"Review of Miniature Wargames #399" Topic

I'm very excited by this issue, for reasons that will soon become apparent. However, I approach this review with a degree of trepidation as well…

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: A fantastic fleet of age of sail warships dominates the cover. They look fantastic and are from the Partizan show this year.

BRIEFING: Henry has some big news; he's not going to handle the graphic design of the magazine anymore. Also, he takes on the critics that the magazine isn't catering for those who like big battles.

WORLD WIDE WARGAMING: More on the ECW online project, a gathering of British wargaming bloggers at Partizan and Grimsby Wargaming gets a shout out as blog of the month.

FORWARD OBSERVER: Neil Shuck has stood down from penning this column so it's over to Mike Hobbs to write about what he's into and what has caught his eye. Looking to the future, there's the Weird War supplement for Bolt Action and looking into the past it's a shout out for Flintloque and Alternative Armies. That's a game that just hasn't gone away even if the buzz has; good on it!

CANED PALMS: Nice looking palm trees and wells for your tropical or desert games. It involves hot glue guns and I shouldn't be let loose with one so let's move on…

FANTASY FACTS: There's some great looking yetis and jungle explorers from EMP games, the new Thunderbirds expansion set is out and there's the usual 1/100 hard SF vehicles. But what catches the eye is the 25th anniversary Full Thrust game. Wow, Flintloque and Full Thrust…nice to see that not everything good has to be new and shiny.

DOWN BY THE SEA: Andrew Rolph's epic…and I feel I can call this series epic…Eastern Front series presents us with Russian paratroops defending the Crimea. A bit off the beaten path but it looks a cracking scenario. Designed for his chosen rules set, Spearhead, but with any Rolph scenario you can adapt it, scale it up or down, for your own preferred set.

THE PERFECT PERIOD: An article about how Grimsby Wargames Society put on a huge War of the Spanish Succession game at Partizan this year and how the game evolved over time. It's a piece that isn't navel gazing, but shows what ideas and considerations the group had and from that point of view, it's a good one to read and perhaps take notes from.

EXPRESS DELIVERY: A bespoke scenario for Airfix Battles, although I think you could use it for other games. It has whetted my appetite, more so because it includes an example of play.

DEMONSTRATE THIS: I can't comment on this article, because I wrote it! I'd welcome feedback though. Kudos to Henry for finding some great photos to accompany it.

GRENOUISSE AT BAY, PART 1: Henry's imagi-nations campaign here, focussing on a games day he organised. He's up front in declaring that this article won't be a "games with my mates" (did I come up with that slogan or was it in general use?) AAR and if it appears to be so then you're missing the detail. This is quite instructional on how to set up such a game but the stand out bits are the campaign maps which you can refer to as Henry describes the action. And this also sets up a second part to come so, again, appetite whetted and I must get around to assembling an imagi-nations army of my own: The Vulgae…a drab and somewhat depressing kingdom where the chief tourist attractions are daily public punishments of miscreants and the boiling mud plains of Inertia Magna.

HEX ENCOUNTER: Brad Harmer-Barnes talks us through his efforts to design an Aliens (tm) miniatures/board game. Good insight into how it's not necessary to re-invent the wheel to make a good game.

SEND THREE AND FOURPENCE: Taking a leaf out of Sharp Practice 2, Conrad comes up with some new character abilities and goals for a Sword and the Flame game. Very entertaining.

PARTIZAN 2016: Some truly fantastic photos of some great looking games on show here; I hope some of them make it to other shows later this year.

RAGE 2016: A report, with photos, of a show I'm not familiar with. All games had a mediaeval/Agincourt theme with a small pic of the Perry Agincourt diorama at Leeds Armoury.

RECCE: Only one game here; Zombiecide Wulfsburg, but of the books being reviewed the one on Andrew Jackson, Mithridates and the two volume Smolensk battle in 1941 seem interesting whilst potentially the most exciting new release is the Wargaming the English Civil War with paper soldiers.

IN CONCLUSION: Plenty to enjoy here. Two scenarios, some good ideas and a terrain modelling article give you something practical to work with and the other articles are nice to read. If you're an ancients gamer then there isn't much for you here but overall it's got quite a bit to cut out and keep…not necessarily my contribution though

I like the magazine a lot and not just because of my article on "the Perfect Period".
I liked the "Demonstrate This" piece and am glad that we are not alone in thinking about how to show of our games. getting people involved is the hard part (I advertised on several forums for people to play if they wanted but had no takers) when i guess time is short and money to be spent. one thing that was apparent though is that, for us at least, we would need more people on the stand to get more of the public involved. for large games that might be the most difcult aspect to achieve.
I thought Henrys article was also very good for giving more insight in to how large multiplayer games evolve.
Yes a good issue I thought.

Nick,

I wrote up a little piece on my blog about participation in convention games and what we did with several of our games designs to encourage people to participate.
We did much of what was suggested in your article: have a game run all day, but have players take control for a few turns.

Our largest experiment was "Red vs Blue", which had 1500 playing cards distributed in the convention hall for people to collect and participate in the game.

link

Thanks for the reference in your blog post, much appreciated.

I remember the Red v Blue game well and the article that followed (was it WSS or MW?). I didn't participate in RvB, sadly, but I should have by all accounts. If I'd been by your Arnhem game I'd have stayed all day! Such is my fascination for that battle.

Micro-participation is a great buzz word and I applaud your games there; I look forward to your next one.