March Madness

Just picked up the final hardcover edition of the six volume series from Arms and Armour Press (for less than 1/3 of the price I had considered spending for it!).

Armour camouflage & markings North Africa 1940-1943
By George Bradford

Hard Cover, Published 1974 by Arms and Armour Press, 98 pages, includes many black and white photos and colour illustrations.
Over 100 superb colour profiles and views of tanks, and 90 black and white photos illustrate this detailed reference work. Described and pictured are the camouflage & markings of the armoured vehicles that fought in North Africa from the first Italian campaigns and the German advance to El Alamein to the final Allied victories that drove the Axis into the sea.

The contents are: comparative colour swatches; Italian armour camouflage & markings 1940-43; British armour camouflage & markings 1940-43; the birth of the DAK; German armour camouflage & markings 1941-43; American armour camouflage & markings 1942-43.

So now I have hardcovers of Panzer Colours; Blitzkrieg; British Tank Markings and Names; The Eastern Front; D-Day to Berlin and now North Africa to go laong with the various Histoire and Starmer titles. It’s only taken me 25 years to get hold of all six but better late than never.

OMG! LOLZ! Pete's playing something to do with Kursk! Hell has officially frozen over.

Hell’s Bridgehead: Clash along the Psel River. July 1943It had to happen, after years of avoiding Kursk as a subject to bother with (overrun as it is with the SS fanboys), I’ve finally bitten the bullet and grabbed Critical Hit’s Hell’s Bridgehead module and volume 6/4 that focuses on it. I think I may well have just put the game on the shelf as a conversation piece and not even thought about playing it until I actually read the designer’s notes and most importantly Kurt Martin’s irreverent and amusing piece on the playtest. Sure it was written back in 2002 but it’s the type of off the wall commentary style that works for me, and I love the reference to the “Kursk Blues Cafe”. I can see why HB has garnered so much praise and positive feedback and I’m glad I made the decision to buy it and the relevant issue. The best thing is that what map and rules errata has been corrected in the 2nd Edition and the new map style is ver’ pretty indeed:

The scenarios are a good mix, not too small, not too big with at least three proper CGs. Plus there are the scenarios in the magazine that use the K2 map which is almost as pretty (no pic of K2 sorry). There’s so much material here for great ASL games (especially once I look at playing some of the Schelling mini-CGs from the ASL journal on different aspects of Kursk. Thankfully I doubt I’ll be spending gratuitous amounts on supplementary reading (mostly the KOSAVE , Glantz and Zetterling books) but I think I’ve found the necessary inspiration to actually do that Mid war Soviet army for Flames that I’ve been holding off on. Not sure I really want to build an army that has anything to do with Totenkopf or Das Reich however.

Lots of reading in 6/4 to take note of and some interesting additional scenarios outside the focus on Kursk – including a look at the Japanese airborne assault on Palembang airfield. Now to sort through all the existing errata and check 7/3 for additional material using the Kursk maps or even Tigers to the Front. The K2 mapsheet could well be used as the basis for some more non-HASL designs.

I’m glad in a way I took such a long time to look at CH stuff again – I’d lost the most severe of the negative pre-conceptions and so I’ve been very pleased with the advances in presentation and general feel. I may have to invest in a few destroyed tiggers and panthers for the tabletop anyway.

P-J