"What ever happened to the Courier magazine?" Topic

I remember reading every issue cover to cover. I think it was so much better than these glossy British magazines with all of the "high quality" color photos and fruit-cake scenarios.

It was sold to someone who couldn't make good on his publishing deadlines, and died off like anything not cared for properly.

It was purchased by Don Perrin. He also bought MWAN. He then merged them into a quarterly magazine called historical miniature gamer that lasted all of about 4-5 issues.

It was too bad because both of those (Courier and MWAN) were two of my favorite magazines.

I like how Ogdenlulimus put it better…

Eric

I wrote for The Courier, MWAN and HMG Magazine. It should be said that only MWAN came out on time, and the Courier's nominal 'year' was considerably longer than a calendar year.

They were all dependent on volunteer writers, and funded largely by a fairly slender adverising base.

All the people involved in these magazines are fine and honourable men, and I reject the cheap, lazy shots taken here.

11 or 12 issues. I have the first 10.

Come on boys. While not nearly as many as MJS I contributed to all these magazines. Wonder how many of the complainers did so.Those magazines and the earlier publications like Jack Scruby's Table Top Talk sustained and literally "grew" the hobby for 50 years. They were all wonderful and were created by wonderful people.

Shame. I liked both magazines. I especially liked the "indy" feel of MWAN.

I'm with Howard. The cheap shots are uncalled for.

acarhj wrote:
I'm with Howard. The cheap shots are uncalled for.

What cheap shots?

Ogdenlulimus wrote:
It was sold to someone who couldn't make good on his publishing deadlines, and died off like anything not cared for properly.

leidang wrote:
It was purchased by Don Perrin. He also bought MWAN. He then merged them into a quarterly magazine called historical miniature gamer that lasted all of about 4-5 issues.

Are you saying these statements aren't true?
If not then what happened to the Courier and MWAN?

In high school (and before), I would eagerly check the mailbox every day for my copy of Wargamer's Newsletter, Table Top Talk or Tradition. I would then spend hours making out my order for the wonderful new figures that were advertised in each magazine. Eventually, I got up the courage to submit an article or two myself.
I could not have imagined that years later, Don Featherstone would show up in my wargame room in Omaha Nebraska!!
Later, as an editor of the Courier and consumer of Hal's MWAN, I discovered it was all about the love of the hobby. Nobody really made a dime.

I really enjoyed the Courier as well.

As mentioned, it had lots of good content.

A shame it died off.

I used to get The Courier via a subscription from Caliver Books. It did used to get a lot of flack for being "irregular" in schedule, that never bothered me overly much. I still have the old issues somewhere (!). It reminded me of an historical version of early issues of The Dragon.

IMHO, Battlegames is the spiritual successor to The Courier.

I throughly enjoyed The Courier and before that Wargamer's Digest.

Obsolescence happened.
-Kle.

I enjoyed the Courier. It's frequency was a little frustrating. MWAN was great, sometimes hard to find. Both great magazines, but my mainstays became the British glossies over time and right now Miniwargs is my favorite.
I would support a decent American published mag if it at least had the quality of a Courier or MWAN with a better frequency track record and up to today's standard. Our disadvantage probably was amateurs versus large British club games that always had the figures and the photos and color.

MWAN was, and is, my favourite wargaming magazine of all time. I still read my collection, picking a copy at random and reading it for old time's sake.

Ditto on rereading, but my all time favourite remains "Battle for wargamers". Had a wonderful balance of the old guard and the new boys without any appearance of animosity. Napoleonics next to the latest for D&D and no-one got upset. Hard to imagine, but I tell you it really happened.

Dick Bryant owner and editor of The Courier was in his early to mid-70's I believe when he felt he could no longer put in the effort required to run the magazine. It's interests were then sold to Don Perrin as mentioned already.

I was tasked for awhile to drum up Napoleonic articles for the magazine. Let me tell you, it was a very difficult undertaking, especially considering there was no remuneration for any of the authors outside of a mag subscription. You might think that people would jump at the chance to offer something like that to a magazine, but that was not the case.

Such magazines were a labour of love, whatever their perceived flaws and existed solely due to the efforts of the volunteers.

Interestingly, Don Perrin never took on any of The Courier editors in the transition to my knowledge despite the fact we were free labour.

PS Does anyone have any news about Mr. Bryant? I have not seen his name mentioned in gaming circles for some time.

Was regular Courier reader from late '80's to close to the end. Now,I usually buy Wargames Illustrated when I can. Interesting to see stuff on gaming events in the U.K. and the Eurozone and from time to time ,North America.

Tricorne1971
Good reading your post. I let Irons know or are you in contact with him?

Jeff

Thanks MJS.

Let's repeat ONE MORE TIME; The Courier and MWAN where GOING TO DIE ANYWAY. The publishers of both wanted to stop. And the Courier had been putting out maybe one issue a year for a long time anyway.

Don just bought the subsciber list and the back list of articles and with HMG tried his damnedest to give North American wargamers a decent magazine.

But when advertisers don't pay up it's hard to meet your deadlines and then you lose even more ad revenue. It becomes a vicious cycle. He brought me on (working essentially for free; I did get one of his old computers and he paid my internet for a while) too late in the game to try and help meet the publishing deadlines but when there isn't any money to print it doesn't matter.

Too bad, issue 12 was all set to go when Don pulled the plug and it was going to be a good one. Oh well.

So could we PLEASE STOP blaming Don and HMG for 'killing off' The Courier and MWAN. Those mags were going to retire anyway, Don was just trying to carry the banner forward.

There was a sense of wonder about The Courier and MWAN "back in the day". You would re-read the issues cover to cover for weeks after they came in, making orders, planning projects, talking with fellow gamers, etc., which is something sorely lacking today. I still recall the first time that Essex advertised in The Courier. I must have stared at that insert for days!

"PS Does anyone have any news about Mr. Bryant? I have not seen his name mentioned in gaming circles for some time."

I received an email from him about some articles I had written, but I went back through my emails and couldn't find the date. I think it was about a year ago, but I could be wrong.

Print media are in trouble all over the world. TMP and other hobby websites are the replacement for The Courier and MWAN. Manufacturers' websites are the replacement for magazine ads. They do pretty much everything the 'zines used to do, faster, cheaper and better, except I can't read them on the throne. And if I'd upgrade to a modern I-phone, I could do that too.

I admit to nostalgia for those fine 'zines and other cultural markers of my mis-spent youth: Stark Trek TOS, Laugh-In, Boones Farm Strawberry Hill, 8-track cassettes. That's progress for you.

Dick Bryant is a member of TMP and posts here occasionally. I have seen a post from him within the past several weeks.

As others have said, I loved The Courier and have back issues almost all the way back to the very beginning when it was first produced as the newsletter of Dick's northeastern wargames group.

Jim

Print media are in trouble all over the world. TMP and other hobby websites are the replacement for The Courier and MWAN.

Battlegames is not in trouble. Well it was, but it has just acquired a new lease of life as a print magazine having been purchased by Atlantic Publishing.

Odd isn't it that the UK with presumably a far smaller hobby base than the US can support three colour printed wargaming magazines, yet the US cannot support even one?

Let's repeat ONE MORE TIME; The Courier and MWAN where GOING TO DIE ANYWAY. The publishers of both wanted to stop. And the Courier had been putting out maybe one issue a year for a long time anyway.

Don just bought the subsciber list and the back list of articles and with HMG tried his damnedest to give North American wargamers a decent magazine.

So, I went into the archives of TMP and looked for "Historical Gaming Magazine", if you look at the posts you will see that the efforts to meld MWAN and the Courier were in some trouble from the beginning. Many attempts seem to have been made to get the mag out in time, clear up picture quality and resolve the late arrival of issues. All good faith efforts.

So could we PLEASE STOP blaming Don and HMG for 'killing off' The Courier and MWAN.

My comment of, "…not cared for properly." reflects my memory of these many posts about HMG, and its less than satisfactory ( read the questions/ complaints about delivery for money spent ) nurturing.

Don

Yeah HMG had many issues; Don was trying to do too much on his own without enough money. My efforts to help were too late really. But those are completely different from what happened to the previous mags.

Don and HMG did NOT 'kill' The Courier or MWAN. They were dead issues anyway.

So next time someone asks "What happened to MWAN or The courier?" could we give the REAL answer; the publishers were done and the mags folded. Hal and Dick were I believe given some nice chunks of cash for the rights to the names and the old articles (which they wouldn't have gotten otherwise).

Don probably should have just launched HMG, and the money he spent buying the rights to the Courier and MWAN names would have been better spent paying for printing while the ad base got built up.

And how come everyone is so forgiving of Dick Bryant and the Courier's once a year publishing, but jumping all over Don and HMG? Both were labours of love and not making any money.

I think the other comments about blogs and websites taking the place of print magazines is much more accurate as to why The Courier, MWAN and HMG died.

What Zippy said is correct to some extent…

But I find that niche hobbies, which historical miniatures certainly qualifies as, can sustain a print base. BUT it seems that you would be lucky to break even. Battlefront buying out Wargames Illustrated (have I got the name right), breathed new life and funds into the magazine. I am afraid that this is the kind of funding needed to make magazines viable.

Magazines are portable and easy to share. Not so much with online magazines although I suppose you could share PDFs. There is still nothing like the quality of magazine glossy pages with well taken photos IMO.

Sadly, I think I am a contributor to some of these magazines failing as I used to buy at the newsstand and I would avoid buying issues that weren't packed with what I cared for at the time. So I contributed some to sales but a subscription would have helped a lot more.

Even more popular magazines are having trouble with profitability. Action Pursuit Games used to be over 200 pages for some issues but is down to about half this now with less advertising. Computer Shopper used to be huge too and look at the latest issues (if you can find them on your newsstand that is) Radio control hobby magazines seem to be holding steady on issue sizes. Ditto for guitar magazines.

I would love it if someone were to take on the task of making the old articles from the Courier, MWAN, Historical Gamers, etc. and post them online. Many articles are certainly relevant today. Even with the Internet, there are article that contain information that is lost to most of us that don't have a particular magazine. Also add the fact that many of us have interest in new periods/genres and the articles that held no interest in the past, certainly would hold interest today.

If nothing else, I would bet that within the TMP community alone, we have every article from these magazines in paper form that could be converted to online PDFs if the copyright owners wouldn't mind? Sounds like a business could be made out of this with what little online advertising revenue going back to the original publishers and/or authors.

"I would love it if someone were to take on the task of making the old articles from the Courier, MWAN, Historical Gamers, etc. and post them online."

Don Perrin may/must still own the rights to all three of these magazines.

Vintage Wargaming blog:

vintagewargaming.blogspot.com

performs a similar service for British wargaming.

It appears to me that most wargaming magazines nowadays, and actually for some time (the last decade or so), are really more like large, advertising circulars, as opposed to magazines with content.

Sadly, many magazines seem to be like that now.

MW and WI were, and have been like that for some time.

I'm not surprised that the UK, even with a smaller gaming population is able to better support these magazines, since most of the ads in them are geared to UK products, for UK customers, with only minor consideration for us, across the pond.

As an example, a number of manufacturers/retailers that advertised in them would run special discounts on their products, with a fairly tight deadline to purchase them by, in order to get that.

Invariably, by the time I got the latest issue in the USA (as soon as it was available – the local shop would call me when it came in), the deadline had just passed to place an order to obtain the discount.

It appears to me that most wargaming magazines nowadays, and actually for some time (the last decade or so), are really more like large, advertising circulars, as opposed to magazines with content.

Battlegames isn't.

"I would love it if someone were to take on the task of making the old articles from the Courier, MWAN, Historical Gamers, etc. and post them online."

Magweb did exactly this with many of the smaller hobby 'zines. They couldn't make the business model work and shut down in 2009.

"Magweb did exactly this with many of the smaller hobby 'zines. They couldn't make the business model work and shut down in 2009."

Magweb was a business and therefore had to make a profit. Vintage Wargaming is just a blog with great vintage content.

I thought Magweb folded because of some catastrophic technology event that destroyed the files? If I recall properly their disaaster recovery plan also failed. They looked at the cost of rebuilding and decided it was not worth it.

I'm sure someone can share more details.

Having good backups and a viable disaster recovery plan have to be part of any business model that involves computers.

Yes, Magweb was a business. So is TMP. So were The Courier and MWAN – never very profitable, but they at least had to cover most of their operating expenses.

I'll take as much of someone else's labor-of-love as I can get, as long as it's free. But most folks in this hobby are not independently wealthy and need some material reward for their labor. So I pay my dues to TMP, and tip my hat to Vintage Wargaming.

Thanks for the mentions of Vintage Wargaming. I'd be more than happy to include articles from the Courier and MWAN if I could get in touch with the rights holder – so if anyone is in touch with Don Perrin and could point him my way I'd be grateful. I have some copies of each magazine though not great archives of them.

I think blogs and the net have allowed people to do hobby related things which otherwise could only have been done in print, cost far more and reached far fewer people.

"I would love it if someone were to take on the task of making the old articles from the Courier, MWAN, Historical Gamers, etc. and post them online."

Look for this to happen for MWAN and The Courier soon, very soon!

GreatLakesWeasel Supporting Member of TMP says
"I would love it if someone were to take on the task of making the old articles from the Courier, MWAN, Historical Gamers, etc. and post them online." Look for this to happen for MWAN and The Courier soon, very soon!

Nashville Responds: "By GOLLY ! something good did come from the complainers and why-did-thngs-fail folks who started posting on this string. I LOVED MWAN and The Courier and , I as noted earlier contributed to both primarily about the Crimean war. Be great for everyone to have access to the "mother-church" of wagaming ( Scruby wrote the "father church").

There are comments on Battlegames, and I tend to agree that it is a good replacement for Battle – it has some "advertorial", but also general wargaming articles – how to paint, how to make terrain, reviews of the hobby etc. So I think that the print version of a decent wargames mag is still available, but perhaps not many USA customers?

It's good to see those Courier covers – the second one promotes my first article in an actual, non-mimeographed magazine, the siege rules "Forlorn Hope" (not Pete Berry's excellent ECW rules of the same name and publication era)

As to magazine sales – I suspect that while there's a vague consensus that there are about as many wargamers in the US as the UK, that's a much smaller part of the whole population, and much more spread out geographically. That's largely why US conventions are whole weekend events attached to hotels rather than day trips out.

Furthermore, the 'local newsagent' who carries a wide selection of hobby magazines is much more common in the UK than the US. Getting your magazine picked up by WH Smith means access to a vast browsing public. I have almost never seen a historical wargaming magazine in an American magazine rack outside specialist game shops; certainly, the Courier and HMG Magazine never reached that sort of distribution. In contrast, if a British wargamer can't find Wargames Illustrated or Miniature wargames at his local Smith's, it's because they've sold out. I bought a WI in the mighty wargaming metropolis of Minehead in Somerset in September. The very large Barnes and Noble in my very large local shopping mall in New York will not have it.

Magazines also have a life cycle; once the enthusiast has grown in his hobby then the magazine content is very much 'been there, done that'.

It's very hard to get a balance between articles for new comers and articles for experienced gamers. Some love scenarios and battle reports, others hate them. some love painting and terrain, others hate them. And then there's the folks that complain if there isn't any __________ [fill in your favourite period here] and others who complain if there IS any ________.

A lot of the stuff we feel nostalgic about with the old mags (bad printing, amateurish graphics and dodgy binding aside) is partly nostalgia for our youth, and also the mags were our only media for finding out about stuff. So Hal's columns about his SYW armies and how he was planning, organizing, painting etc. those are now replaced by blog posts. Need to find uniform info? Used to be you had to wait for someone to write an article, now you ask Google.

Used to be a company would find it worth the money to buy a full page ad and run a catalogue listing with a few crappy pictures. Now it's much more economical for them to buy a business card sized ad with their website on it.

Old Glory backed a magazine a few years ago; La Gloire. It was great for 5 issues, then it had problems too.

I think we're only going to see a glossy North American mag if Old Glory and 19th cent miniatures back it (I'm just guessing those are the 2 'big boys' by size of booths at the HMGS-E shows). But why should they? They get enough free advertising by people using their stuff and talking about them on their blogs.

I moved from UK to Texas in 1989/90. I recall picking up some erratic issues of Courier from a now defunct hobby shop. I must be old school, but I certainly had more hours of pleasure from some of the older magazines than the 'pretty' glossy ones I pick up today. Typically, what I pick up today doesn't last long before I trash it… Courier would stay around for ages on my book shelf

Another magazine which seldom gets mentioned is Battlefields Magazine, which was published in the UK by Partizan Press/Caliver books.

There are some posts on Vintage Wargaming here:

link

with kind permission of Dave Ryan at Caliver. I understand some back issues are still available from him.

If you haven't noticed already Wargames Vault is slowly publishing all Courier and MWAN back issues.

Gentlemen;

Yep, as "freewargamesrules" says, I was just updated by Wargames Vault and Vol 1, No 1 through Vol 9, No 6 are now available for purchase and download as pdf's at $3.00 USD each. You can see them, along with summaries and/or previews here:

link

And I have no connection to Wargames vault except as a satisfied customer.

Bill
Sir William the Aged

Thanks for pointing out that Wargames Vault has the Courier back issues … good way to see the covers and preview the table of contents.

Got nearly all of Courier and MWAN in hard cpoy. Still read them both.

I have all the Couriers, Most of the newer MWAN (colour covers) and many many of the order ones and all of HMGs. They were great back in the day (pre-internet) but that ended almost all of the hobby mags except a few from across the pond. All were great back in the day.
VR
James Mattes