Innehållsförteckning för July 2022 från Miniature Wargames

When one has the time, it’s always nice to bring a gaming project to fruition. This issue contains the third and last of our War of 1812 series (next month features a ‘prequel’!), the completion of an ecclesiastical scratch build; a set of siege mechanics to add to Dan Mersey’s popular Lion Rampant and more. But it’s also time to start new projects, I guess, so I’ve had the time to write a piece that I’ve been toying with for two decades: my apparent obsession with the Anderson world of the UFOTV series has finally come to completion with a ‘hunt for a downed Alien spaceship’ system (to go with the space based rules I have published in this magazine previously: visit the tabletopgaming.co.uk site and see the video on…

JOY OF SIX Sunday 3rd July Halham University 48 Howard St, Sheffield, S1 1WB thejoyof6.co.uk BRITCON Friday 12th-Sunday 14th August Nottingham Trent University, 50 Shakespeare St. Nottingham, NG1 4FQ bhgs.org.uk CHILLCON Saturday 20th August Ecclesfield Secondary School, Chapeltown Rd, Chapeltown, Sheffield, S35 9WD chillcon.co.uk TABLETOP GAMING LIVE 2022 Saturday 17th & Sunday 18th September 2022. Manchester’s Victoria Warehouse Trafford Park, Stretford, Manchester, M17 1AB tabletopgaming.co.uk OTHER PARTIZAN Sunday 9th October 2022 George Stephenson Exhibition Hall, Newark Showground, NG242NY partizan.org.uk…

BATTLEGROUP! ◗ Jim Storr◗ Helion (2021)◗ £25◗ 295 pages (softback)◗ ISBN:9781914059964◗ helion.co.uk The central theme of this book is the development and application of land warfare doctrine, largely at ‘battlegroup’ level (broadly, a combined-arms grouping equivalent to a battalion). Storr has analysed the equipment and operational procedures for the main players – Germany, USA, France, UK and Warsaw Pact – and compared their strengths and weaknesses. He offers an extraordinary case for wargaming, based on 202 NATO/WP games fought with his brother (both were Army officers), with each game being analysed to learn lessons. Their rules were the WRG ‘1950-1985’ ruleset, significantly modified… The book closes with five scenarios based on a Soviet opening offensive against British and German forces. Additionally the book dissects training manuals and other sources providing…

CASTLES IN THE SKY Flying Battleships! Osprey have a new set of rules: Castles in the Sky (CitS). It is a new attempt to produce a ‘fin de siècle’, flying battleships system and is ideally suited to play with miniatures (like the huge range from Brigade which are heavily featured within the publication). You need models, a ruler, loads of d6 (preferably in three different colours), some marker chits, and lots of pretty terrain (back to Brigade!). It covers all sorts of ship classes, biplanes and dirigibles. Unlike many games (say, Imperial Skies) CitS allows for extensive use of multiple height bands: ten, in fact. In CitS, 0 is ground level (landed or crashed) right up to altitude 9 where the crew need breathing equipment, and mountains and terrain with…

The Battle Dragashani was fought in Wallachia, between the Ottoman forces of Sultan Mahmud II and the Greek Filiki Etaireia insurgents as a part of the Greek War of Independence. 2000 Ottoman cavalry, 7,500 troops and four cannons attacked but were counter charged by 500 horsemen and the Greek “Sacred Band”: a volunteer unit under Vasileios Karavias. The vastly outnumbered Sacred Band stood and fought the much greater Ottoman force, even though they had no hope. After some distracting tactics about a hundred men with their leaders escaped to inspire the uprisings in the Peloponnese.…

The idea of wargaming a medieval siege, complete with siege towers, mighty walls, and heroic combats is an attractive one. Scenes of sieges as portrayed in The Kingdom of Heaven (2005) or Braveheart (1995), for example, while extremely dramatised, are nonetheless inspiring. Yet the reality of wargaming a siege is daunting and requires organization and preparation, just as in reality. This is my attempt at making that happen… LAYING THE GROUNDWORK It was rare for a medieval besieging army to attempt to storm a castle’s walls immediately after their arrival before its gates, unless they were supremely confident of success, or very desperate. Instead, a typical siege would first involve both sides calling upon a range of stratagems, some more devious than others. Only when the attackers felt confident that…

THE SHALLOW WATERS ◗ deepcutstudio.com◗ €31.90-€74.90 Deep Cut Studios have excelled themselves with a new mat and they supplied a sample for review. Called Shallow Waters the mat is designed (spoiler alert…) for games in just that: islands and sandbars in some sort of vaguely tropical, or at least temperate, environment. As many of their recent productions have demonstrated, this mat displays a very a high quality, almost photographic print although I suspect that they are not actually a photograph but have been worked on hard. In fact I am going to do something I have never done and credit the artist involved (Jan Jasinski) simply because this really is a work of art. But what use is it in gaming? I think that the mat would come into its…

RETURN TO THE CONGREGATION This month – fresh from the Last Word in the previous issue (and his ‘coming back into the fold’ of miniatures) – we caught up with the Editor of our sister publication, Tabletop Gaming Magazine: Christopher John Eggett. Chris is heading back into the painting of miniatures and he’s here to tell us all about it. “I’ve spent a long time away from the painting side of the hobby” He admits, time having been absorbed by frequent but differing gaming, “But having recently returned in an attempt to be able to play more solo skirmish games, I invested in some 15mm Hordes of Things fantasy models, plus a few Japanese Fantasy figures. In short, I got all the weird stuff that seemed useful. “The idea was…

WARS OF ORCS AND DWARVES ◗ wargamesbuildings.co.uk◗ £20 There are a variety of responses to the question: “what’s the best way to learn a new set of rules?” Rather obviously, you can read them cover-to-cover and then try them out either on your own or with company. Nowadays I try to watch ‘how to do it’ videos on YouTube and read up on reviews from trusted sources. In reality, however, there cannot be many better approaches than “the author of the rules runs a game for you”. John ‘Buck’ Surdo – author of many rule sets (Combat Patrol amongst others) has written Wars of Orcs and Dwarves: it’s a fantasy mass-combat system and – via the joys Zoom – Buck ran a game for me all of the way from…