All hail the 2021 Wargames Illustrated award winners! Whether you voted for them or not, I am sure you will be interested to read about the winners and runners-up in the eight categories that made up our annual awards, as voted for by Wargames Illustrated magazine readers and social media followers. Turn to page 52 to check out all the podium finishers.

In tandem with your bagged freebie frame*, our magazine theme for this month sees us return to the battlefields of the Napoleonic Wars. In Frame Focus on page 58 we present a guide to painting your newly acquired Waterloo Campaign Epic British or French Infantry – the frames have been bagged randomly – only Lady Luck (or you rooting around on the shelves) can decide which frame you will get with your magazine. We also provide you with a guide to making bases for the figures on page 78. Don’t feel obliged to paint your figures, you can have great fun gaming with them au naturel, as proved by our Epic scale newbies on page 32.

We will be providing you with freebie gifts again throughout this year, and whilst I’m not going to spoil the surprise by telling you what lies ahead (partly because I don’t know some of them yet!), stick around and I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.