Nice wins.

GameScience reprinted the Little Soldiers booklets in a compendium called The Fantasy Gamer's Compendium in 1990. It has The Book of Mystery, Book of Monsters, Book of Demons, Book of Sorcery, Book of Shamans and Book of Treasure in it. The little digests are far more appealing though.

Hi there!

Well, I figure if they're old and they have demons and magic, I'll enjoy them. I know a fair amount about early gaming stuff and somehow these slipped under my radar screen, so I guess I was mostly curious about historical stuff. Afterglow's list tells some of that but then some of the guys who wrote for Little Soldier/Phoenix also wrote for Rider Fantasy Creations so I'm just curious about this little corner of ancient rpg history.

Chess - yeah, after my Ars Magica and WFRP campaigns wrapped up in the early nineties I hung up roleplaying for about five years and played chess instead. I got to the A player level but hadn't lost to a non-master in over two years when I quit playing - won two local tournaments with experts playing in them too. I wrote a chess column for a state magazine for a while. It's a beautiful game but I do logical/analytic stuff for a living and ultimately I decided to go back to roleplaying because I needed not to be calculating all the time in every aspect of my life. With apologies to David Bronstein and Mikhail Tal, roleplaying gives wider scope to wonder.

Calithena wrote:Well, I figure if they're old and they have demons and magic, I'll enjoy them. I know a fair amount about early gaming stuff and somehow these slipped under my radar screen, so I guess I was mostly curious about historical stuff. Afterglow's list tells some of that but then some of the guys who wrote for Little Soldier/Phoenix also wrote for Rider Fantasy Creations so I'm just curious about this little corner of ancient rpg history.

Chess - yeah, after my Ars Magica and WFRP campaigns wrapped up in the early nineties I hung up roleplaying for about five years and played chess instead. I got to the A player level but hadn't lost to a non-master in over two years when I quit playing - won two local tournaments with experts playing in them too. I wrote a chess column for a state magazine for a while. It's a beautiful game but I do logical/analytic stuff for a living and ultimately I decided to go back to roleplaying because I needed not to be calculating all the time in every aspect of my life. With apologies to David Bronstein and Mikhail Tal, roleplaying gives wider scope to wonder.

I'm afraid I don't know that much about the history of Little Soldier/Phoenix; back in the late 70s/early 80s I would buy almost anything concerning D&D that I could get my hands on, but I never concerned myself much with the people who made them. Anyway, I still have a few other 3rd party fantasy "rarities" that I intend to eventually auction off - of course I'll post in the Acaeum Classifieds when I do  

I topped out in the 2100s in chess; lack of practice and faster time controls have caused my rating to settle at 1900. These days I'm a very active correspondence chess player - I'm an ICCF rated master. Anyway, I find that both chess and RPGs are something that I keep coming back to.

More proof that man is irrational (or at least that I am): I'm positive I'll get more wonder and inspiration out of it if it's a digest from the seventies than I would if it were printed in an updated package. That said, I'll have my eyes out for the gamescience version.

I played postal for a while and enjoyed it, though it ate ALL my free time (more than fantasy gaming even). Here's a couple goofy miniatures I won postally:

Calithena - RM 1-0 (Ruy Lopez, Schliemann Defense)

1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bb5 f5 4 Nc3 Nf6 5 exf5 Bc5 6 d3! 0-0 7.Ne4 Bb6 8.Bg5! d5 9 Nxf6+ gxf6 10 Bh6 Rf7 11 Bxc6 Bxf5? (11...bxc6 12 Nh4! Kh8 13. Qh5 Qg8 14. Ng6!) 12 Nh4 Bh3 13 gh 1-0.

Calithena - MS (Panov-Botvinnik Attack)

1 e4 c6  2 d4 d5  3 exd5 cxd5  4 c4 Nf6  5 Nc3 e6  6 Nf3 Nbd7? 7 c5! b6?
8 c6 Nb8  9 Qa4 Qc7 (9...Qd6 10 a3! Nxc6 11 Bf4!) 10 Nb5 Qe7 11 a3!  1-0.

And here's me losing a blitz game to Judit Polgar:

Calithena - GM Judit Polgar (Benko Gambit)

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5 3.d5 b5 4.cxb5 a6 5.bxa6 g6 6.Nc3 Bxa6 7.e4 Bxf1 8.Kxf1 d6 9.g3 Bg7 10.Kg2 0-0 11.Nf3 Nbd7 12.Re1 Ng4 13.Bf4 Qa5
14.Qc2 Rfb8 15.h3?! Nge5 16.Nxe5 Nxe5 17.Bxe5 Bxe5 18.Re2? Rxb2 19.Qxb2 Bxc3 20.Qb1 Bxa1 21.Qxa1 c4 22.Rc2 Rc8 23.a4? c3 24.Qa3 Rc4
25.f3 f5 26.e5?! Qxd5 27.exd6 exd6 28.Qb3 Kg7 29.a5 Qc6 30.Qb8 Qa4 31.Qb7+?? Kh6 32.Rc1?? Qa2+ 33.Kf1 Qd2  34.Re1 c2 35.Qe7 Qxe1+
36.Kxe1 c1Q+ 37.Ke2 Rc2+ 0-1