15 September 2014

Review: Solo Wargaming Guide

Solo Wargaming Guide by William Silvester

I had this delivered back in July when I first made the move from Australia - thanks Amazon!  Lets just say I've spent a bit with them since then.  Why don't they have a network back home? But I digress...

This book is very easy to read to carves up the genre into a few different categories by chapters. These include:
  • Land Campaigns
  • Sea Campaigns
  • Personalising the Campaign
  • SF & Fantasy
  • Tactical level gaming: weather, concealment, ambushes and minefields
  • Air Games
  • Solo Boardgames

Each section is very easy to read with a combination of styles - description, narrative and examples.  The author switches between the styles frequently which can be a little confusing at times, but the flow is logical and it all makes sense.

Somewhat frustratingly, and very much in the style of early Featherstone works, Silvester presents a campaign or idea in detail for a particular genre (say Napoleonic) and then gives a couple of barely useful ideas on how to use them in another period like WW2.

Overall, while I found the content to be of interest, I didn't find any of the a revelation.  Much of the material has been circulated before either in magazines or the volumes by el supremo Donald Featherstone, and this is more of a collation in 116 pages.  If you don't have anything similar already on your shelves, then it might be worthwhile.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1938270134/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1



2 comments:

  1. Bought the pdf, and I have to agree, nothing ground breaking here but a nice place to put a lot of ideas in sequence, now for us both to put it to use.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I second the above. I enjoyed the read. Well put together with some neat ideas. Using the land campaign ideas are on my 'to do' list. Good review.

    ReplyDelete