Some wargamers believe that between H.G. Wells and his book Little Wars, published in 1912, nothing much happened in toy soldier games until Donald Featherstone published his classic book, Wargames in 1962. In fact, there were a number of such games in this apparent void. One of these was Sham Battle (1929) by Lieutenant Harry G. Dowdall (U.S. Army) and Joseph Gleason.
The book is a small volume of 135 pages that was only published once. Although clearly a toy soldier game, it deserved more success that it had. Economic depression and then the threat of real war perhaps contributed to the book's early obscurity. Outside of North America, the book is hardly known today.
As stated above, it was clearly a toy soldier game. Lacking the realism even of the HG Wells game or the early games such as Lionel Tarr (1959). It did have some original features.
The rules have the standard sections we expect today; army lists, movement rules, melee, firing and victory conditions. They included three difficult levels ; a Lieutenant's Game, a Captain's Game and the General's game. Each level builts on the previous game with additional rules, such as for spies, and hospitals. I also noted it was the first game that had infantry moving six inches. The artillery fired using an artillery grid, while the machine gun used a triangle, which approximately reflected the real world beaten zone of the deadly weapon. The chapter on officers, medals and spies added some colour. I particularly liked the mechanism for detecting a spy; this involved a player challenging one of their own men by interrogating them, perhaps even killing them. A careless player might have killed a number of their own men during such a spy hunt.
The development of war game rules over the last 100 years has been incremental, with periodic steps backwards. However, Sham Battle certainly made a number of such steps.
This reprint contains this introduction and a copy of the original 135 page book in a comb binding.
Sham Battles is an original edition to the collection of historical war games available via www.johncurryevents.co.uk.
