Way back in 1968 E. C. Tubb published a fun little stand-alone adventure, The Winds of Gath, featuring a laconic space traveler named Earl Dumarest.  Terse, punchy, and full of tension, it read like a Dashiell Hammett novel, complete with political intrigue, wealthy dames in trouble, and the kind...

We know. Film-makers have a real problem these days because Hollywood – and the BBC even moreso – can’t recognize the good from the bad. It’s not just this meme: It’s something far deeper. First off, we should clarify what we mean by “modern spy thrillers”.  Not “set in...

To Napoleon’s surprise, the Austrians decided in early 1809 that Italy belonged to them.  In April of that year Archduke John launched an attack against the northern reaches of Italy, hoping to catch the French forces flat-footed.  He succeeded, but his counterpart, Napoleon’s adopted step-son Eugene opted to give...

We gotta talk about The Princess Bride for a minute.  It’s a book that gets a lot of praise for mostly the wrong reasons. Goldman’s tale of adventure and romance is one of those odd deconstructions that manages to recompile the genre that it is deconstructing, and it does so in...

My efforts to branch out from skirmish wargaming into larger scale battles has borne some pretty tasty fruit.  Osprey’s “Absolute Emperor” has proven to be as easy to play as it is easy to handle.  Large divisions sweep across the field, unwieldy but powerful, and with a minimum of...

Somewhere in the wilds of Social Media fellow sci-fi author and fellow wargamer AND fellow YouTube wargamer, Mike DiBaggio, posited that: “Oldhammer is best hammer, and it’s more than just nostalgia. At a small scale, too much and over-fine detail is bewildering to the eye. Just like the Heroquest...

These pirate figures are available from rebelminis.com. they are a joy to paint, full of character, great scopes, who could ask for more? Instead of going with the normal trend of making figures Brown and dirty flat colorless, I went with more of a 1930s Hollywood feel. This look...

We Gen-Xers were raised by people who were terrified of peer pressure.  They spent decades giving us the tools to resist peer pressure to take drugs. Now they’ve spent months pressuring me to take a dangerous drug and are shocked – SHOCKED! – to find that I’ve got the...

Having shuttered War In A Box to streamline my blogging, my very next project is to… Start a new blog. At least this one is something of a one-off.  I’ve always loved the idea of map based wargame campaigns.  There’s something much deeper and richer in the experience.  Instead...

One thing about “Black Ops” that still gives me pause is the concept of ‘raising the alarm’.  In one sense the game has dual-states; either the defenders are unaware of intruders or they are not.  Unless individuals become aware, and then the question arises of what it takes to...