Show reports present an interesting opportunity for magazine content, especially when the magazine is called Wargames Illustrated. We are lucky* to have the twice-annual Partizan shows on our doorstep, which always present at least half a dozen great-looking demo tables. Naturally, we always attend the show and round up the games
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I don’t really get excited by new technology, however, the modern magazine editor would be a fool to bury their head in the sand and pretend there isn’t a world of publishing outside of printed paper. They would also be out of business. At Wargames Illustrated we already embrace Facebook, YouTube,
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Test cricket is very different from Twenty-Twenty cricket, 3x3 basketball is very different from that played in the NBA, and tournament wargaming is very different from how I like to play my wargames. That latter fact was underlined recently at Britcon, one of the UK's largest tabletop tournament gaming conventions,
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How we laughed, as I trampled the princess to death. Not me, personally, I hasten to add; my miniature Ashigaru, who, in their haste to save the centrepiece of our Hail Caesar Samurai game, had accidentally crushed her to death in a failed charge. This was the ‘hilarious’ conclusion to a
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Editor Dan and the Perry brothers packed their bags (and sculpting tools) and jetted off to see an award-winning wargaming and cultural collaboration. The town of Gradara in North Eastern Italy has picture-book Italian charm, with winding cobbled streets that ascend to a large medieval castle. Perched on a hillside above
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One of the great pleasures of being the Editor-come-Photographer for Wargames Illustrated is the opportunity to go ‘on location’ and photograph readers' figure collections. Not only do I get to see the ‘toys out on the table’ I also get to see the behind-the-scenes conditions in which gamers store their
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If you were to stand directly in front of the Wargames Illustrated stand at Salute on Saturday, then sidle two yards to the right, before then shimmying four meters to the left, you would have seen a living breathing timeline of Europe’s largest wargames show. To the right of our stand
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Something’s gone wrong - the entries in the Wi/Hammerhead Painting Competition weren’t supposed to be this good! When we first teamed up with the organisers of the Hammerhead Wargames Show back in 2018, we collectively decided we wanted to run a painting comp in which anyone coming to the show could
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Do you like the cover artwork for our April magazine (see below)? I do, but then I would, because I commissioned it, and it's by one of my favourite artists working in the hobby: Neil Roberts. Neil has been knocking out cover illustrations for us since October 2017, and we’ve managed
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What’s a fair cross-section of the wargaming world? How about 2,046 Wargames Illustrated readers? That was the total number of votes we received for our 2023 Wargames Illustrated Readers’ Awards and, while I say 2,046 Wi readers, the reality is that quite a few of those voters probably don’t flip through
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As 2023 draws to a close I have two options for my last Editor’s Exploits of the year; do I look forward? Or do I look back? I choose the former and will take a moment to share some of the Wi-related goings-on we have lined up for 2024. Wi Mobile Early
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The introduction of MDF model buildings into our hobby has been one of the great innovations in wargaming. I remember travelling down to deepest darkest Wiltshire about ten years ago to take a tour of 4Ground’s laser cutting facility and see what all the Medium Density Fibre fuss was about.
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It’s always intriguing to hear about famous wargamers. It wasn’t until fairly recently that I discovered the English actor Peter Cushing had been one of our fraternity. Doubly intriguing was the fact that Alan Perry had recently acquired what he billed as “Peter Cushing’s Wargaming Ephemera”. Alan invited myself and a
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I’m completely biased of course, but I wouldn’t say our medieval rulebook Never Mind the Billhooks is ‘style over substance’. As a publication, it looks pretty, but it’s much more about the substance of the rules. Our Napoleonic rules: Valour & Fortitude, could even be accused of lacking in style,
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TM Terrain is a one-man band model-making maestro from Loughborough, Leicestershire named David Marshall. David is a lovely fella who has been making terrain boards, buildings and dioramas for individuals and companies within the hobby for over 25 years. He recently contacted me to say he was thinking of putting together
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A good umpire can make or break a game. I’ve played loads of multiplayer wargames that meandered along at such a tediously slow pace half of them had to be wrapped up early with a guess at what would have happened if we had another three hours. Other times players
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It’s always a pleasure; never a chore visiting Gripping Beast down in Evesham. I had several boxes of what they warmly refer to as “Dark Age Haries” to return to them - painted figures Wargames Illustrated had borrowed for a recent photo session. What made this trip particularly interesting was that
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The June issue of Wargames Illustrated comes with a free ruleset: Never Mind the Boathooks. It’s the nautical neighbour of our successful medieval small battle rules Never Mind the Billhooks, but Boathooks is a stand-alone set of rules, supported by downloadable cards and tokens. Players take to the high seas in a
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I must be slacking. I clocked up 20,000 steps/eight miles walking around the Salute hall at ExCel last Saturday. Looking back in my diary I did nearly nine miles in 2021. Mind you, eight miles felt enough by the time I got home on Saturday night! Not only did Team Wi
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Looking back in my diary at March 2020 was an interesting experience. It’s largely a collection of entries about different daily Lockdown rules and restrictions announced by the UK government, but just a few days before the big 'everyone in stay inside' announcement there was Hammerhead 2020. The Newark (participation game
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It's a bit of a cliché that Medieval naval battles were just like land battles at sea, but what if you take a successful set of medieval land battle rules and set them afloat, does it work? That’s what rules writer Andy Callan did with Never Mind the Billhooks. If you
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In my office here at Wi Mansions I have a glass display cabinet which houses my favouritest painted miniatures. Suffice to say, none of them have been painted by me; the work which features more than anyone else is by Brushman Matt Parkes. I’ve known Matt since about 2008 when we
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With postal strikes meaning we couldn’t get any orders out of the door, and rail strikes meaning we couldn’t get any stock in the door, coupled with a fire alarm service meaning the lights in the office were out of action, we could cry, moan, and hope Netflix would give
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Editor Dan gets behind the wheel with friends Nick North Star and Alan and Michael Perry. What sights did they behold on their 1.5k mile road trip? “How about turning Tactica 2022 into a Road Trip?” said I to friends and Tactica regulars Alan and Michael Perry. Having later recruited our
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Editor Dan ponders how the GW generation of game designers resonates with the Wi audience. I’ve never actually played War Games by Donald Feather (first published 1962), or any rules by George Gush, Tony Bath, Charles Grant et al. I have got, and read, several books by those authors, but have
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“Why don’t you publish more articles about 6mm gaming?” was the predictable first question I was asked in my capacity as one of the panel at the Joy of Six event which took place in Sheffield, England, in early July. It was a fair question and one I knew was coming
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I do like an umpired game and I’m particularly keen when I'm unfamiliar with the rules but the umpire is a walking, talking, 3D version of the rulebook. That meant I was already keen when friend of the magazine Pete Brown offered to umpire a game based on a battle
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It was quite flattering to discover that one of our readers had been to nine different stores in the Staffordshire, Cheshire, and Birmingham areas of England to try and get hold of a copy of the April issue of Wargames Illustrated magazine. On the flip side, it wasn’t so good
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Somebody once said “It’s not what you know it’s who you know” and when that somebody you know is a very good and pro-active Game Designer they are certainly worth knowing! Andy Callan has been writing wargames rules since I was in short trousers. His 'Loose Files and American Scramble' rules
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“I thought this would be sacrilege!” said Andy Callan. He was referring to the fact we were about to play a wargame using unpainted figures, and feature them in the pages of Wargames Illustrated. He had a fair point because I can’t remember the last time we did such a
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