It's Getting a Bit Chile ... is more than just a book of rules

My copy of IT'S GETTING A BIT CHILE: TABLETOP WARGAME RULES FOR LAND CONFLICT IN THE WAR OF THE PACIFIC 1879-1884 arrived in Monday's post, and although I had read the draft rules, this is the first time I've seen the complete text, including the illustrations.

This is an excellent book in so many ways. Not only does it give a brief but very informative history of the war (including a chronology) but also includes a uniform painting guide (written by Alan Curtis) and a short bibliography of English language books that deal with the events of the war. (It is interesting to note that one of the books in the bibliography was written by Clements R Markham, the cousin of Admiral Sir Albert Markham, whose biography I recently reviewed.)

The rules are designed to be used on a gridded playing surface. The author uses 15mm-scale figures on 30mm wide bases on a 3-inch squared grid for his battles, but the rules can be used with large or smaller scale figures just as long as the size of the grid squares is adjusted to match any changes to the size of the base frontage.

The book is 76 pages long and is split into the following sections:

• Introduction
• A Brief History of the War
• The Basics
• Figures, Scales & Formations
• Unit Quality and Equipment
• Turn Sequence
• Movement
• Charges
• Disorder
• Firing
• Hand to Hand Combat
• Routing, Retreating, Retiring and Rallying
• Commanders
• Winning and Losing
• The battle of Dolores/San Francisco
• Playing "It's Getting a Bit Chile" without squares
• Resources
• And Finally

As an aid to readers, the author has included simple and easy to understand diagrams in the relevant sections of the books (e.g. permissible Infantry Formations).

The book also contains 15mm-scale colour representations of the battalion/regimental and national colours carried by the combatants, and purchasers have permission to copy these and the Disorder Markers for their own personal use. The back cover of the book has a very helpful Quick Reference Sheet (QRS) on it, and once players have fought through a couple of moves, this is probably the only playing aid that they will need during the rest of their wargame.

One particular aspect of the rules that I like was the way that the personal attributes of the actual commanders has been integrated into the rules. For example:

I understand the Graham Evans is hoping to publish his TAIPING ERA rules later this year, and I hope that sales of this book are sufficient to encourage him to do so.

---

IT'S GETTING A BIT CHILE: TABLETOP WARGAME RULES FOR LAND CONFLICT IN THE WAR OF THE PACIFIC 1879-1884 was written by Graham Evans and published in 2020 by Wargaming for Grown Ups Publications (ISBN 978 1 797 56040 3). It is currently available in printed format from Amazon.