Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2025 i Miniature Wargames

Well I’m writing this Editorial in a reflective mood: today, as I type, it’s a ‘significant’ birthday and that brings many things into focus. I also had a very pleasant afternoon with Henry Hyde, previous editor of this very magazine and – as the afternoon proceeded – Henry pulled me up on something: he asked “John, why do you say ‘bowl the dice’ and not ‘roll the dice’…” and – you know – I have no idea? What do you say? Is it even important? An interesting conversation to end a fun afternoon for two old wargamers! Anyway never mind that malarkey: what have we got this month for you? We’ve got cavemen, we’ve got Pirates, and some Future/Past with Konflikt ’47. We’ve got Napoleonic wars (the earlier sort), Omdurman,…

“They say there’s a troopship just leavin’Bombay, bound for old Blighty shore,Heavily laden with time-expired men, boundfor the land they adore.There’s many an airman just finishing histime, there’s many a twerp signin’ on.You’ll get no promotion this side of theocean, so cheer up my lads, bless ‘em all. Bless ‘em all,Bless ‘em all,The long and the short and the tall,Bless all the Sergeants and W.O. 1s,Bless all the corp’rals and their bleedin’ sons,‘Cos we’re sayin’ goodbye to ‘em all.As back to their billets they crawl,You’ll get no promotion this side of theocean, so cheer up my lads, bless ‘em all.” British Army Song (various) I have a writer friend called Conor Fitzgerald who once observed to me that – while he hasn’t played a war or roleplaying game in twenty…

SHARPE & THE DARK AGES Sounds like a band! Wargames Atlantic is looking Sharpe! Coming soon is the Wargame Sharpe’s Rifles: a new, officially licensed (so Sharpe with an ‘e’…) hard plastic range and game to bring the world of Bernard Cornwell’s Richard Sharpe to the tabletop. To kick off this fantastic sounding new game line WA are starting with a very new kind of product that should appeal to gamers in all scales: a character frame that includes both a 28mm and a 54mm version of Richard Sharpe as he was in the Sharpe’s Rifles books (and on TV, frankly). And – if that degree of excitement ain’t your period, how about Dark Ages? WA’s new Dark Ages Army Builder has 48 Dark Ages Warriors for only £30! Pair…

USING PULP ALLEY Fundamental to my writing this scenario is the Pulp Alley rule set. I’ve been playing Pulp Alley for over 10 years now, on a regular basis with lots of different people so sometimes get a bit blasé and forget that there are a lot of gamers who have not tried it or maybe even heard of it, so I thought it might be handy, before I got started, to try to explain what the game is all about; how the mechanism’s work, it’s depth and it’s breadth. (you may remember that I reviewed the latest edition in the last issue of the magazine: Ed.) In some way’s the name is deceptive. It would be easy to read it, look at the character on the front of the…

Following from last months set up ‘programmed paragraph’ game we transfer Omdurman to the tabletop. Ed. THE FIRST PHASE Last month we used a gamebook style narrative version of the events leading up to the charge (or not as the case may be) of the 21st Lancers at Omdurman in Sudan. We know that at dawn on September 2, 1898, the unit rode out of the southern end of the zeriba surrounding the British positions. They made for the Jebel Surgham Ridge, reaching the high point at around 05:45. From here they could see the whole of the Dervish army stretching along a front of some four miles and making good progress towards the British positions. The 21st remained in position, unaware of the fact that the Khalifa was holding…

Based in Poland, Archon Studio is a rapidly growing company and their flagship brand, Dungeons & Lasers is becoming increasingly popular among RPG players and miniature painters worldwide. They are now producing figures in PrismaCast: a game: changing technology that produces pre-painted terrain directly on the sprue, but they make a variety of tabletop games, from board games and wargames to card games. They sent in some figures for Paul to paint and this is what he made of them. Ed. INTRODUCTION I received a couple of sprues (care of the editor) from Archon Studios to paint for the magazine. These are from their Dungeons and Lasers Porthaven release. Each sprue contained a Female Satyr Rogue and a Male Elf Rogue Bard. Having two of each I thought I would present a range of techniques and…

INTRODUCTION The Battle of Wagram in the Napoleonic Wars was a costly but victory for Napoleon’s army against the Austrian army under the command of Archduke Charles of Austria-Teschen. it was the largest battle in European history up to that time. Napoleon took six weeks to prepare for the offensive and the two-day battle was casualty heavy, mainly due to the extensive use of artillery on a flat battlefield packed with some 300,000 men. SIZE IS IMPORTANT It’s massive. The French army under Emperor Napoleon amounted to around 131,000 men and the Austrians under Archduke Charles of Austria topped this figure by 8,000. It had a fighting front of around 12 miles, a complicated watery Danube flank on the Vienna side and a tricky Russbach River slicing up the opposite…

DEATH FROM ABOVE In terms of status, reputation, training and effectiveness, both the British paratroopers and their German counterparts, the Fallschirmjäger are considered elite, the same can be said for the US 82nd and 101st Airborne. Used in an offensive role, they are by necessity light troops. Equipment-wise everything had to be flown in and dropped either by parachute or landed in gliders. When the editor sent me these photographs firstly I wondered if this was a “fantasy historical” encounter and whether the Red Devils actually ever fought the Green Devils for real. In fact they did, in three places beginning with Tunisia. The first really notable encounter was the Battle for Primosole Bridge in Sicily, but the final one is probably the encounter most wellknown and that took place…