Wargames Terrain and Buildings: WWI Trench Systems is one of Casemate Publishers latest offerings. Douglas Hardy, an avid war gamer, has delivered a wonderful soft cover tome on all things related to WWI trenches. After a brief introduction Mister Hardy discusses the trench system employed by Britain, France, and Germany during the Great War.

After some introduction the author goes on to discuss, in some detail, the ins and outs of designing and building your own table top trench warfare gaming area. The focus of this volume is on war gaming but the techniques he discusses are just as applicable to any diorama or vignette builder. [Fun Fact: British philosophy toward trench warfare was to use them as an offense starting point whereas the German focus viewed trenches from a defensive perspective.]

The book is divided into six chapters that focus on the specifics of those areas germane to fashioning a tabletop wargaming landscape. Those chapters are:

Value Gear has produced a complete line of stowage items that are useful for adding those finishing touches to armor projects or dioramas of all types. This set contains 25 cast resin stowage items for armored vehicles, although some of these items could also be useful in aircraft, sci-fi, or automotive dioramas.

There is a lot of variety here. This assortment includes backpacks, bedrolls, duffle bags, toolboxes, cardboard boxes, equipment bags, and sleeping cots. The vendor’s website claims that all 25 items are unique. That may indeed be true, but the six backpacks supplied seem to be of two types, with only subtle differences among them. The resin is a neutral, medium-dark gray color. The surfaces are slightly textured, again with variability. The sculpting of these parts is excellent, with the appropriate creases, straps, buckles, and in some cases, a little wear and tear.

The Vietnam War, in my opinion, is not covered as well as many other conflicts both in the written word and in some cases modeling too. Arrigo Velicogna covers one of the parts of the war not talked about frequently and that is Operation Attleboro. This operation was not well detailed until recently and as late as 2018, it was poorly covered. The time frame involved is November 2, 1966 through November 23, 1966. These three weeks are analyzed thoroughly.

The Warsaw Uprisings 1943-1944 is a photographic essay by Ian Baxter, consisting of hundreds of black and white photos and accompanying text. This is not merely a military book, but an indictment of the Nazi regime and its military that carried out large scale, institutionalized genocide between 1939 and 1945. The searing and horrific images tell the story of two uprisings against the Nazis in Warsaw, Poland: the first is the 1943 Jewish ghetto uprising, the ghetto's destruction by the Nazis and the liquidation of the remaining community (60,000). The second is the story of the 1944 Polish Home Army uprising which resulted in the 200,000 civilian deaths and the wholesale demolition of Warsaw, as the Soviet Army viewed the carnage across the Vistula river.

In the last year or so I have been able to try out the Ammo by Mig Jimenez paints and I’m very well impressed with them. They are sturdy and durable, nothing like other acrylic paints I have used before. When I had the opportunity to review another set of them, I jumped on it, as these paints are among the best acrylics I’ve ever used.

This particular set A.mig-7242, Pucara FAA includes six 17-ml eye-dropper style containers of paint for

• A.MIG-0025 FS33446 US MODERN VEHICLES
• A.MIG-0244 DUCK EGG GREEN (BS216)
• A.MIG-0271 FS35450 AIR SUPERIORITY BLUE
• A.MIG-0023 PROTECTIVE GREEN
• A.MIG-0064 EARTH BROWN
• A.MIG-0263 IJN MEDIUM GREY

As you can see from the list of colors, most of the paints in this set (if not all of them) are from other sets and found to be a close match to the Pucara colors used in the Fuerza Aerea Argentina (FAA).