Well, first off apologies for not providing my usual review service here on TMP. I tend to not produce any over the school summer holidays…I'm far too busy with keeping my sons entertained. Second, my general writing career has got busier lately, including writing articles for wargaming magazines!
I had really wanted to review the last MW under Henry's stewardship but, sadly, I got too busy to read it quickly and produce a review. Henry, if you're reading this…it was a darned fine issue.
Now onto the first under John Treadaway's editorship:
FIRST IMPRESSION: A big change to the look, font and photography style. It looks a bit "busy" on the front cover, not necessarily easy to pick out text that stands out but it's a good shot of war elephants though.
EDITORIAL: John, attired in a Roman helmet and British army lightweight shirt (who says he's not a historical gamer at heart?) welcomes you in a brief editorial and makes it known without any doubt that he goes beyond his reputation as a sci-fi and fantasy gamer. There's even an invite to produce content for the magazine…John, I'm working on it, I'm working on it!
FORWARD OBSERVER: Iain Fuller takes on the column from Henry who took it on from Neil Shuck. 28mm plastics, especially from Victrix, a very tasty M60A2 from Old Glory (I'm going to have to cave in and play Team Yankee soon) and the heads up on the Warfare, Battleground and Reveille shows.
WARGAMING MY WAY: I'm glad this series is continuing as I do like insights into how other people game. This time it's Noel Williams' perspectives: He refers to himself as a wargaming jackdaw, being attracted to new and shiny things and this article reads much the same: It flits from here to there without a sense of something bigger but one point I really found interesting is his way of trying to make status and casualty markers look more natural than just having tokens all over the table.
SEND THREE AND FOURPENCE: Conrad Kinch is still here, and this time he offers a scenario set in the hypothetical WW3 using the Funny Little Cold Wars rules and played out on your floor or garden. Or you can use Iron Maiden/Team Yankee…Nice to see Conrad writing a scenario instead of sage wisdom here for a change.
DREADNOUGHT BATTLEFLEET: A set of WW1 naval rules and campaign which are different in that they're written in prose style instead of rules plus charts and tables. There's a lot of reference to the Berthier campaign system which you can download for free. Whether or not the rules themselves play well, I can't tell, but as an article giving you things to consider when playing WW1 naval games, this is a very good article.
THE BATTLE OF CRETE: This is mostly a historical article, which I found interesting because the locations the author, Jeff Brown, mentions I've actually visited. I suspect he stayed at the same hotel I did just east of Rethymon given his descriptions. Now as a wargaming guide to Crete, I think it just misses its target….just like most of the Fallschirmjager! Boom boom. There's not enough crunch to go with the colour, but…and it's an important but…Jeff does describe the difficulty of the terrain and how that's important to wargaming Crete. I couldn't help notice it when I was there. Oh, and there's a link to downloadable cardboard model terrain plus Junckers and gliders.
BACK TO BACK WARGAMING: Or the "double blind" system to some. How to really accurately reflect fog of war in a wargame by having two identical game set ups and having umpires show what each side can actually see. A very old gaming idea gets a new lease of life here but it's a short article with not much in the way of examples in terms of maps or photos. Still, if your group is blessed with time and terrain to match, it looks like a good challenge.
CRITICAL HITS: The sci-fi section sits in its own pull out section. So this is going to be the review within the review…
1. FANTASY FACTS. The same old figure and game review. There's Imperial Skies Victorian ether flying game, some fantastic US cops and a Land Rover from Crooked dice, self-assembly pre-painted sci-fi corridors and only a teeny tiny bit of 15mm Hammers Slammers stuff from Ground Zero.
INFINITY OPERATION RED VEIL: New boxed board/miniatures hybrid game designed as an introductory version of the Infinity game. This is basically a appetite whetter.
FROSTGRAVE: This is an interview with Joseph McCulloch, designer of the game. So you get his perspectives, a history of the development of the game and so forth with a teaser of off-shoot games to come.
HYSTERICALLY ACCURATE: An interview with the designer of the new Weird War Two fantasy game Panzerfauste. To me this is really like Flintloque for WW2 and even the author acknowledges the influence of the older game on Panzerfauste. Alas, there's only concept art to go along with this, no photos of actual figures for the game or seeing it in action and then there's the reasoning behind why the various fantasy races represent their real life WW2 counterparts: The Germans are Dwarves because they're officious and like drinking beer. The British are Orcs because they brag about their victories, commit atrocities and are hard drinking football hooligans. The authors say they've gone for lazy stereotypes and I agree, they are lazy and perhaps don't do proper justice to WW2 so a huge amount of suspension of disbelief is needed here.
BUSHIDO: The skirmish miniatures game, not the old FGU role playing game. This is basically another promotional piece about a game with only two photos to go with it.
BELLI MINIMI: Right, we're out of the sci-fi section and back to the rest of the magazine. These are a set of rules by Harry Pearson (yes, the "Achtung Schwinehundt" author) for Fast Play Ancients. Nice to see and covers a lot of ground in a few pages.
RECCE: Surprisingly not right at the back of the magazine but a little before then. There's an Osprey book on the downfall of the Reich, the Roman empire's trade with China, a photography book covering the war in the Crimea, 1941-44, the Battle of the River Plate and an electric grass flocking machine to boot.
PAINTING TOY TANKS IN DOUBLE QUICK TIME: The editor shares his tips on basically that, using plenty of photos of Hammers Slammers vehicles by way of example but it must be stressed this will work for any type of tank; historical or otherwise.
TEDDY O'ROURKE: Jazzing up MDF Rourke's Drift kits with teddy bear fur, courtesy of the Wargaming Widow.
WAR: This history of the Wargames Association of Reading. I like reading about the clubs, and this one is fairly local to me and I'll be attending their excellent show next month.
CLUB DIRECTORY: A nice little guide to the clubs that are out there. I want to give a shout out to the unlisted Staines Wargames Association, based in Egham…we meet on Friday evenings at 7pm.
OVERALL: Well, considering Henry left huge shoes to fill and there's been some circumspection about John Treadaway's appointment so what did I think?
What two things do you associate most with John Treadaway? Science fiction gaming and photography and yet, strangely, these two were (for me) the weakest parts of this issue. I found the sci-fi and fantasy pull out section to be little more than promotional pieces for games; I was hoping for something more practical. And although a lot of individual photos were of a high quality, there weren't enough to illustrate the games or topics especially in the sci-fi section.
But those are the negatives. On the positive side if you were worried that John would steer the magazine firmly in the direction of science-fiction and fantasy at the expense of historical gaming then you need not be concerned. There were plenty of historical gaming articles and most were practical: A scenario, two sets of fast play rules, a fog of war variant game plus modelling and painting articles. It was varied in terms of ground covered so I'll give that a thumbs up.
It was nice to see John contributing articles beyond Fantasy Facts as well, although the quality of magazines rests largely in the hands of its contributors. With messers Shuck and Harmer-Barnes no longer writing for MW, it's up to us to man up and start penning articles.
So a solid start for John, a few problems, but solid nonetheless.