Wargamers can be a bit sniffy about using 2D figures, often saying that they are not “real” miniatures. If you hold the belief that if it does not weigh a ton in lead and takes you a year to collect and paint then it’s not real wargaming. Well, please read
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Our Giants in Miniature range was launched half a decade ago and we are celebrating with an epic painting competition! We want to see your painted Giants in Miniature! We’ve created a range of categories, along with varied judging criteria, to ensure painters of all levels can get involved. You could
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Great word isn’t it, ramshackle. Apparently it’s got nothing to do with rams or shackles, but is derived from ransack. It first appeared in a copy of the weekly journal Forest and Stream in 1830. Anyway, I digress. This 28mm Ramshackle House is the sixteenth model in Renedra’s range of flat-pack
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The First Campaign Victory of the Great War: South Africa, manoeuvre warfare, the Afrikaner Rebellion and the German South West Africa Campaign 1914-1915. Antonio Garcia Helion Books Reviewed by Jim Graham The First Campaign Victory of the Great War by Antonio Garcia is published by Helion, and has 208 pages including index and
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The Napoleonic Ottoman Army Uniforms, Tactics and Organization C. Flaherty Partizan Press Reviewed by There is very little written material available in English about the Ottoman Army during the Napoleonic period and hence this new work by Chris Flaherty is very welcome. The book is an A4 size hardback book that runs to 180
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Frederick Whirlpool VC Alan Leek Pen & Sword, 2019 Reviewed by Neil Smith Frederick Whirlpool welcomed his obscurity in late 19th Century Australia, indeed he worked at it and even assumed a false name to guarantee his anonymity. His success might have been assured except for two things; he won Australia’s first Victoria Cross,
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The Eighth Army in North Africa. Rare Photographs from Wartime Arichives Simon Forty Pen & Sword Military Reviewed by To put it like John Miles, the North African campaign was my first love and probably will be my last. The campaign ultimately got me into scale modelling and wargaming. So over the years I have
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Edward the Elder – King of the Anglo-Saxons, Forgotten Son of Alfred Michael John Key Amberley Publishing Reviewed by Bernd Biege When the first sentence of the first chapter has the author praising his own book, it gets my bristles up ... and classifying Edward the Elder as “forgotten” does the same. Not a
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D-Day Through German Eyes: How the Wehrmacht Lost France Hardcover Jonathan Trigg Amberley Publishing Reviewed by Matt Hardwick This is an interesting title from Jonathan Trigg. A graduate from the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst who served in the Royal Anglican Regiment in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and the Gulf, he has written other books on
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Chieftain British Cold War Main Battle Tank Robert Jackson Pen & Sword, 2019 Reviewed by Neil Smith The Chieftain tank is synonymous with the United Kingdom’s participation in the Cold War as a member of NATO. In Chieftain British Cold War Main Battle Tank, part of Pen & Sword’s Tank Craft series, tank expert
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Dunkirk German Operations in France 1940 Hans-Adolf Jacobsen Casemate, 2019 Reviewed by Neil Smith Originally published in 1958, Dunkirk relates the incredible success of the German army in crushing French, Belgian, and British opposition in a blitzkrieg campaign that took place over a few weeks in May 1940. In five chapters, running to about
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WWII in the Desert Andy Singleton Pen & Sword, 2019 Reviewed by Neil Smith I do not intend to start an internet versus book debate here, but I had wasted an awful lot of time looking for painting tips and lessons in the virtual world before Andy Singleton’s WWII in the Desert fell through
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T-54/55 – Soviet Cold War Main Battle Tank Robert Jackson Pen & Sword, 2019 Reviewed by Robert Jackson’s T-54/55 – Soviet Cold War Main Battle Tank marks the 16th release in Pen & Sword’s Tank Craft series, which “aims to provide modelmakers and enthusiasts with a new standard of primarily visual reference” for full-size
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Great Naval Battles of the Ancient Greek World Owen Rees Pen and Sword Military, 2018 Reviewed by Zachary G Martin The importance of warships to the Greeks cannot be overstated. Indeed, the Athenian Empire was a Thallassocracy in name and nature, existing much like the later British Empire, generally by dint of its overwhelming
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Charles XI’s War – The Scanian War Between Sweden and Denmark, 1675-1679 Michael Fredholm von Essen Helion (Century of the Soldier) 2019 Reviewed by Bernd Biege We all heard of the Thirty Years War, and the Great Northern War, but apart from that, Scandinavian military history is often lost in a bit of fog,
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The Armour of Rommel’s Afrika Korps Ian Baxter Pen & Sword Military, 2018 Reviewed by Paul Leach Ian Baxter’s The Armour of Rommel’s Afrika Korps stands as a welcome addition to Pen & Sword’s Images of War series and should be of interest to the general World War II enthusiast and tabletop wargamer alike.
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Greece 1941 – The Death Throes of Blitzkrieg Jeffrey Plowman Pen & Sword Military, 2018 Reviewed by Paul Leach Jeffrey Plowman’s Greece 1941 – The Death Throes of Blitzkrieg offers a riveting—and sometimes harrowing—account of Germany’s three-week campaign to capture Greece in April 1941. It focuses on the understrength British and Commonwealth expeditionary force
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Letters from Mafeking, Eyewitness accounts from the longest siege of the South African War Edward M. Spiers Reviewed by Jim Graham Letters from Mafeking is published by Frontline Books, one of Pen & Swords imprints, and is the third in Spiers’s series on the sieges of the Boer War; he has also written
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Attila the Hun: Arch Enemy of Rome Ian Hughes Pen & Sword Military, 2019 Reviewed by Matthew Hardwick Even today Attila the Hun occupies a unique place in the minds of modern Europeans. It is not Alaric the Goth, who actually sacked Rome, who is used as a synonym for barbarian hordes, or as
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Images of War – M7 Priest. Rare Photographs from Wartime Arichives David Doyle Pen & Sword Military, 2019 Reviewed by Kevin Rolko The books of Pen & Sword´s well-known series “Images of War” can be divided into two different groups. Books of the first group cover a particular battle, period or theatre. They are
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Large Scale Warship Models Kerry Jang Seaforth Publishing, 2019 Reviewed by Neil Smith Kerry Jang’s guidebook Large Scale Warship Models takes potential modellers through all the stages of building a big model ship from scratch to completion, but along the way he teaches us something a little more profound about our hobby. The essentials of
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Panther Tanks: German Army and Waffen-SS Defence of the West, 1945 Dennis Oliver Pen & Sword, 2019 Reviewed by Neil Smith It sometimes strikes me as extraordinary the lengths some writers will go to research their subjects. Dennis Oliver’s Panther Tanks: German Army and Waffen-SS Defence of the West, 1945, part of Pen &
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Wargames Terrain & Building The Napoleonic Wars Tony Harwood Pen & Sword, 2019 Reviewed by Neil Smith One of the biggest joys our hobby provides is the aesthetics of miniature figures displayed on well-crafted terrain. And while skirmish games are all the rage, there is nothing quite like seeing the big armies fighting it
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Case Red: The Collapse of France Robert Forczyk Osprey Reviewed by Neil Smith Most of Wargames Illustrated’s readers will have a grasp of the Dunkirk story when it comes to the narrative of World War II. On 10 May 1940, the Germans poured over the French, Dutch, and Belgian borders and trounced a seemingly
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Images of War – M1 Abrams Michael Green Pen and Sword Military 2019 Reviewed by Phillip Herbert This new offering from Pen & Swords excellent Images of War series of books focus’ on one of the most iconic main battle tanks of the last forty years the M1 Abrams. The book follows the same format
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Southern Thunder, the Royal Navy and the Scandinavian trade in World War One Steven R Dunn Reviewed by Jim Graham Southern Thunder, the Royal Navy and the Scandinavian trade in World War One by Steven R Dunn, is published by Seaforth Publishing. It has 304 pages including appendices and index, 16 pages
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Images of War – Fallschirmjäger: German Paratroopers 1937-1941 François Cochet Pen and Sword Military 2019 Reviewed by Bernd Biege If you need image material regarding the Fallschirmjäger during the early war years, this would be a good go-to-book – 112 pages crammed with photos (and a few drawings) of varying quality, but generally of
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Flying, Fighting & Reflection. The life of Battle of Britain fighter Ace, Wing Commander Tom Neil DFC AFC AE Peter Jacobs Greenhill Books Reviewed by Peter Brian Covering the entire career of one of the RAF’s Battle of Britain Heroes, this book starts with the young Tom Neil joining the RAF and follows his
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Tiger I and Tiger II Tanks – German Army and Waffen SS – The Last Battles in the West 1945 Dennis Oliver Pen & Sword, 2019 Reviewed by Bernd Biege While I can spot the differences between a Tiger I and a Tiger II (often called “Königstiger”), I am not a hardware fanatic that
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Tiger I and Tiger II Tanks Dennis Oliver Pen & Sword, 2019 Reviewed by Neil Smith If you ask anyone interested in military history to name a type of tank, the German Tiger would surely be in their top three. Indeed, the Tiger is the symbol for German panzers during World War II, and
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