Innehållsförteckning för October 2024 från Miniature Wargames

BROTHERS IN ARMS This month we present the broad selection of wargaming articles we are so rightly proud of: from Entebbe Airport to Killiecrankie we cover a lot of ground! We also have an ECW scenario with Powick Bridge; some Easy and Puerile toy soldier rule ideas; and – still in 54mm scale – a second visit to the Boxer Rebellion. On top of all that fun the crafting side of the hobby is well covered with some ideas for making your own hex terrain; finishing off the Jabberwocky tower build plus a detailed guide for getting the best from your 12mm scale Warlord Plastic Gauls. So let’s get our noses down on the tabletop, draw the curtains and play some great games. As Mark Knopfler sang “But it’s written…

I think there’s a law somewhere that anyone writing for a wargame magazine who talks about gridded wargames has to write something called the “The Joy of Hex”. I can see the joke and it’s not a bad one, but I think it lacks a certain imaginative flair. I had considered names such as “Hexual Dysfunction”, “Hexual Frustation” and “Hexual Orientation”. But sadly I got called into John Treadaway’s office for a serious talk about Hexual Harassment due to my repeated use of Hexual innuendo (and I can tell you it wasn’t an easy meeting and ended up with discussions about ‘six of the best’… well: let’s leave that there! Ed.) WHAT STARTED ALL THIS…? I’ve been playing hex based wargames for about twenty years now, mostly OGRE/GEV, Memoir ‘44,…

WEAPON OF THE FUTURE gzg.com £3.60 Ground Zero Games have some new releases that specifically concentrate on that current weapon of choice: Drones. They have ten new packs of wheeled and tracked light drone combat units (plus they have hover units), each with five different weapon options. Starting with the chassis before the armament, these are each a one piece metal casting somewhere around 24mm long and around 12mm to 15mm wide. The wheeled versions have eight very small wheels and the tracked units are very well defined. The important thing (from my perspective) is that no assembly is required. On top of the ‘hull’ goes the weapons mounts. They are (for want of a better term) pintle-mounted, ‘open’ weapons rather than mini turrets and each comes with a respective…

Paul aims his brush at the plastic opponents of Rome Ed. INTRODUCTION I was lucky to get my hands on the new sprues from Warlord Games before they were released. The Celt Warriors sprue is smaller than the others that Warlord have released in their Epic Hail Caesar range. They have hinted however that they will be expanding on the range of these figures in the future. They are suitable for not only your Punic Wars games but perhaps also Ceasar’s invasion of Gaul (or indeed the later invasions of Britain). At this scale I am sure you could also field your units of principes as Ceasarian or Early Imperial Roman legionaries and – if you are not fussy – your Celtic troops could work fine as generic barbarians. I…

THE RISING SUN 10mm plastics from Wargames Atlantic WA’s new Grand Battle Scale (10mm) means us gamers have yet another scale in styrene to tempt us. They’ve just rereleased their second box so they now have both Samurai and Ashigaru as options. The former has 192 infantry and 32 cavalry equipped with yari (spear/pike), naginata (pole arm), yumi (longbow), and katana (sword). They are sculpted in one, two, three, and five man connected strips although the cavalry (armed with a selection of longbows, spears and a commander looking chap with a katana) are one piece, individually cast and there also a dozen casualty figures included to use for scenic basing or as markers which is a nice touch. In addition the little back banners are separate items and will need…

During the first English Civil War the Royalist cavalry enjoyed a fearsome reputation. While often ill-disciplined and hard to control, time and again they swung battles in the favour of the King. This reputation was established early during the war at the Battle of Powick Bridge, the first engagement of the conflict fought between the main field armies of the Royalists and Parliamentarians. Although this battle was not much more than a skirmish and had little immediate strategic importance, its size belies its significance. The Royalist victory had a profound psychological influence on both sides, granting the cavaliers a significant morale advantage over their opposite numbers that they retained for much of the war. INTRODUCTION After King Charles raised his standard in Nottingham on 22nd August 1642, both sides began…

Each Command Decision usually aims to offer a series of playable options in timeless military scenarios. Command Decision is designed so you can read the situation and figure out your own command decisions if you were leading the troops on the ground. You can either work through the various options or use the mechanics to create the precise circumstances of the table top engagement. The scenarios may have particular historical themes and settings, but you can easily adapt the mechanics to suit your own preferences and collections. FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND The Jacobite Risings are highly romanticised, but in truth they were bloody, dark and divisive. We know the cause died on the battlefield of Culloden in 1746, but before that there were hard-fought engagements in 1689 and over the course…

INTRODUCTION In issue 495 of Miniature Wargames I wrote about the Boxer Uprising and the background to the game Skirmish Wargames staged at Salute earlier this year. We staged another Boxer game at my local show, Broadside, due to a local connection which the Medway Towns has with this conflict. This scenario is based on that game THE BARFLEUR MEMORIAL As you drive into the town of Chatham, with its former Royal Dockyard connections, you pass a statue of Captain Waghorn who pioneered a new overland postal route between Britain and India before the Suez Canal was built which shortened the usual threemonth journey to 35-45 days by going through Egypt on land. Previously hidden amongst shrubbery behind the statue sits a small obelisk and when Medway Council carried…

Modern actions are rarely wargamed: several years ago Peter Pig’s AK47 rules and figure range was very popular and since then there has been a trickle of modern figure ranges. There’s a kind of inverse relationship between the movie industry and wargame trends. As an example, think ‘Napoleonic’ and consider that – beyond Sharpe and Hornblower plus Waterloo and a couple of Ridley-Scott movies (of varying quality… Ed.) – there’s been very little, and yet the period is incredibly popular with wargamers. In comparison, movies featuring modern warfare are two-a-penny, but modern wargamers are few and far between. One event that took place in the 1970s and at the heart of the vicious conflict between pro-Palestinian factions and the Israelis was the remarkable Entebbe action. There have been no less…