BORDERS OF BLOOD

◗ caliverbooks.com ◗ £19.50

Up until this morning, I will confess that the Paraguayan War of 1864-1870 is a slice of history of which I was fairly ignorant. However Caliver Books have just published an A4, softback, full colour ruleset written by Victor Barone – a gamer from Bazil – and that goes a long way to fixing that problem.

The book is a tad over 60 pages and is backed by three pages of QR sheets plus some Action Cards (which you’ll need to scan and print) and other useful items. The game is written for use with any size of figures from 6mm to 28mm but is designed for battalion level play. Rules cover a little over thirty pages and use those Action Cards I mentioned in conjunction with what it names ‘Action Dice’ – lots of d6 (one per unit as far as I can tell on a quick read through) which are rolled and then distributed by the player to execute commands for their forces. Those d6 dice are used again as Attack Dice for the various combat types (melee, artillery etc) where their number is largely increased to six per battalion (with various extras and so forth determined by circumstances) and employed as a ‘dice pool’.

The book contains army lists and organisation charts for the forces involved (Brazilian, Argentine, Paraguayan and Uruguayan) plus two scenarios: The First Battle of Tuiuti, and The Battle of Curupaiti. The book is well laid out with clear text with the occasional piece of art for art’s sake, which is nice. There’s also some generally good photography to get the gaming juices flowing and some very useful Painting Guides from the collection of the which will be invaluable on the ‘getting painted models on the table’ front.