While browsing for some game oldies, I ended up on a pretty cool archive website.
The Gamers was a wargaming company founded and run by Dean Essig in Homer, Illinois. Their distinction was the focus on a few series, with special rules for each individual game. This made it easier to play new games within a series that was well known to the players. This company was bought out by Multi-Man Publishing in 2001 who continues to publish new materials for the original Gamers series and plans to release new ones designed by Dean Essig.
The Gamers produced games in several different series:
- CWB – The Civil War Brigade series simulates battles at the brigade level during the American Civil War.
- RSS – The Regimental Sub-System series simulates battles at the regimental level during the American Civil War.
- TCS – The Tactical Combat series simulates 20th century platoon level battles.
- OCS – The Operational Combat series simulates 20th century battles at levels ranging from battalions to divisions.
- SCS – The Standard Combat series is a general system which is easy (yet still challenging) and allows simulation of a wide range of battles.
- NBS – The Napoleonic Brigade series simulates brigade level battles during the Napoleonic Wars.
A full list of games is available on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gamers
There is an archive site who maintains a documentation about all the games published by The Gamers, including those now out of print: The Gamers Archives
=> You’ll find there useful resources about the games (maps, counters, rules, links to Vassal modules), as well as a full index of the Operations magazine.
According to a recent post of Chas Argent from MMP on both ConsimWorld and Gamesquad, the firm is on the verge of releasing an electronic version of ASL rulebook. That’s certainly exciting news for the players community, striving to make the game more popular and struggling to attract new players, often scared off by the complexity of just the Starter Kits.
The Australian Wargamer 