This is arguably my favourite period. Many many years ago I wrote a couple of Osprey books on The Russian Army of the Seven Years War. I suppose then it was inevitable that I would get sucked into gaming the period. Funnily enough, though the Russians were my first Seven Years War (SYW) army, I no longer have them.I once had about two dozen Russian units, all figures from the superb Foundry range. Then, just before I went out of town, I stupidly lent the army to my pal Dougie. The idiot popped to a pub after the game, and landed up losing the army in a  Czech-themed nightclub in Edinburgh. He also managed to lose his own Prussians.  The only saving grace was I hadn’t lent him my Cossacks. After that I abandoned the Empress Elizabeth’s finest, and instead I opted for the French and their opponents.When I was in the Edinburgh club this was a popular period, and we’d often game the period. Up here in Orkney though, I’m the only one with any figures for it, so games are a lot less frequent. A second setback was a house fire in early 2019, that saw my figures smoke damaged. It took a while to face retouching them – and rebasing too, as the MDF bases retain that smoky smell – a bit like a peaty whisky.Over the years I’ve used several rule sets for this period. We began with Die Kriegskunst, the SYW variant of the Napoleonic General de Brigade rules. Die Kriegskunst (or DKK) was written by me, in cahoots with that drunken idiot Dougie.  Essentially they were based on the Napoleonic set, but heavily tweaked to suit the earlier period.They play really well, although they’re slower than more modern rivals, such as Black Powder. They remained in vouge in the Edinburgh club until about ten years ago, when Dougie moved south to Hertfordshire in England. At the same time I was spending a lot of time in Orkney, and didn’t game the period for a bit. Meanwhile, back in Edinburgh others had raised armies, but they were using Black Powder. So, on my return I went with the flow. As rules go these are pretty straightforward, and while they weren’t tailor-made for the period, at least everyone was familiar with the rules, as they Edinburgh guys used them for all their horse and musket periods. We also dabbled with a few other sets, including Keith Flint’s Honours of War, which were published by Osprey. They were quite good, but inevitably the general familiarity people had with Black Powder led to them being dropped in favour of the “club standard”. We’ve used others too, including Charles Grant’s The Wargame, and Piquet – Field of Battle. Over the years I’ve been dabbling with a revised version of DKK, and for a while we tried out mechanisms from Dave Brown’s newer Napoleonic set, General d’Armee. In fact, Edinburgh wargamer Michael Schneider picked up the ball on this and developed them further, producing a playtest set called The Seven Years War which is still in widespread use at the Edinburgh club. I’m not sure I’ll ever find the time to see the revised DKK project through myself. If I did, I’m not sure I’d go down Michael’s road, as I don’t find the mechanics especially intuitive. So, at the moment we’re trying out Post of Honour, another set by Keith Flint which is more in keeping with what I like in a game. They’re the SYW version of his Shadow of the Eagles Napoleonic rules, which are published by Caliver Books. Post of Honour though, is a shorter, simpler set, available as a free download from Keith’s wargaming blog – here.As for my armies, the fire set me back a bit, but it had some advantages. It made me retouch and rebase my armies, and in the process, while I kept my 24-figure infantry battalions and 12-figure cavalry units, I tightened up the basing, as I use a 15mm frontage for infantry and 20mm for cavalry. This puts them in line with my Napoleonic figures. Basically, I find this looks “right” – the more common 20mm frontage for infantry just looks too spaced out for my tastes. I pretty much have all the French I need at the moment – around 16 battalions, and 20 squadrons – the equivalent of around 600 figures, if I include my light infantry and artillery. My Western Allied army though, is only half the size, so they need bulking up. Once that’s done I might turn my attention to the Prussians and Austrians – and who knows – even the Russians. After all, I still have those Cossacks…