Solo Nostalgia!

After a long search I managed to acquire a book that had considerable impact on how I have viewed wargaming since my teenage years. I found “Solo-Wargaming” by Donald Featherstone during a late night trawl of EBay a month or so ago and at a ridiculously low price compared to the few copies I had seen on sale previously. Upon its arrival in the mail, I voraciously read “Solo-Wargaming” from cover to cover. Every page proved so familiar to me and inspiring despite the years that have passed.

I believe “Solo-Wargaming” was one of the first books on wargaming that I read. I can’t be entirely certain (My memory is a bit fuzzy these days). It was an old book by the time I found it on the library bookshelf and I had long been aware of wargaming as a hobby through reading wargaming articles in “Military Modelling” and watching episodes of the television spy series “Callan”. I had even managed to play games using basic rules of my own devising and then with rules obtained from a shop in distant Launceston.

However, reading “Solo Wargaming” back then proved an absolute inspiration and provided me with an understanding of how greater depth and enjoyment could be had out of games using a wider variety of devices than I had previously been aware of. Re-reading it so many years later I was struck by the elegance of those mechanisms and that even now they can provide real depth in both solo games and those against opponents. Indeed, many of those ideas are still being used in wargaming today. After some forty-four years since it was published “Solo-Wargaming” by Donald Featherstone still inspires and is still relevant to every gamer.