'A Gentleman's War'

[Howard Whitehouse]

My comrade in arms, Dan Foley and I are working on our own shiny toy soldier rules at present.  It involves dice, cards and a deliberately genteel code of conduct. Soldiers are ludicrously brave,  infantry use their bayonets in earnest, and your single remaining lancer may well charge the enemy all on his own. We've been using Dan's 42mm Spencer Smiths, but I hope to deploy my 30mm flats soon.

This is the introduction to the introduction: "This game is intended as a simple game involving toy soldiers of the classic style. It isn't intended to be 'realistic' in any sense. Rather, it's the friendly collaboration of two wargamers of mature years, with getting on for a century of playing with small but lethal figurines between them. It is a relaxed and relaxing game, where enough depends on the turn of a card and the roll of a handful of dice to say that our disasters are pure chance, but enough cunning decision-making to claim our victories as acts of brilliant generalship."

 If anyone is interested,  I've begun a 'Gentleman's War' Yahoo Group (which seems like an archaism in itself in 2016, but I can't send a broadsheet printed in a squalid shop in Whitechapel, which obviously I'd prefer.)
Go here to join -
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/groupurlGentlemansWar/info

If you'd simply like a Word doc of the rules as they stand, email me at professorbellbuckle@yahoo.com

[Metternich]

Brings back my youth !  Shades of H.G. Wells' Little Wars !  For those who haven't had the pleasure of encountering them before, see below link:
 http://gardenwargaming.com/wargame/title.html

[Howard Whitehouse]

Project Gutenberg has the whole of Little Wars here:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3691/3691-h/3691-h.htm

My own copy was a gift from Duke Seifried in 1988, a photocopy of the original, spiral  bound. I must thank him again for it, as I just re-read it last week.