Historic Enterprises Company designs and publishes rules for historical miniature wargames. We currently have two rules sets and a third is in the works. Historic Enterprises is a partnership between two wargamers and authors, Les Benoodt and Phil Johnston, with a lot of help from wargamers around the country.

Our Design Philosophy

Historic Enterprises Company is dedicated to the proposition that playability and realism are not mutually exclusive--or even unfriendly to each other. Rather, what often is mistaken for realism is an excess of mechanical details which are incompatible with realism.

Realism consists in determining what you want to represent in the wargame rules and single-mindedly focusing on that goal.

We begin each design process by asking these simple questions: Who on the battlefield do the players represent? (Army commander, a local feudal lord, etc.) What did those people do/how did they interact with the battlefield environment? What are the key decisions that person would make? From the answers to these three questions, we develop the all important "perspective" of our rules. Perspective determines what elements of the battlefield and battlefield command are emphasized and what elements are abstracted or simplified.

For a more lengthy discussion of various aspects of wargaming realism, our approach, etc., visit the ARTICLES page to see several pieces Phil wrote on the subject.

Our Rules

Historic Enterprises has published two sets of rules and one supplement. These are:

Knights & Knaves

Castles, Cogs & Chevauchees

More Knights & Knaves

Phil also has a burning passion to do more rules sets: 30 Years War, Seven Years War, Age of Sail and a few others, if there's interest out there for yet another title in these categories. Of course, to complete them all might take several years.

Other Facts

Historic Enterprises has sold products throughout the world, though the bulk of its market is in the United States.