''Perfidious Albion'' was a British

board game A board game is a type of tabletop game that involves small objects () that are placed and moved in particular ways on a specially designed patterned game board, potentially including other components, e.g. dice. The earliest known uses of the ...

and

wargame A normal wargame is a strategy game in which two or more players command opposing armed forces in a simulation of an armed conflict. Wargaming may be played for Recreational wargaming, recreation, to train military officers in the art of milit ...

magazine, published and edited by Charles Vasey and Geoff Barnard.

History

In the early 1970s, Charles Vasey, a chartered accountant and wargames hobbyist, began to write reviews of the games that he played for small games magazines such as ''Military Modelling'' and ''

Strategy & Tactics ''Strategy & Tactics'' (''S&T'') is a wargaming magazine now published by Decision Games, notable for publishing a new wargame in each issue. Beginnings ''Strategy & Tactics'' was first published in January 1967 under its original editor, Chri ...

''. Vasey and his acquaintance Geoff Barnard, came to believe that other reviews being published at the time were either too deferential to the major game publishers such as SPI, or were written for game designers and publishers, not for the consumers who were buying the games. When the 1975 publication of the popular wargame ''

Tobruk Tobruk ( ; ; ) is a port city on Libya's eastern Mediterranean coast, near the border with Egypt. It is the capital of the Butnan District (formerly Tobruk District) and has a population of 120,000 (2011 est.)."Tobruk" (history), ''Encyclop� ...

'' by

Avalon Hill Avalon Hill Games Inc. is a game company that publishes wargames and strategic board games. It has also published miniature wargaming rules, role-playing games and sports simulations. It is a subsidiary of Hasbro, and operates under the compan ...

resulted in more shallow reviews, Barnard convinced Vasey that they should create a

zine A zine ( ; short for ''magazine'' or ''fanzine'') is, as noted on Merriam-Webster’s official website, a magazine that is a “noncommercial often homemade or online publication usually devoted to specialized and often unconventional subject ...

dedicated to in-depth, objective and critical reviews of wargames. The result was ''Perfidious Albion'', a small self-published zine focussed on miniatures and board wargames. It was intermittent in frequency of publication and irregular in size. At the height of its popularity, Vasey said that it had a circulation of about 500.

Awards

* At the 1979

Origins Awards The Origins Awards are American awards for outstanding work in the gaming industry. They are presented by the Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA) at the Origins Game Fair on an annual basis for games released in the preceding year. For example, t ...

, ''Perfidious Albion'' was awarded the 1978

Charles S. Roberts Award The Charles S. Roberts Awards (or CSR Awards) is an annual award for excellence in manual, tabletop games, with a focus on "conflict simulations", which includes simulations of non-military as well as military conflicts. From its founding in 1975 ...

as "Best Amateur Wargame Magazine". * At the 1980

, ''Perfidious Albion'' was awarded the 1979

as "Best Amateur Wargame Magazine".

Reviews

*''Magazines for Libraries'', 2000, p. 1058 *''Magazines for Libraries'', 2006, p. 506

References

{{Reflist

External links

Interviews by an Optimist # 99 - Charles Vasey
at

BoardGameGeek BoardGameGeek (BGG) is an online forum for board gaming hobbyists and a game database that holds reviews, images and videos for over 125,600 different tabletop games, including European-style board games, wargames, and card games. In addition t ...

Defunct game magazines published in the United Kingdom Origins Award winners Defunct wargaming magazines