Saturday 5 November 2011

Rally 'Round Battlegames!

Many of you will by now have heard the announcement that wargames magazine Battlegames will no longer be able to be produced in its current printed format. Battlegames was a great magazine with echoes of Practical Wargamer and Battle, I especially liked the inclusion of F/SF as "just another period" (the way it should be).

It may be that editor and publisher Henry Hyde is able to keep the magazine going as a PDF project, I certainly hope so, but what concerned me was his comments in the statement as follows, "the blunt fact is that I should have recognised the writing on the wall sooner and am now in considerable financial difficulty as a result. I have been operating as a one-man-band in a precarious financial position from the outset, with no fall-back position, and I have paid the price. It is now imperative that I resume my former career in graphic and web design for the time being, as well as my new one in writing, in order to prevent complete financial meltdown."

You may have seen Henry recently raised over £10,000 for the Combat Stress charity walking from Battle to Lewes Castle (on an unseasonably hot day when temperatures hit 28c!) and it doesn't seem right to me that someone who does something like this should not have the support of the wargaming community in his hour of need...

If you have not bought any copies of Battlegames you can buy some back issues here. Alternatively (and I think this is a fantastic bargain) for just £40.50 you can download issues 1 to 24 in PDF format here (and get a free PDF of Tabletop Teasers Volume One as well).

I'm sure any purchase, no matter how small,  will be of great personal help to Henry and I encourage you all to visit the Battlegames website and buy something, you won't regret it, the only regret will be if this is the end of Battlegames...

2 comments:

  1. I still have several copies of Battle stashed away in my attic ! :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Shades of the demise of Practical Wargaming many years ago. This is one of those unfortunate salutory lessons that wargamers need to heed every now and then. We have to remember that this is a niche hobby and that margins are slim, if they exist at all. There aren't that many people who can actually make a living from it, and to be honest I'm surprised Henry wasn't working at a more regular job as well as editing Battlegames. I guess that the rise of the internet and the plethora of information that is available for free at the click of a mouse button doesn't help either.

    ReplyDelete