Take a tour through the Vault and read some classic Wi articles. The new year is now enough underway that we have to stop calling it the new year... instead, why not head into the Vault and focus on some of the stuff from old years instead? Wargames Illustrated Wi006 - February 1988 Go back 35 years and you'll find some of the very earliest issues of Wargames Illustrated preserved in the Vault. They've aged rather well, like a fine wine or a perfectly ripe cheese, and while they don't look quite as fancy as our modern issues, there's still some really enjoyable content within. Issue six has a snappy three-page ruleset for Pike and Shot by Paul Trickett, the Battle of Stamford Bridge is explored by Anthony R. Tucker (Daniel Mersey also covers this battle in the much later Wi365), Mike Bell looks at the Missouri Outlaws during the ACW (with a classic Peter Gilder tabletop setup pictured), Ian Russel Lowell goes back a lot further than this issue's 35 years to Arzawa 1330BC, and there's a fair bit of other stuff to enjoy. Wargames Illustrated 185 - February 2003 Leaping to the 21st Century, Wi185 still feels fairly old school with many of its article offerings having an 'of their time' charm. It starts out with a campaign for AK47 (which is a system that still gets some play today but isn't seen around too much) then transitions to a very unusual article that gamifies some 1910s and 20s Hollywood films but primarily seems intent on describing what happens in said films ... this was only a couple of years after the launch of Wikipedia; maybe such information was harder to find for the masses and Wi was doing its duty in explaining the plot to films such as King Kong? Worth a curiosity peek anyway! Rapid Fire is a game that hasn't gone anywhere. It still gets a decent bit of play which makes us wonder if some of you will give Stephen Bennett's Operation Comet scenario a go. David Bickley hasn't gone anywhere either (the final article in our latest issue, Wi422 - is penned by him) and in this 20-year-old issue, he covers the battle of Logan's Crossroads. His article is accompanied by some snaps of a setup from David Marshall of TM Terrain; he is also still doing what he was busy with two decades ago - making great-looking gaming boards. Wargames Illustrated 304 - February 2013 Go back just a decade and things are a lot more colourful. These early 300s issues come from the 'Battlefront era' so there's a hefty dose of Flames of War within the magazine but plenty of other
