Innehållsförteckning för August 2023 från Miniature Wargames

In the latest issue we have a great selection of articles. Not only do we have a Pegasus Bridge Command Decision (designed for a triad of popular systems); we have WWI desert warfare; Schleswig Holstein; and the War of the Roses in the Emerald Isle, all three with downloadable rules. Along with an analysis of Non-historical versus historical gaming (and not by the Editor…). We also have two scratch builds covering grav-tanks and a ruined chapel plus a bevy of unbiased reviews of gaming products and books that (unlike your average YouTube fayre) exploit adverbs other than the vastly over-utilised word ‘super’’… As Kate Bush sang: “Our little army boy is coming home from B.F.P.O; I’ve a bunch of purple flowers to decorate a mammy’s hero; mourning in the aerodrome:…

Atomic Mass Games (successors to Fantasy Flight Games) have a new Star Wars skirmish level, larger scale game called Shatterpoint. Competing with the Combat Patrol type of game, Shatterpoint is designed for play on a small mat with just a squad or so of figures using their new 40mm Star Wars figure range. So you may already have (smaller) figures, or be thinking of buying some new ones, but what about a mat? Deep Cut spring to the rescue (again) with some of their classic mats with new markings on them. At 3ft square, each of the new gaming mats is based on an extant design from the Deep Cut catalogue but tailored for standard games of Shatterpoint. Additionally they now have some light spots marked on their designs so…

Mr Kinch has written a thought provoking analysis of a subject very close to my heart. Please read this and by all means send comments to the magazine. Ed. I really enjoy YouTube. It’s replaced television for me as my main form of visual entertainment. That’s not least because there is some really top notch historical, modelling and wargaming stuff available there. But every so often one comes across something that leaves a very bad taste in the mouth. Midwinter Minis is a YouTube channel with 450,000 subscribers. It’s run by a chap called Guy and mainly focuses on Warhammer related content, mostly modelling, painting and the odd battle report. He’s generally pretty good and I really liked his series on the game Blackstone Fortress. However, he recently published a video…

◗ spellcrow.com◗ £9 - £45 Small scale, mass combat games can be a lot of fun if you have the right miniatures. Spellcrow make a specific set of rules (64 pages and £15) called Argatoria for their figure range (of the same name) which is in 10mm (so that’s really 12mm…) and all fine cast in grey, one piece resin (well, the main figures are in one piece: some of the monsters and creatures are multipart). We haven’t seen the actual rules but what are the figures like? The short answer is: very nice. Spellcrow sent a box of the latest releases all the way from Poland and they include bubble packs of individual figures such as Vaendral Heroes. For £9 you get four heroes (a pair each of Champions…

◗ brother-vinni.com◗ €22.00 Brother Vinni have sent in some new Viking Ulfhednar miniatures (or berserkers). Designed for ‘28mm’ fantasy and/or historical gaming (they are marketed in their SAGA range) they are all 32mm tall, multi-part resin minis. There are four models in the range and come – broadly – in two variants. The figures are all built like body builders, but are not with utterly over the top physiques in a ‘Conan the Barbarian’ kind of way. All come with an animal skin cloak (bears, I assume) and no armour at all save one that sports a shield (pieced with optional, separate – and rather fragile – arrows). Weapons are spears, axes, two weapon axe and dagger combos etc. Other than the cloak they are without clothes; the poses are…

Anyone with a passing interest in the Second World War will have heard of the S.A.S. and of the Long Range Desert Group with the recent TV show on the BBC highlighting their actions as raiders in the Western Desert (indeed we have run several articles about this in the magazine! Ed.). Both groups used vehicles fitted with machine guns and occasionally light artillery pieces when conducting raids on enemy bases and convoys. Yet few will have realised that almost 25 years earlier British and other Imperial soldiers carried out similar raids using motor vehicles fitted with machine guns over the same desert terrain when fighting a Muslim brotherhood in league with the Ottoman Turks. The Senussi Invasion of Egypt was part of the Great War. Of course most histories concentrate…

The Milton Hundred Wargames Club ran their third show at their ‘new’ venue: the Medway Park Sports Hall in June and, content wise, it was much the same as last year (though I’m unsure why I might have expected it to be different). The organisers said that their were a few hiccups – a blazing hot summers day and a car park heaving with attendees to a coincidental athletics event didn’t help – but space and facilities were provided for all, including free car parking (if you remember to put in your details in to the computer when you go in). TRADE Trade turn out was pretty good for a smaller sized show with nearly 30 present plus a ‘flea market’ section to buy and sell your old spares. GAMES…

This month we ran into Donal Bisanzio at Partizan 2023 who has a particular technique which he was kind enough to share: “I have started to use water colours to paint my miniatures. Like many wargamers, I do not have dedicated space for my hobby. With a major portion of my time spent on setting up paints and then cleaning everything I’ve been struggling to make progress on my pile of unfinished projects and decided to ‘hang up my brushes’ and quit wargaming. This lasted until I attended an introductory lesson on water colour painting with my family. I was hooked!” “I was amazed by how easy it was to start a painting session and the portability of all the water colours in their palette box. Riding the enthusiasm, I…

INTRODUCTION At one of the last wargames shows that I attended before lockdown I saw a lovely model of a medieval trading ship (or cog as they were known) manufactured by Sarissa Precision Ltd. As an interesting project to fill my time I eventually ordered and built one of these little cargo vessels; whilst I enjoyed making the model it then lay forlorn on my shelves as I had no immediate use for it. Later I saw a review of a new set of figures from Wargames Atlantic, a group of Dark Age Irish warriors and I had a new interesting project to embark upon. I ordered a box and whilst I waited for them to arrive I decided to build a terrain pieces to compliment them, eventually settling upon…

◗ victrixlimited.com◗ £25 Victrix have sent in their latest set of WWII Armour. This pack includes three identical sprues (with a handsome sheet of waterslide decals) that build up into six superbly detailed 12mm/1:144 scale T34-85 tanks. Any WWII aficionado will know the story of the T34, the tank produced in the greatest number throughout the war and which is widely believed to have turned the tide against the Germans. One of the most advanced tanks of its time, the T34 was known for its exceptional speed, manoeuvrability, and armour protection, making it a formidable weapon on the battlefield. Although not the first AFV with sloping armour it did make full use of it in a tough package and with its 76.2mm gun – and especially when up-gunned to the…

For those who are members of a club (who maybe play in a local hall or similar), having a space to play big games is almost a given and one of the reasons to join a club or society. Alternatively – if you are fortunate enough, as I do, to have a large space at home – maybe this is also an option. But few of us have enough space to have three, custom-built, 24ft by 6ft tables permanently laid out with a huge selection of custom built scenery. Does that sound appealing? Let me introduce you to Andrew Cummings and Derek Whittenbury. Pre-pandemic both of these gentlemen – wargamers for multiples of decades and retired for a considerable period – decided to find a large gaming space to fulfil…

Brigade Models had some new releases available at Broadside. It included some new Small Scale Scenery (1/1000 or so) in their Roman line: These are the Basilica of Constantine (£3.50) and a pair of Roman Warehouses (£5). The latter two are only suitable for period games although the Basilica is still standing in the modern day. They have also released some new 15mm vehicles: from their Hammer’s Slammers range the new Hindi vehicles are pleasingly retro-SF looking and suitable for SF in any background but are so new that we have no prices as yet. Go to brigademodels.co.uk.…

TANKS FOR THE MEMORIES Many years ago I scratchbuilt an entire game for my club the Maidstone Wargames Society called Fenris Descending to take to shows that included 116 robots. Now obviously it was the massed swarm of robots that grabbed all the attention but I also scratchbuilt a few other things for the poor human forces going up against the robots. For a bit of extra firepower I built a classic Mouse Tank. That is a tank model made out of a computer mouse. I cannot claim to have come up with that idea and that annoyed me somewhat, given how everything else was unique for the game. At the time I did have some other ideas for a tank but they never came to anything. However the different…

Rather than suggest a single way to refight the iconic Pegasus Bridge airborne assault, this time we’ll look at three different approaches to the same action using Bolt Action, Rapid Fire, Crossfire and Flames of War: probably the most popular sets for WWII. SITUATION REPORT Europe is on the brink of liberation. Allied forces are about to make landings on the coast of Normandy. In the British sector of operations, airborne landings are to secure river crossings for the beachhead breakout and to eliminate enemy defensive positions. Two vital bridges, one across the Caen Canal (later known as Pegasus Bridge) and the other, half a kilometre away spanning the Orne River (which would be nicknamed Horsa Bridge) are essential as their capture will mean that German reinforcements will be compelled to make a six-hour…

Television has a lot to answer for. In 2015 the BBC showed a foreign language series called 1864, which received both plaudits and brickbats, but it was a series I thoroughly enjoyed. The fact that the battle scenes were available on Youtube, backed by a great track by rock group, Sabaton, only added to my viewing pleasure. RESEARCH TO THE MUSIC I told the guys in our group to catch the series, and we were all confessing to each other how little any of us actually knew about this conflict. The short answer being “Nothing!”. In fact, at that initial stage, we weren’t even aware there was an earlier conflict fought in 1848. This is the story of how we amended our lack of knowledge, how that built into two…

I can never remember a time when I have not played with toy soldiers (and that is a very long time) but becoming a “war gamer” is something entirely different. That started, as I am sure it did with many of my age, with a book called War Games by Donald Featherstone. Soon I had my Airfix plastic American Civil War armies marching along chalk roads or struggling over plasticine hills on a piece of hardboard placed on my bed. I had the occasional game with pals of mine but mainly it was solo play. Then came more books by Featherstone, plus Grant, Wesencraft and others, and that is when I started messing about creating my own rules, using the best bits of theirs plus a few of my own…