Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy

Wargaming is a big hobby with many diverse factions and perspectives: striking a balance that pleases everyone can be truly challenging! We like to think what sets Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy apart from other historical wargaming magazines is its focus on having fun, no matter what kind of wargamer you are or what your background is. WS&S is a light-hearted publication, that pays particular attention to games themselves and how to play them: it doesn’t get bogged down in lengthy historical expositions or recycle content you can read yourself in any history book. While popular periods like WWII, the Napoleonic era, and the ancient world get frequent coverage, we also try to feature the unexpected, with articles on spies, monsters and gangsters to name but a few.

Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy

Editorial

MINIATURE REVIEWS • A look at some of the newest miniatures, terrain pieces, and more from across the wargaming world.

WARGAMES SHOWS • The first wargaming show I ever attended was not actually a wargaming event at all, but the Model Engineering Exhibition staged at the Seymour Hall in London in the early 1970s. It was a strange induction to the hobby, but at the time I was — or thought I was — a burgeoning military modeller. The event catered for all types of modelling, from railways to military, but with a significant bent towards the engineering component of the hobby. If you had delusions of being Isambard Kingdom Brunel, you’d be in your element. I didn’t and I wasn’t.

THE BATTLE OF DRUMCLOG • We all know how the British Civil Wars and the later Monmouth and Jacobite Rebellions ended. But what happened to get from one to the other? Popularly, the Restoration is seen as peaceful, prosperous and debauched. But on the fringes, nothing could be further from the truth. As a relatively untapped era (barring maybe Barry Hilton, the League of Augsburg and co.), the religious politicking of Anglo-European governments is a prime environment for tabletop action.

FIGURES

PAINTING, FLAGS, AND ARMAMENTS

TANK BANZAI • Throughout the island-hopping campaign across the Pacific, the Japanese had put up a furious resistance. However, what was noticeably absent was any significant use of armour. That was to change with the invasion of the Mariana Islands. On 15 June 1944, the men of Lieutenant Colonel William K. Jones’ 1st Battalion, 6th Marines, came ashore on Saipan, on the extreme left flank of the invasion force. Jones led his men inland beyond the beaches, to where the bulk of enemy forces were entrenched, passing a radio station with its tall tower not far from the beach.

ORDER OF BATTLE

ADAPTING TO OTHER RULESETS

FREEDOM OR DEATH • Greece’s long and vibrant history spans millennia, dating from the earliest Bronze Age kingdoms and polis city-states, to conquest by successive empires, the struggle for independence against the Ottomans, and finally occupation by Nazi Germany.

THE BATTLE (NEARLY) NOT FOUGHT • To claim that Greek city states in the early Archaic period didn’t tend to get along brilliantly does not court much controversy. In a similar vein, it’s safe to assume that most people reading this magazine are used to the frustrations of scant and inconsistent records of battles during this age, with an entertaining but often unhelpful blend of epic poems, legends, and fragmented accounts.

CARVING UP AN EMPIRE • After becoming head of the Catholic Church in 1198 AD, Pope Innocent III issued the Post miserabile bull: a call for a crusade to retake Jerusalem from the control of the Ayyubid Sultanate and restore the Crusader States of the Levant. Little did anyone realise that his call to arms against the Infidel, which became known as the Fourth Crusade, would instead lead to the carving up of the Byzantine Empire between the crusaders and the Venetians.

ADAPTING...