John Hill

A bit over a week ago I came across several announcements online of the sudden passing of John Hill. Hill was a titan of board wargaming during its heyday, his Squad Leader and Advanced Squad Leader selling in the hundreds of thousands of copies (as a point of comparison, many developers today are fortunate to ship a few thousand units) and influencing in innumerable ways the work of other designers.  But he also was involved in tabletop miniatures and to get to the subject of the Civil War (this is a Civil War site after all) he created the popular regimental scale Johnny Reb rule system in 1983. I've never been into that particular branch of the hobby but do make some effort to leaf through publications related to it every once in a while. Hill's most current iteration Across A Deadly Field: Regimental Rules for Civil War Battles was released by Osprey last year. Where there's a wargaming system there are expansions and supplements soon to follow and this is the case here as well with Across A Deadly Field: The War in the East (2014) and the upcoming Across A Deadly Field: The War in the West (May '15). I may have to check these out.