November is reaching its end, the days have well and truly darkened, and there’s less than a month left until Wi Tower gets locked up so we can head off for our festive break. I’m excited to have some time to rest and recuperate ahead of me but at Wargames Illustrated we must earn our downtime! An extra magazine sign-off gets crammed in before the end of December each year, to ensure we’re on top of our printing schedule in the new year, and that means it’s all hands on deck right now. Editor Dan and I (Project Manager James) are busy putting the finishing touches to assorted articles and taking all kinds of snazzy photos covering centuries of history. Here’s a peep at some of the pieces ahead to get your anticipation glands fizzing! Wi433, December 2023 – Peter Cushing’s wargaming ephemera Wi433, December 2023 – Designer’s Notes: Never Mind the Billhooks: Here’s the Ruckus Wi434, January 2023 – Wargaming Manzikert Wi434, January 2023 – The Templars’ last charge Cast your eagle eyes over the second article above to get a sneak preview of something that’s going to take up plenty of my attention in 2024. Never Mind the Billhooks: Here’s the Ruckus (or Ruckus for short) is a spin-off from Andy Callan’s excellent large skirmish wargame. Developed by passionate Billhooks player Mike Peters, we are working with him to release the game in 2024 (with Andy’s seal of approval, of course) as a magazine freebie. Ruckus shrinks Billhooks’ gameplay down to intense, fast, fun skirmish battles with a focus on characters, skills, duelling, and narrative. It shares the same DNA as its big brother but has countless variations that bring new tactical challenges and create intriguing stories in the time of the Wars of the Roses. One of the areas of the game I most enjoy so far is building up a group of combatants. You can cherry-pick their skills and backgrounds or randomly determine them with a versatile card draw system. Whatever route you take is a brilliant way to build a characterful collection of figures for the period; I’m already converting some Perry Plastics to make leaders for a couple of companies. The pressure’s on to bring Mike’s rules together so they look as good as they play. They’ll be a freebie somewhere around mid-2024 and who knows where things will go from there. I’ll finish off this Insider Insight with a look at another project I’m working on right now. At the start of 2023, I set myself a mission - to learn how to sculpt digital terrain - and with the year coming to an end, I feel like I’m doing ok. I’m working
