THE ANCIENT WAR GAME

We muddled through as much of this as possible but playing with toy soldiers is a special hobby with fine rules and it calls for enthusiastic study. These war games require purchase of various 25 mm. pieces representing bowmen, light infantry, charioteers and so on, and are to be played on a large table with either flat or molded scenery (Grant prefers flat). Hobbyists don't re-fight famous engagements with the Egyptians, the Hittites, Greeks, Persians or others so much as invent their own battles, sometimes with armies from different eras having impossible frays with a 500-year spread. Dice affect the troops' morale, and a high roll can actually plunge an army into an utterly fatal charge which the player can't stop. It all sounds fun for our septuagenarian sunset years. It may be that war-gaming is adaptable to literary politics, with A and B choosing moves wrapped in spitballs: A: I publish The Naked and the Dead. B: I pan it in the Sunday Times. A: I throw my bloody typewriter at you. B: I punch you in the nose. I win!