John Curry (1)

Hard to rate this one because it's hard to say what it's really trying to achieve. Calling it a "handbook" is a bit of a stretch, as it's mostly a discussion of the history of matrix games and speculations on possible future applications. From a handbook I would expect more focused how-to than this.

So there's a lack of focus throughout and this is compounded by the very poor standard of editing. I know the three "editors" listed are more in the "curator" sense but a lot of this book hasn't show more been subjected to a basic grammar check or, it seems, any independent proofreading. There's extraneous words and malapropisms throughout (presumably leftovers from earlier drafts) that leap out at the reader and sometimes make it hard to understand exactly what the authors are trying to say; some of the authors are worse than others and one gets the sense they were left to their own devices without much oversight which is kind of inexcusable when there's supposed to be a team of three editors. One or two such errors I could overlook but the book is littered with them.

Overall I have to give it 2 stars because it's surprisingly amateurish from a team of so many professionals and I don't think the labelling of it as a handbook is reflective of what you're going to get. show less

Reprint of one of the earliest miniature wargames that was played by civilians, rather than officers in a war college. Now very dated, it's a piece of history worth remembering.