"Charlie Sweet and his rules for Ancients" Topic

This post concerns Charlie Sweet, who I had the [privilege to met and play with a number of times back in the 1970's:

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Charlie was instrumental in our hobby getting much wider exposure, at least in the US, first by way of an article in Sports Illustrated, and later an interview by "Sixty Minutes":

(image from the Vintage Wargames blog)

Included is the best reconstruction I could do of their rules for Ancient armies

I hope you enjoy it, and if you are not familiar with this wonderful gentleman, follow some of the links in the blog post for a fuller background on him.

Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays to all!

Peter

Nice to see the ancients rules posted to your blog. Thanks much for posting this, and for the very useful blog.

In 1969, the New England Wargamers Association based in Boston, made a field trip to visit Charlie. We played an American Revolution game with his hand made figures. A wonderful gentleman who did much for the hobby. He contributed many articles to Jack Scruby's various publications.

Here is a link to this Sports Illustrated article.
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Here is a link to the article in The Courier that Peter kindly mentions on his blog:
link

Charlie's son, David is also an active gamer, whom I run into at the HMGS cons. Just a youngster then, he was present when we visited in '69.

Now to tie us all back together, when Dick Bryant and I did a recreation of Don Featherstone's ACW rules,at 2012 H'Con, David and another member of our field trip, Leo Cronin, played in the game.
David, Dick, me, Leo, 43 years later.

Bob,

Glad you enjoyed the post. Dave is an old friend dating back to college as mentioned in the post preceding this one in the series; he was a [player in my Borodino game at Historicon this July as well.

Enjoyed the picture of a group of famous gamers as well; I think I first met Dick at the last MFCA wargames convention held in the Armory.

Peter

Very nice to see, thanks.

I had read the article before but it was nice reading all the related items too.

Thanks,

John

Very interesting. The Sports Illustrated article was very interesting.

Glad it has been of interest! Whenever Charlie comes up for discussion, anyone who knew him invariably uses the term "gentleman" to refer to him, because it describes his personality perfectly. This, plus his enthusiasm for the hobby, and his "respectability"(he was the president of a local bank) made him perhaps the ideal ambassador for our hobby at the time. Charlie wasn't at all afraid to let it be known that he played with (and researched, designed, and cast his own)"toy soldiers", but no one would ever consider him childish.

Peter