Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels is one of those classics of English literature that has become so familiar that a lot of people recognize with the content without ever cracking it open. An English doctor gets shipwrecked over and over again in strange worlds, allowing Swift to make a series of satirical comments on his own […]

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A strategy guide is usually little more than a souped up manual. It goes over the basics of a game, often reiterating things you’ll find elsewhere like commands and explanations of iconography. There’ll be tips and tricks, unit breakdowns and maybe a rough approximation of cost/benefit analysis. There are, naturally, cheats. Strategy guides have no […]

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I first became aware of Bill James through an article in Sport magazine about the stolen base. This was the early 80s when Whitey-ball and the exploits of Tim Raines and Rickey Henderson seemed as big news as the home run explosion has been in recent years. James was quoted as being skeptical of the […]

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Greg Costikyan’s article on the history of board and strategy gaming provoked me to return to H.G. Wells’ Little Wars. Actually, the full title is Little Wars: A Game for Boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys’ games and books. […]

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