ADLG: Rulebook - An Improvement

In September last year I finally tracked down a copy of the ADLG rulebook. I even managed to get in a practice game and began looking closely at the rules.

Since then not a lot has happened. However I've just found out that there will be a ADLG competition in this year's Northern League. I don't have any details yet but there's a distinct possibility of me going to at least two of the rounds this year.

As my thoughts turned to entering competitions (with a set of rules that I've hardly played) it occurred to me that my rulebook was going to get quite a bit of use. Sadly the rulebook isn't ideal in these circumstances. Don't get me wrong, the rule book is great value and contains everything you need to play the game but it has a few small problems:

• The book is so thick that it won't lie flat without breaking the binding.
• Nearly 60% of the book is army lists and they aren't needed during a game.

What I really wanted was something I could use at a table preferably something that would lie flat. It then occurred to me that if I split the lists from the rules and had them bound I would end up with a slim rules only book and a much thicker army list book for reference at home.

The type of binding wasn't a problem. I fixed my badly stapled copy of DBMM v1 by having the pages wire bound at Staples and simple wire binding would allow both books to lie flat. It was really just a matter of finding someone with the equipment to do all this for me.

I approached my local copy shop to see what they could do and yesterday afternoon I left my rulebook with them. They copied the front and back covers, cut off the glue from the square binding, split the book in two and wire bound the two sections. This shows one of the finished books:

I was surprised how thin the rules are once split from the lists:

Both now have nice shiny acetate front and back covers. The rulebook uses the original front and back covers whilst the army lists uses the colour copies. The big plus is that they now lay beautifully flat:

Not bad for £7.00: ten years ago binding one book cost me £5.20. So much for inflation.