Issue 11 will be with our distributors by the end of the week, so what does this packed issue have in store?
Bob Barnetson and Bruce McFarlane from Canada carry out another of their comparative reviews, this time of rules for gaming the American War of Independence. Patriots and Loyalists, Warfare in the Age of Reason, Shako, and British Grenadier, together with one boardgame conversion, Clash for a Continent, come under scrutiny.
Dillon Browne — he of Bloody Picnic fame — delivers part 1 of a two-parter on how to write wargames rules.
Paul Bright writes about the experience of staging an ancient Romans demo game using 10mm Magister Militum armies for Warmaster Ancients.
Stuart Asquith's battle for wargamers this time is a fictitious scenario based on incidents from the French and Indian Wars, "the defence of Fort Cumberland 1758."
Mike Siggins' Forward Observer column ponders the emergence of 28mm plastics, the problems of getting decent lighting for painting, the challenges of painting samurai, online colour matching services and his Top 20 products from 2007, as well as other tidbits.
Arthur Harman, who always comes up with innovative ideas, gives us some great systems for simulating the risk to our tabletop commanders.
Our Fantasy & Sci-Fi Editor Roger Smith is also in rule-writing mode, and ponders some of the challenges facing rules designers in arriving at balanced troop capabilities.
In my own penultimate episode of The Wars of the Faltenian Succession, I deal with pontoon bridges (an eagle-eyed reader spotted their omission from an earlier issue) and give some simple, automated rules for carrying out conventional sieges in your campaigns, before taking a more in-depth look at siegecraft.
C S Grant's Table Top Teaser this time is Insurgency, pitching irregular forces against red-coated rank-and-file. A real humdinger, this could be adapted to any number of historically-paired opponents.
The Recce section is packed as usual, with some excellent rules reviews in particular, including the new Field of Glory ancients rules, There Are Your Guns GdeB variant for the mid 19th century, and EM-4's Ludus Gladiatorus 2 fun gladiator game in a box.
We have a new regular short column, War and Preece, from veteran British gamer and witty grumpy old man John Preece, whose skilful prose is directed at reminding us that not all new ideas are really new, nor old ideas really old. In his opening issue, he gives a deft sketch of Neil Cogswell.
Finally, I regret that as of issue 12, I am having to raise the cover price of the magazine to £3.95 GBP, and the cost of an annual subscription £23.70 GBP post free for the U.K., £27.50 GBP incl. P&P. to other EU countries and £36.00 GBP for the Rest of the World. EU and Rest of the World postage is still heavily subsidised. You can beat the price rise by subscribing before the price rise takes effect, and page 42 of this issue also contains details of a special 12-issue subscription deal with a fabulous bonus into the bargain. You'll have to buy the magazine to find out what it is!
Hope you enjoy the magazine, and I hope to make the PDF version of issue 3 available later this week, too.