"Review of Wargames Illustrated #312" Topic

June 1967, the Summer of Love, the Age of Aquarius, Procul Harum are contemplating a Whiter Shade of Pale…meanwhile in the Middle East….

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: It's what a lot of us have been waiting for: Flames of Six Day War! The magazine comes in plastic wrapping with the "Fate of the Nation" supplement tucked in at the back and a great picture of an Israeli Centurion tank creating havoc whilst a Mirage III streaks overhead…HELL YEAH!

Right, rip open the plastic, take out the Fate of the Nation book and put it to one side…it's not part of this review. Other people on TMP have reviewed it already, I'm here to review the rest of the magazine.

EDITORIAL: The guest editor is Flames of War's designer, Phil Yates and he's cock a hoop about the Fate of a Nation project. It's nice to see an editor or games designer really enthusiastic about their work. Of course, in the world of WI everything is brilliant.

WARGAMING NEWS: As well as information about new releases (everything's brilliaaaaaaaaant!) there's information about WI having a digital counterpart available for ipads soon and other tablets and readers at some point.

THE SIX DAY WAR: A very good article on the build up to and course of the Six Day War. Good as a primer for the conflict in case you don't know much about it already. The author knows his stuff and although I have read possibly the definitive tome on the subject (the Dupuy brothers' Elusive Victory) there were still things I wasn't that aware of before about the war. Some good maps too.

OUTFITTING CONFEDERATE INFANTRY: The follow up to the one on Union infantry from last month. Not quite as in depth as the Union article, mainly because of the Confederate procurement policy which didn't have standardisation of uniform and kit their opponents had. Good, and with a handy painting guide, but just that little bit lacking in detail.

THE TANKS OF '67: Excellent article about the tanks of the Six Day War including the Israeli Super Sherman, the up-engined Centurion and the AMX-13. Top notch stuff with statistics for all the vehicles from Israel, Egypt and Jordan and you get some nifty pictures of Battlefront's range of vehicles released for Fate of a Nation.

SALUTING THE ALAMO: This is a game I missed at Salute 2013 (a price I paid for allowing my gaming friends to treat the show as purely a shopping trip) and the photos are good but it's a strange article in some ways. On the one hand it's about the complexities of putting on the game in time for Salute and the testing of the rules and on the other it's a report of the game as it ran on the day. I wanted to know more about the rules used and how they played out and, frankly, there was too much photography and not enough text. This is a theme I will return to…

COLOURS OF '67: A painting guide for 6 Day War uniforms and vehicles. Well illustrated, Vallejo colours recommended, in short it's essential if you're going to wargame the conflict.

SAVAGE WARS OF PEACE PART 4: If you're a regular reader of WI, you'll have been following these rules and scenarios about putting personality and role playing figures into your skirmishes and battles. This part goes into goals for your character in battle and then describes the 8th Xhosa War (no, I didn't know anything about it beforehand) and presents a Black Powder scenario of the conflict. It's well presented and the role playing part is decent but…it's more a style thing: I'm getting bored with wargaming magazine articles that contain flowery mock-Victorian and Edwardian straplines. If I see another "Being an account of…." under the title, I'll scream. The same goes for "Being a set of principles for fighting battles and fisticuffmanship in a gentlemanly manner" under any set of Victorian wargames rules.

BATTLEFIELDS OF THE SIX DAY WAR: An overview of the terrain of the war, illustrated by the Battlefield in a Box range and with some reference to FoW terrain rules. Useful for newcomers even if you don't play FoW.

RONIN DESIGNER'S NOTES: Just that. The designer of the Japanese skirmish rules, Ronin, explains his game's mechanics and design philosophy with some excellent photos of painted figures care of Kevin Dallimore.

MISSIONS OF '67: A very brief (1 1/2 pages) set of scenario ideas for Fate of a Nation. There's a paragraph of the historical setting, a suggestion for a FoW mission and some suggested forces but this really could have done with a full sized scenario description. It'll do but maybe something else in the magazine should have been sacrificed to make way for a fuller article…such as…

PHOTOGRAPHING THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION: Pages and pages of wonderful photography of wonderfully painted AWI figures and terrain. Very little in the way of text. I respect the work of the painter and modeller, Bill Gaskin, but did the article really need all those pages? Look what had to be truncated to make way for this. Last month's issue had pages and pages of a pretty looking AWI game and this is more of the same.

WRESTLING WITH RAPHIA: "Being an account of one wargamer…." AAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH! A problematic article; it starts with the author describing his failed attempts to design a wargame scenario of the battle of Raphia and it ends with a description of the game he eventually ran. What is missing is the historical background to the battle. I don't know the battle, I'm hazy about the history of it and that era. I could have done with learning more to see if I too could play the game. Not only that, the author never goes into detail about how and why his previous attempts to get a game of Raphia successfully done. I'm now going to launch a plea to article writers and editors to not assume we readers know what you're talking about when describing a specific battle or war. Not only that, a write up of a game which consists of "Dave rolled 2 sixes and forced Neil's Parthians to retire…meanwhile Dave's mate Tony charged his elephants at the enemy centre". I'm sure you had a fun time, but I don't know who Dave, Tony and Neil are and unless you relate your gaming experience to the historical battle you're recreating, you're not hooking me into your article. So if you describe how Dave departed from his real life counterpart in the actual battle, then you've described how it happened and how changing the tactic worked out in the game. Rant over.

TRAWLING FOR TROLLS: A nice little column from Barry Hilton about the nasty side of internet forums in the world of wargaming. A good plea for understanding and tolerance in our hobby but I suggest to Mr Hilton that if he wants to witness the baseness of the human soul and encounter the vilest of internet trolls then he need look no further than YouTube and typing in the words "JFK assassination" or "Moon Landing Hoax".

BUTLER'S RANGERS: This is about a light infantry raiding force of the AWI. I didn't know about them before and I learned a little about them…but not enough. Too many large pictures and nothing about what happened to the rangers after the AWI or their fate at the end of it. So a good teaser, but it needed more.

HISTORICON 2013: I didn't think I'd like this bit, but strangely I did. What makes it work are some little observations from the writer about the differences between US and UK shows and a nice photo of games specifically designed to appeal to under 12s. British show organisers, take note.

OVERALL: If you like Flames of War and the Arab-Israeli wars, this issue is a must have. If you don't like FoW but like the Arab-Israeli wars, then I say it's still worth getting. If you like neither, you may want to skip this one. Too much photography drowning out the text, articles half done and not enough meat on the bone, so to speak.

The plastic wrapping stopped me buying this issue. Without being able to browse inside there was nothing on the front cover to tempt me.

I got my MWBG and WSS though!

That's what I'm here for: To unwrap the plastic on your behalf. Like I said, whether anyone should buy this issue is solely dependent on whether you like the Six Day War as a historical and wargaming period.

Also, there were some typos in my hastily written review. They should read:

"Not only that, the author never goes into detail about how and why his previous attempts to get a game of Raphia successfully done failed."

and

"Not only that, a write up of a game which consists of "Dave rolled 2 sixes and forced Neil's Parthians to retire…meanwhile Dave's mate Tony charged his elephants at the enemy centre" makes for a frustrating read."

I was in a hurry when I went to the shop and didn't realize it was Octobers issue and not September. I wanted the AWI article from September:-( I liked the eye candy but overall not what I was looking for. I also prefer to look inside before buying but it doesn't take much to get me to buy an issue. I would have gotten this one no matter what.

This is the first WI I have purchased in quite some time, and I wasn't disappointed by it.

I find that WI restrict themselves to a rather narrow range of companies. Osprey, Warlord and North Star products get huge coverage along side the house staple of FoW. I expect FoW to get pride of place, they own the mag, but I do wish WI would look futher afield than Nottingham. This is a big hobby and this mag is, for me, failing to cover more than a small sector of it.

Fortunately MW and WSS do a better job.

I stopped subscribing but i will buy this number for sure!

This was great issue, wish they were more like this all the time. The Barry Hilton article was ok but not really saying anything we don't all know. Write about wargaming please!

I liked this issue very much also.

A useful review as I'm loathed to buy sealed magazines. Unfortunately it is another copy of Wargames Illustrated I won't be buying. Personally the magazine outside of the obvious Flames of War coverage is a poor shadow of its former self.

Big Jim, in recent months WI has done a good job in expanding its coverage of wargaming but this issue is an oddity because it's put so much effort into the Six Day War material (which lends itself well to other rules systems) and yet the other articles, for the most part, fall short of the standard they can achieve. It needed, I feel, more editorial control but a dedicated games designer in the role for a one-off wasn't the person to do it.

I haven't purchased WI since it was picked up by Battlefront. I purchased this issue due to the AIW content and was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the other articles in the magazine.

A fair point Ubercommando, I'll keep an open mind about future issues and its possible development.

Have to agree with ubercommando regarding the Barry Hilton piece, I didn't think it really told us anything we already knew. The Xhosa Wars article wasn't read by me for the same reasons really as the reviewer, pseudo Victorian trappings, and the fact that I'll never ever game the particular period even if it was written up for playing with BP. Have to say I skipped the Ronin article too because I'll never play Samurai as it doesn't interest.
Mr Gaskin's wonderful collection, whilst amazing to behold, could have been parked on the website pages instead couldn't it, especially as last month was the AWI issue not this one.?
Actually, to save any more typing, I agree with your review completely ubercommando, keep up the good work!!

Oddly enough my subscription copy hasn't arrived yet. Normaly it would have been here (Belgium) at least a week ago.
I'm sort of wondering if the extra booklet has something to do with this.

Appreciate the comments about my Raphia report. I like to think that I get a little better with each article. It seems that at least with this effort, it wasn't the case.

Thanks again for taking the time to read and as you say, rant.

Chris

I hope you can derive encouragement when I say that I wanted more of that Raphia article. It did enlighten me to a battle and a period of history I know virtually nothing about but once you tantalised me, I really wanted to learn more.

I hope the print quality of 312 is better than 311. Being an AWI gamer I bought 311 mail order as the newsagents seem to have dropped WI here in Oz. But I was greatly disappointed by the heavy, dark pictures, almost as bad as White Dwarf.
I remember some very high quality photos of Bill Gaskin's colonial figures in a wargaming mag from the 80's. It would be great to see similar high quality shots.
So I am another who believes the best place for these is on the web as the web's graphic reproduction quality is a lot better.

On the newsagents dropping of WI, I wouldn't be surprised if the topic of the Six Day War and calling it "Fate Of The Nation" might have been viewed as pushing the boundary of what could be put on general display.