several were quite interested in something more than line em up and go at it, so after I played one game, I GM'd two others. A good time was had by all.
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My 25mm Scots facing Ron's English in an Armati scenario game. |
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Pete Panzeri's Haye Sainte game (buildings by Tom Milmore). The greencoats in the sandpit are some of my lads. |
To my great surprise, the 54mm Haye Sainte game was over crowded with many new players including lots of kids. Pete was soon over stretched and asked if I'd run one end of the table. Well I'd done plenty of that at Cangames as well as Dalhousie game days and the rules were simple, so I jumped in, only slightly distracted by things like chatting with Rob about those Russians which he decided not to buy and then with Frank Chadwick who was showing some of his newest 54mm Volley & Bayonet ACW units.
It was a great weekend but I had barely gotten home when I got an email from Arty Conliffe, he had been into the printers and had seen the latest Courier magazine:
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The almost completely untested F&IW With MacDuff To The Frontier was first to print! |
How did it go? Well 25 years later, having co-hosted scores of various convention games including one Best In Show at Cold Wars, and various other smaller awards, as well some of the other things friends do, Rob and I are still at it!
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Huzzah 2019: Our Sittingbad using a fastplay version of MacDuff and some of our Not Quite The Seven Years War, Prince August homecast armies. |
So it was that the internet became one of my major connections to the hobby, leading me to start the Littlewars email group and then set up a Webpage which eventually became this blog, but also helped me form friendships around the globe and made my remote corner of the world a little less remote.
In the next post, I'll talk about developing the rules itself and the dangers of not knowing when to stop!
This little window into your personal war gaming history was fun to read- thank you for sharing it.
ReplyDeleteThanks, glad to hear it.
DeleteI'll mostly skip the Dal SUB games, incl'ing those 15mm F&F games, which (thankfully) snapped me outta' that terrible 5mm Nappy rabbithole. (yikes!) Those Friday nights in '96 at Ron's were great. Still chuckle [to myself, obviously] over informing his daughter that, in fact, contrary to Ron's rationales, it was her dad who was actually playing the "bad guys." (Today, it's every other Friday night. Slowing with age?) With the advent of hard plastic, is 28mm the newest "miniatures scale du jour"? Perry; Warlord. meh. who cares.
ReplyDeleteFirst HMGS East con was also '97...but I chose Fall In!. Hosting a single Historicon event, a WWII Pacific naval in 2011, was my first - and last! - event I ever wanted to do. So my hat's off to anyone who's crazy enough to--
--I mean *Enthusiastic* enough to run games like that.
Attended several Jodiecons in 2000 at the NJ military academy + the Borodino event in 2002 at Fort Munroe.
Fun times back then. And many fond and memorable games.
(And presently, I'm happy to state.)
Not to forget us snatching you off the street at Dal in 2001? poking you into the back seat with half the city of Quebec on your lap so we could leave a day early to beat the unexpected snow dump and make it to Cold Wars....
DeleteHow the internet has changed the hobby ! , love the old photos , always something charming about old wargaming pictures - a glimpse of a lost age .
ReplyDeleteGone but not forgotten.
DeleteBtw, I came across your MacDuff rules by total accident while rummaging through a box of 'zines at one of the Historicons in the late 90s. Different cover than the one in your write-up though.
ReplyDeleteProbably the Colonial version. The picture wasn't related.
DeleteInteresting read and a piece of Wargames history straight from the horse's mouth (or keyboard) whilst the horse is still alive and gaming ...
ReplyDeleteSo far so good!
DeleteAs much as the hobby is fantastic now with all of its very professional support that covers virtually anything you might want to game, there is still something magical about the 'old days' of that early exploration of the hobby and the raw energy that went with that.
ReplyDeleteFor a lot of different reasons, money not being the least, there was a mindset that made writing your own rules was as normal to the gaming process as painting, basing, modelling etc.
I have three moments of the light being shone on my hobby and increasing its depth for me. First Don Featherstone's Newsletter, Second Battle magazine (an eye opener in 1976) and thirdly and still doing it today, has been the internet.
Good to hear your journey, cheers Norm.
A lot of diy in those days. Better, worse? Who can say. Seems to me plenty of those who started a few decades are happy to buy off the shelf and just get on with it and who can say they're wrong?
DeleteI really enjoyed reading your story and seeing the pictures.
ReplyDeleteGreat pics and reminiscences Ross - thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteVery interesting post(s) about your wargaming journey.
ReplyDeleteThanks,
DeleteRoss Mac,
ReplyDeleteI was totally absorbed reading your early wargaming history, and I look forward to reading the next instalment.
It reminded me about how events have a way of coming together as if they were planned when the realty is that so many things that turn out to be important are purely accidental. In my case, accepting an invitation from Paddy Griffith to attend the first ever COW came just after I had taken part in Eric Knowles’ Madasahatta Campaign, both of which turned out to be defining and decisive moments in my wargaming ‘career’.
All the best,
Bob
The longest journey......
DeleteThe F&IW MacDuff rules were a lucky draw of the fortune cards. :D The HAWKs were formed in 1994. When I came in, Chris was single-handedly working on 40mm F&IW home cast from various Prince August and Meisterzinn mold, and I was working on 40mm Not Quite Seven Years War using Prince August “Irish Wild Geese” molds in splendid isolation. We each ended up buying more molds and adding to the other project…Anyway, the MacDuff rules were designed for units of individually based figures in groups of 8-10, which is just what we had, so it was a near perfect fit. The rest, as they say, is history… (Although somewhere along the way, the ever-expanding NQSYW reached critical mass for Charge! games, which took over…)
ReplyDeleteInteresting follow-up, Rob.
DeleteIt only took 1 small game of Charge! after all those years of rereading it to hook me. Didn't take long for the first mould to follow.
DeleteIt's always interesting to read other people's 'journeys'. They're all different but with some common elements.
ReplyDeleteFascinating look back at the provenance of MacDuff to the Frontier. I could not recall where I got my first copies of the rules back in the ‘90s but it must have been from The Courier. Cannot believe the rules were published without play testing. I wonder how many other published rules fit that scenario of untested but published?
ReplyDeleteThanks for these recollections.
I suspect that quite a few sets of rules are published after very cursory testing, hence the need for published errata and updates.
DeleteWell the original rules were well tested, just not the F&IW version, didn't even have the figures yet!
DeleteLots of background goodness here...always interesting to see others' origin stories (and note how details may differ but broad themes are often common). But the thing that made me jump was seeing your reference to the old rec.gamers bulletin board system: wowsa! That was a buried memory!
ReplyDeleteFeels like another century!....OH!
DeleteDear Ross;
ReplyDeleteThat was a great read. I especially liked the parts about IT. My brother was the technology person in the family. I remember he had a Texas Instruments computer with a membrane keyboard and a cassette tape player or something for memory. When that issue of The Courier was published, I forget where I was, either the Hobby Bunker in Malden, or Phoenix Hobbies in Medford. Probably the Hobby Bunker... I still have that issue and between MacDuff and Bill Protz's articles, I've been in love with 25mm French and Indian War gaming ever since.
Eric
Well, to be honest, Bill knows a heck of a lot more about the fiw than I ever will.
DeleteLove this - it's great to learn how this all came together. Bear in mind, you're still a key connector in the local hobby; you certainly were for me!
ReplyDeleteLess and less each year, even discounting Covid. Haven't got the
Deleteenergy and will to keep up with the modern scene despite still being happy to sample it. Hopefully one day there'll be more local game days.
Fascinating stuff here, Ross! I think you might have underestimated the interest in this background to your rules development.
ReplyDeleteLove the way the 80s and early 90s bulletin boards, Internet message boards, and email made their way into wargaming via your story. I was in college '90 to '94 and spent a lot of time playing on those then still young technologies but nothing so enjoyable as making wargaming contacts however (I was only vaguely aware wargaming was a thing people did, having read Battles with Model Soldiers when trying to figure out what to use my D&D miniatures for besides playing D&D)
Looking forward to your next post!
My memories of the late 50s are few and vague but it's a very different world today and still changing faster and faster.
DeleteA Ripping Yarn there Ross. Enjoyable reading.
ReplyDeleteThanks Rob, so much left out, so much lost and forgotten. These days I'm starting to get nostalgic for those seaside getaway games and company let alone last century!
DeleteHopefully next year I will be able to host a seaside getaway game. Possibly bring my 25mm colonials to have a peek at the frontier.
DeleteThat was a lovely nostalgic piece, always interesting to read personal histories and how certain events are crucial. 'What a long strange trip it's been..'
ReplyDeleteMany of my 15mm Pike and Shot chaps are Mikes Models, I think I bought one of their 'army packs' back in the 80s. I confess I rather liked those 'chubby little dwarves'(!)
I confess that I had some of their 30 yrs war Cuirassiers that I was quite fond of.
DeleteFascinating story Ross. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear it.
DeleteRoss -
ReplyDeleteWow - quite a war gaming history! An enjoyable read. I liked especially you mention of the superb role-play by the young 'Midshipman' commanding the train. Brilliant!
Cheers,
Ion
He's grown up a bit since then.
DeleteThat was a truly great read, Ross. The multiple coincidences are akin to how I wound p meeting and playing with Charlie Sweet back in the mid 1970's. That story doesn't contain any Swedish girls, though. Just Napoleonic Swedes. :-)
ReplyDelete