And while I'm in a reminiscing mood..

I thought I should just promote this great blog 'Vintage wargaming' ...

... in case you haven't seen it yet.

It has brought back some great memories from the 'good old days'.. when you only had three packs of 20mm figures to choose from for ancients, and... as they say, the good old days often weren't, but ..

Well, they were still good old days.. but maybe for different reasons, maybe it's because I was younger????

Digital migrant in wargaming land.. the nostalgic smell of ink on paper

In the 90's I subscribed to the magazine "Practical Wargamer", and have quite a few copies in my 'games room.

I dragged them out the other night to hunt out some scenario ideas for the ACW. I had obviously already done that at some time in the past because I already have Volley and Bayonet conversions for all the scenarios I found. But the rather enjoyable and nostalgic browse set me thinking.

The war gaming magazines I have access to these days are so product specific! 'Practical Wargamer' used to cover a wide range of rules sets and periods, and I found a very cool scenario idea for an Austrian/Serbian game for 1914 (an unexpected benefit of the browse, although I now need to paint some Austrians.. ). But it is this very diversity that seems to be lacking from magazines today. Of course I suspect this is driven by an economic imperative, and shouldn't be taken as a criticism of the publishers of some very cool magazines on the market today. I buy 'White Dwarf', and enjoy reading it each month.

I guess I am just lamenting the loss of a delightful genre of magazine. I can get quite a lot of what I am after from the myriad of blogs and web sites that I follow, but I guess you can call me old fashioned - I love the smell of the ink on paper, the feel of the glossy magazine in my hands as I browse the pages in bed at night before I tackle the challenge of sleep. And these magazines had contributions from so many of those famous names, Charles Grant, Charles S Grant, Stuart Asquith. Ahh, those were the days. I'm certainly a digital migrant!!