DEFENCE IN DEPTH

With the latest figure and rules reviews.

◗ amberley-books.com ◗ £15.99

If you play wargames set at any period over the last century at some point you may well have to build the odd AFV. The hobby press sometimes tends to concentrate on larger 1/35th scale models for collecting and dioramas and – while some of us do wargame in those scales – many do not. Tom Cole’s book covers getting the best from military vehicles (okay, mostly tanks!) in scales from 1/300 through 1/72 and 1/56th to 1/35th and even up to 1/6th are at least mentioned.

The layout and approach to this work is straight forward: being somewhat larger than A5 but sub A4, this 100 page full colour softback goes into detail about model kit history and manufacturers. The author concentrates on the kits from Airfix and Matchbox and looks at the early imports from Japan, in the form of Fujimi and Nitto, and the Esci. After some classic practical modelling tips and a tool run down, there’s a section of super detailing models and painting and finishing (using lots of Tamiya and an airbrush for the most part). Periods covered are WWI, Interwar, WWII and Modern though the latter seems a little stuck in the Cold War (though I guess there’s few models of the like of a T14 Armata around in any scale).

It’s a good book full of shots of – mostly – diorama level models though all gamers can learn something from the techniques employed and apply them to their 1/72nd or 15mm collections. If I had one gripe it’s that the front cover illustration is not the best one in the book: many better ones from the contents could have been chosen!