Who doesn’t like to see a parade of elephants, a caravan of camels, or a mute of hounds on the tabletop? There are some great animal miniatures out there, capable of taking on a number of wargaming roles; from the frontline ‘Beasts of War’ to background tabletop fauna. The theme of this magazine focuses on our furry friends in their roles as combatants and canvases for our painting. We look at how rules deal with animals in action, and check out some animal moments in history, before moving on to see how our in-house painters approach the challenge of applying colour to a range of different elephant types at varying scales.

Speaking of painting; just before going to press we got our hands on the new Speedpaints from The Army Painter and managed to ‘speedily’ pull together an article informing you how the paints fared when we gave them their first run out. See page 38. You will find more Speedpaint fun on our YouTube channel, where you can watch Marc and James putting them through their paces and comparing them with similar paints on the market.