Take a second journey with us to an ancient age, just one step up from carving game rules on clay tablets. The year 1973 was at the very dawn of the independent wargame publishing companies. Typesetting was done with a manual typewriter, print-on-demand meant the photocopier at the library, counters were printed on paper (and drawn by hand), page layout was done with scissors and cellophane tape, and two guys in a garage could turn out a wargame magazine that won two Origins Awards. The point was creativity, new ideas, and imagination. Production values would have to come later.
This is a PDF scan of a copy of the magazine from Steve Cole's personal archives. It includes cover art he drew by hand, ACAV (a PanzerBlitz variant for Vietnam, basically a complete major game), Fliegenkampf (close air support rules for PanzerBlitz created by Al Hall, an Air Force pilot who flew F-4s over Vietnam), variants for several games (US troops in Stalingrad and Barbarossa, Japanese and Germans in Korean War, replacements in Anzio, Laos in Year of the Rat, Americans in France 1940, Diplomacy, night raids in Luftwaffe, naval bombardment in Guadalcanal), an article on land warfare, Principles of Wargaming (article), a Dogger Bank scenario for Jutland (with a hand-drawn counter for the Blucher), an article on naval miniatures, an article on armor miniatures, a review of Up Against the Wall, an article on private armies, a filksong to the tune of "Hawaii-5-0" (the very first filksong SVC ever published), a review of S&T back issues, a tiny game (Crazy Horse) about hunting buffalo from horseback with a bow and arrow, and a one-page game called Eban Emael about the famous airborne attack in WWII.
JagdPanther Magazine was the brainchild of Stephen V. Cole, who later went on to design Star Fleet Battles. He created a magazine that, over the next three years, produced two dozen games, 15 issues, hundreds of variants, and dozens of game reviews. While the magazine steadily improved in later years, this second issue was, clearly, a work that had made no real progress from issue #1.
This classic magazine has been out of print for decades and has been sold on eBay for over $100 a copy. Now, you can have a copy (and soon, the complete set) at a very reasonable price.
Because Steve Cole (against the advice of everyone) did this magazine on 14-inch paper, this scan breaks each of the 19 original pages into two modern 11-inch pages, plus the maps and countersheets. (This is a scan of the second printing, which had eliminated some obsolete advertisements.)
Written by Stephen Cole
