The Featherstone Factor

The Featherstone Factor is my salute to that doyen of wargamers in the 1960s & 70s, Donald Featherstone. He wrote over 40 books aimed at guiding the gentle reader in the ways of wargaming. For a snotty neophyte like me, his most influential book was War Games Through the Ages 3000 BC to 1500 AD, bought for the princely sum of $6.90, not cheap back in 1972. 

In that pre-internet, information at your fingertips era, can you imagine my excitement in discovering a book that, in Donald’s own words, provided, “ all the information the wargamer requires to build up armies in the Ancient and Medieval periods.” Not only that, the book was going to specify the “standard tactical methods of fighting of every army of Ancient and Medieval times,” and set out, “the methods of fighting to which armies should conform.” Now that was a trove of information (not to mention an ambitious brief)!

Replete with lovely line drawings of warriors and slightly naff photos of miniatures at battle, I read this book from cover to cover several times and used it as my go-to source of information for a long time. Each army was given an assertive and authoritative overview of its fighting history and capabilities. 

Importantly for the Featherstone Factor, Donald provided a Fighting Assessment Chart for each army that listed 20 qualities of an army and gave it a ‘Fighting Assessment’ score so you could conveniently compare the effectiveness of any given army with another, just by comparing their scores. Simples!

So, in tribute to War Games Through the Ages, I have come up with the Featherstone Factor. For every army I present on this blog that Donald rated in his book (turns out he didn’t actually cover every army) I will present a brief overview of Donald’s own overview and its fighting Assessment score. I’ve enjoyed dipping back into my wargaming past and I hope you have some fun with it too.