Innehållsförteckning för August 2024 från Miniature Wargames

The Battle was a major battle of the War of the Spanish Succession. The overwhelming Allied victory ensured the safety of Vienna from the Franco-Bavarian army, thus preventing the collapse of the reconstituted Grand Alliance. The battlefield stretched for nearly 6 km and the French right rested on the village of Blenheim and the terrain was difficult for the attackers. The French lost the battle for a number of reasons (including hubris, indiscipline and poor dispositions) with over 27,000 casualties. Although the war continued for years, Blenheim was the most decisive victory for Marlborough (British) and Prince Eugene of the Habsburg Empire and thereby preserved the Grand Alliance from collapse and led to the Treaty of Ilbersheim with Bavaria placed under Austrian control.…

◗ northstarfigures.com◗ £32 I think that we would all accept that the world isn’t short of WWII rules systems. So – to shine – a new set has to be something special. North Star sent me V for Victory from Tomahawk Studio written by Alex Buchel and Alex Verger. So what’s different about these? Thirty two quid buys one of the best looking rule books I’ve seen in a long while: hard back, A4, full colour and over 120 pages, it’s superbly laid out and sprinkled with just the right amount of beauty shots – of the very highest calibre – to make reading a pleasure. But (you ask) pretty is all very well but what about the rules? Well, it’s what I’d call a ‘heavy skirmish system’ (20 plus…

◗ Bradley M Gottfried and Linda I Gottfried◗ Savas Beatie (2024)◗ £13.99◗ 167 pages (softback)◗ ISBN:9781611217025◗ casemateuk.com This book – subtitled: Lee and Meade after Gettysburg, July 4-14 1863 – is an excellent account of the difficulties and challenges which faced both commanders after the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg. General Meade, who had been the commander of the Union Army of the Potomac for less than a week at the time of the battle, was criticised for the speed of his follow up. The book well explains the constraints and limitations which he faced and the reasons for his caution. Similarly, the book covers the difficulties General Lee faced in extracting his defeated army back across the Potomac River and into Virginia. It is a fascinating account of how a…

◗ Robert Orrison & Mark Wilcox◗ Avas Beatie (2024)◗ £13.99◗ 192 pages (softback)◗ ISBN:9781611216868◗ casemateuk.com This book’s subtitle is The Battle of Camden and the British High Tide in the South, August 16th, 1780. It is a volume in the Emerging Revolutionary War Series that “offers compelling, easy-to-read overviews of some of the Revolutionary War’s most important battles and stories.” This book achieves that objective admirably. The British were intent on securing the Southern Colonies in the spring of 1780. Charleston was forced to surrender, together with the majority of the American army that had defended it, in May 1780, after which the British set up outposts across the backcountry of South Carolina to control that area before moving into North Carolina. Congress responded by sending General Horatio Gates, the…

The latest release in this now copious range is called Dead or Alive and it gives Stargrave players all the tools they need to generate solo bounty-hunting scenarios, including a variety of different settings and locations, a host of complications to be faced, and much more. There’s random scenario generators and it can all be done Solo or with Cooperative Play. The latter idea is a welcome twist: two players can either create one crew together (one player should take on the role of the captain and the other the role of the first mate) or they can each create a half-sized crew. This has the advantage of not fiddling with the crew creation rules in the main rulebook. Either way round, this latest from Osprey and the pen of…

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◗ caliverbooks.com◗ £19.95 Welcome to Dystopia City: This is a new fast play small skirmish (almost roleplaying) set of rules for near future urban warfare from Caliver Books. Set in the 2080s, the ‘Big Six’ Corporations run things in a neon lit, cyber-infused city. The book – written by Wayne Bollands – is 72 pages in (I assume – I only have a PDF) A4 and is in full colour and is very well illustrated. The book starts with 25 pages of background which lays out the background to the environment but – in all honesty – the setting could be drawn from Bladerunner or a gzillion other similar backgrounds. The rules require some figures (probably 28mm but you could rustle up some 15mm for it without issue) and an…

How did the club first get started? With not many wargaming clubs in mid Cornwall around the mid ‘80’s, a magazine advert was placed in Military Modelling Magazine in ‘86 asking if people wanted to start one and the club has been growing since with a steady number of members from all over Cornwall and others who travel from Devon a few times but we currently have been in our village hall in Quintrell Downs for 34 years. We still have one of the founding members who regularly comes to the club. What has changed over the years that the club has been running? Other than the name changing, and the venue moving to a location that best suits the club, nothing major has changed: if it works, don’t fix…

◗ Robert Griffith◗ Helion & Company (2024)◗ £45.00◗ 516 pages (hardback)◗ ISBN:9781804514399◗ helion.co.uk Number 131 in Helion’s From Reason to Revolution 1721-1815 series is subtitled Britain and the Liberation of Portugal – Rolica and Vimeiro 1808. This is a handsomely produced, heavy hardback. The spirited colour illustration on the front of the dustjacket by Christa Hook shows soldiers of the 50th Foot delivering a volley. Numerous monochrome illustrations, including reproductions of contemporary portraits, battle scenes and cartoons, together with modern photographs of battlefield sites, are distributed throughout the text. The opening chapters explain the reasons for, and the events of the French invasion and occupation of Portugal. Separate chapters cover the French, British and Portuguese forces. Chapter 6 which begins with a detailed table of the composition and strength of…

◗ Conrad Cairns◗ Helion (2024)◗ £25◗ 138 pages (softback)◗ ISBN:9781804514559◗ helion.co.uk The Spanish First Carlist War (1833-40) offers a riot of colourful and disparate troop types, including British, French and Portugese contingents, and with significant tactical challenges in which infantry had to combine the solidity of line & column formations with the necessary skirmishing fluidity in so much mountainous and rough terrain. As usual with Helion it is attractively presented, with quality colour photos of Perry Miniatures. It covers uniforms, organisation, tactics etc, with a selection of fourteen battles for wargamers, each with a map plus commentary. Orders of battle are provided down to battalion level, but unfortunately very little on the numbers in each battle – a curious and serious omission, bearing in mind that he does give casualty…

In issue 490 we reviewed the copy of Warpaint: A painting guide for Plains Indians, specifically for the shield and horse decoration aimed at ‘The Old West’. Caliver Books have just released a follow-up book – also written and illustrated by Mike Blake – as a companion volume: Plains Indian War Shirts and Warrior Society Regalia. This is 120 pages in length and is in hardback (though we are looking at the preview PDF) and has 70 full colour plates with lots of background material. As for the contents, the Author says that “War shirts were intended to attest to a warrior’s achievements and were usually individual to that man. A warrior would have more than one such shirt in his lifetime. As a young warrior gained in status and his…

A couple of issues ago I mentioned the Crawley Club’s upcoming D-Day game in June. As the anniversary approached, lots of clubs were doing something to recreate or – in some other way – mark this event: as most people know eight decades ago the Western Allies landed on the beaches of France to strike into Fortress Europe. CLUB APPROACH Over the last couple of years the Crawley members have been regularly playing some very large Team Yankee and Flames of War games in 15mm and these formed the basis for the rule set for the games. Steven Davis – committee member at the club – was keen to organise a non-competitive game for all the members (even those without a WWII background) and it morphed into a two day…

◗ Gregg Adams◗ Osprey (2024)◗ £15.99◗ 80 pages (softback)◗ ISBN:9781472861139◗ ospreypublishing.com This volume neatly follows on from the author’s previous Osprey title Japanese Infantryman versus US Marine Rifleman, and here encompasses the three amphibious assaults on Saipan, Guam, and Peleliu in mid-late 1944. There is inevitably some overlap with that earlier volume in terms of uniforms, equipment and organisation, but it is still an excellent read that conveys the toughness and skill with which both sides fought, including organisational, tactical and operational changes in the mode of fighting, plus of course the introduction of new weaponry. The maps offer superb clarity for any wargame refight, and the photos and text provide a real picture of the difficulties in overcoming harsh terrain and enervating heat – for example, many of the…

◗ Massimiliano Afiero◗ Osprey (2024)◗ £12.99◗ 48 pages (softback)◗ ISBN:9781472862983◗ ospreypublishing.com There are two principal formations covered in this book – the French Legion, and the late-war Charlemagne Division – plus a handful of other units such as the short-lived company-level Phalange Africaine that fought in Tunisia. As usual, there are eight informative colour plates of the uniforms and insignia, plus a useful background commentary on the motives and aims of the French command and the German overlords – by no means always synchronised. However, for wargamers the strength of this book is the extensive account of major and minor operations (albeit without maps), supported by a reasonable description of unit orbats and equipment holdings. Most actions were of course against Soviet troops, including an epic action in which a…

◗ Gabriele Esposito◗ Pen & Sword (2024)◗ £25.00◗ 224 pages (hardback)◗ ISBN:9781399051903◗ pen-and-sword.co.uk Gabriele Esposito provides an overview of the history, organization and uniforms of the British military forces during the reign of George II (1727-1760), in which they participated in the Jacobite Rebellion, the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years’ War. The Birth of the British Army explains its origins in the Royal Regiment of Guards, formed in 1665 by merging Lord Wentworth’s and Lord John Russell’s Regiments of Foot, raised by Charles II in exile in 1656, and Monck’s Regiment of Foot that became the Lord General’s Regiment of Foot Guards, later the King’s Footguards. It then describes the separate English, Scottish and Irish armies during the reign of James II/VII. Following the Glorious Revolution…

In the early 1980s there was a feel in the air that some how through osmosis there would emerge a single set of rules, that would capture everyone’s imaginations and lead to one dominant set of rules for each period of history. It never happened. For a while though it did appear possible, WRG Ancient Rules were universally used by Ancient players and Grand Manner seemed to dominate the Napoleonic world and then slowly, other sets appeared which proclaimed to tackle the “problems” with both those sets. Today the wargames world is awash with top quality rules: a new set seems to appear every week. Like many gamers of my generation I was a fanatical rule collector, buying everything that appeared in an elusive searching for that perfect rule set.…