The Desert

The American wargaming landscape of the early 1950s was a desert of solitude. Hobbyists moved their toy soldiers across sand tables and living room floors in isolation, separated by geography and shame. Grown men playing with toy soldiers risked social ridicule in a post-war culture that wanted men to be serious. They kept the hobby secret. No figures were commercially available. No magazines connected them. No conventions brought them together. No shared rules unified their games. Each player invented his own system, argued its logic to a handful of friends, and died with it.

Jack Scruby entered this void in the early 1950s not as a visionary designer seeking to create something new, but as a practical manufacturer responding to an unseen need. He saw isolation and thought: supply. He saw shame and thought: infrastructure. He would not be remembered for inventing the game itself. He would be remembered for making the game possible.

The Factory

The breakthrough came through partnership. In 1953, Jack Scruby connected with Frank Conley, and together they founded Historical Miniatures Figures. They were not the first to cast toy soldiers, but they were the first to do it at scale and with a technology that would make the hobby commercially viable. Around 1955, they adopted the RTV rubber mold technique—a revolutionary process that allowed rapid, affordable reproduction of metal figures. The economics shifted first. Scruby and Conley moved figures down from 54mm to 30mm. By 1963, they had standardized a 50/50 tin-lead alloy formula that would become the industry standard for decades. Figures that had cost dollars now cost 15 to 18 cents.

The factory was not glamorous. It was essential. No one remembers the beauty of a Scruby musketeer—they remember that it existed, that it was affordable, and that it made the next step possible. The soldier figures were the bridge between imagination and tabletop. Scruby built the bridge.

The Magazine

War Game Digest arrived in 1957 with fifty subscribers. It was not glossy. It was mimeographed, hand-assembled, and distributed by post to isolated hobbyists scattered across America, Canada, and England. For the first time, wargamers could read what other wargamers were thinking. The magazine became the first wargaming communication network in the United States.

Scruby understood something crucial: a hobby without a network is not a hobby. It is a private eccentricity. War Game Digest transformed private eccentricity into shared culture. Readers sent in their rules. Others responded with modifications. Ideas iterated across the network in real time.

Copies of War Game Digest reached Donald Featherstone in the UK, reigniting his interest in miniature wargaming after years of dormancy. Featherstone and Tony Bath co-edited a UK edition. When the partnership split, Featherstone launched Wargamer’s Newsletter in 1962, followed by War Games magazine. The chain reaction originated in Scruby’s decision to publish.

The Personal Innovations

What did Scruby himself actually design? His stand-based no-bookkeeping combat system represented a deliberate move toward simplicity. Fire-and-charge pre-commitment declarations opened tactical space for hidden intent. Fog-of-war markers functioned without requiring an umpire. Strategic-tactical integration through HQ control ranges and supply lines created emergent relationship between operational planning and tabletop execution.

Cavalry pursuit and exploitation chains allowed successful cavalry charges to cascade through enemy lines. These innovations were real contributions. But they were not widely adopted by name. No designer citing Scruby pointed to these as mechanical ancestors. He was the gardener. Everything else followed.

What Remains

HistoriFigs still produces figures cast from Scruby’s original molds. The San Joaquin Valley War Gaming Association still meets, now in its fifty-fourth year. The Jack Scruby Award is still given annually. The concepts that emerged through his magazines became the universal grammar of tabletop wargaming. Every player who learned to assign points to units learned from innovations published through War Game Digest. Every campaign that tracked supply lines learned from mechanics synthesized in Strategic-Tactical War Game.

The tools came first. Then the rules. Then the games. Then the industry. Then the culture. He built the tools. Everything else followed.

Total: 21 points. Year: 1957.