Take a journey with us back to July 1975, when a small wargame club in Amarillo, Texas (led by Steve Cole) produced an award-winning magazine filled with articles, variants, and reviews. This issue marked another improvement in production, going to a cardstock color cover and professional binding. The "Iron Age" of JagdPanther had arrived. The editorial said that the wild child of JagdPanthers #1–#7 had gone to college in #8 and #9 and this was his entry into the life of a grown-up magazine.
The issue included actual die-cut counters for the first time. The typewritten pages were "justified" in the sense that extra spaces were manually inserted between the last few words of each line, producing an undesirable effect. We did at least have a table of contents.
The masthead said "JagdPanther #10" abandoning all efforts to define volumes.
The game in the issue was Marine! This was one of those semi-generic tactical games with a map of typical beachhead terrain and units comprising squads and heavy weapons. You could build any battle by just counting out the right number of units and picking an appropriate part of the map. The "lead article" described "the mission and the man" of the Marines of all nations.
Smaller articles included the use of a combat calculator in the game Cambrai, a conventional (non-psionic) movement and combat system for the game Starforce, two revisions for the games Panzer 44 and Mechwar 77, several variants for Anzio (New Zealand troops, paratroops, the German navy, coastal defense units) for Anzio, an American expeditionary force under Winfield Scott and Andrew Jackson for Waterloo, Spanish troops for the game 1776, British troops and paratroopers joining the invasion of Japan in Operation Olympic, steamships in the game Frigate, a scenario for Triplanetary, storm troopers and combat engineers in the game Verdun, using miniatures for the game Missile Boat, a 1948 variant for the game Sinai, a coded search system for use in many games, a Cold War variant for the game Seelow, the objective vs. the subjective in game design, Russian paratroops invade Israel in Bar-Lev, a review of the Modern Quadrigame, various eastern horse armies against Romans in Eagles, variants for East Is Red, and Arab Civil War variants in Sinai.
Larger articles including a package of six variants for the game Sixth Fleet, a humorous scenario for PanzerBlitz involving a stockpile of wine (sought by US, British, Soviet, and SS troops), strategy and a variant for Spanish Civil War, a solitaire variant for the game 1914 (spelled "solotaire" because Steve Cole thought that was how it was spelled), strategies and variants for Third Reich, merging Panzer Leader rules into Panzerblitz, a 1941–45 variant for the game Winter War, strategy for Diplomacy, a history article about King Arthur, and Zeppelins for Richthoffen's War.
It was a watershed issue. JagdPanther was suddenly taken seriously, and circulation increased dramatically.
Written by Stephen Cole
