What's Different in the Falklands

[Jeff Conner]

The best book I found on Falklands Conflict was unfortunately, the last book I bought. I wish I had found it much earlier in the process as it would have been a great help. The book is The Falklands War, Then and Now. It is probably not for everyone though. It is expensive, I think I paid about $90 for it, but it is huge. It's a coffee table sized book, crammed full of pictures and it must weigh more than ten pounds. There are lots of pictures that I have only seen in this book. The history of the war is told through the captions of the pictures while the body of the text is an oral history as told by the participants, many of them Argentine. One of the major things that the editor tries to accomplish is to find the current equivalent of the pictures taken during the war as well as showing where events took place. Consequently, there are lots of pictures of the terrain of the Falklands. There is also a complete listing of all the men who lost their lives and pictures of many of them. I found that besides being a very good historical document, it gave me a visualization of the war that was previously lacking. I would highly recommend it and you might check your local library. If they don't have it, they may be able to obtain it from another library that does.

In terms of books that most of us can afford, I would recommend anything by Nicholas van der Bijl. He was a NCO attached to 3rd Commando Brigade's Intelligence Section. His Nine Battles to Stanley is probably the best depiction of the land battles that occurred and my primary source for many of the scenarios. His other books are not quite as good, but still a very good source of information.

Lastly in terms of books, I would recommend Not Mentioned in Dispatches by Spencer Fitz-Gibbon. It only covers the Battle of Goose Green, but it is an excellent work. The author is pretty critical of Lt Colonel Jones and his command style, which didn't garner him any points with the British military, but it is kind of hard to argue with him. This battle was not Colonel Jones' finest moment. Besides a very good description of the battle, there are numerous grid maps that reference specific positions. It was a huge asset for the Goose Green scenarios.

In terms of things I learned, I found out more about the Squad Battles' editors than I ever wanted to. I also came to the realization that I don't know as much about the Squad Battles system as I thought I did. I tried to incorporate many of the chrome components of the game system, but there are a few that I just couldn't figure out how to make work properly. Blessed are the playtesters who patiently helped me through the process.

For quite some time, I didn't think I wanted to do additional scenario design, at least in a lead position. However, as the game came to a close, I changed my mind completely. It was very rewarding to actually finish something I had been working on for so long. I won't tell you how long, but it was years.

In terms of what I will do differently in the future, the one thing I can think of is to try and maintain a fairly steady work pace, with some time off. I tended to work enthusiastically for a period of time and then get burned out and not work on the project for a quite some time. I am sure I tried Rich's patience more than once.

I hope you enjoy the game and feel free to ask any questions you might have. I will try and answer them as best I can.

Jeff