It’s Sunday, so what better day to post pics of my newly painted Renedra church?  Like the ramshackle barn I posted earlier in the week, this is a plastic kitset in 1/56th scale.

I didn’t want the harshness of my usual black undercoat on the white weatherboards, so first painted the walls grey.  Then I dry-brushed on the white.

However, model it proved quite difficult to get a good finish on the walls because of the large surface area.  I used my biggest brush, but that didn’t stop a streaky, patchy look.  When I tried correcting this with more dry-brushing, I ended up obscuring the underside edges of the planks on which I had wished to leave the grey undercoat showing.

So the church has a rather streaky paint-job.  But perhaps that’s more realistic anyway, depicting as it does a colonial whitewashed church that has stood through a few harsh antipodean seasons.

This church is going to serve from my New Zealand wars project.  For example, although not absolutely accurate in architectural design,  it would be perfect for  a game based round this real life scenario: 

The Fight at Pukekohe East Church

Excerpt from FRONTIER – The Battle for the North Island of New Zealand 1860-1872

by Peter Maxwell

The Presbyterian church at Pukekohe East had been consecrated six months earlier. It stands in a clearing in the bush at the edge of a flat-topped ridge. Immediately behind the building the land drops away steeply for several hundred feet, offering a prospect across rolling country to the summit of Pukekohe hill, four miles distant to the south-west.

Each day the ridgetop clearing grows larger as trees are felled and trimmed and the logs added to the wall. By early September the clearing extends to perhaps an acre but it is still littered with branches and tree stumps. The church is garrisoned by seventeen men of the Forest Rifle Volunteers, Sergeant Perry in command. Each man is armed with an Enfield with fixed bayonet, and has the makings for sixty cartridges.

A section of the garrison continues the work of tree felling while others deepen the trench and throw the dirt hack against the logs – it is warm work and the pace is unhurried. Each morning fires are lit to consume the brush and boil the billies. They burn until dusk, sending columns of smoke above the treetops. At times the smoke thickens and drifts into the bush, putting the occasional wood pigeon to flight. The settler/soldiers toiI with axe and spade – their rifles are stacked vertically in stands of three, never more than a few paces distant. Perry has ordered rifle slits to be cut into the wall, a tedious job involving the hewing of matching half slots in separate logs, then the careful stacking of them to ensure that the holes align.

At times, Lieutenant Lusk rides by on his routine patrols through the Pukekohe area. The Lieutenant regards the church’s defences with a critical eye – the rifle slits he approves of, but the walls are too low. He would prefer them shoulder height. He orders two more rows of logs to be added and the ditch deepened further.

At dawn on Sunday morning the 13th of September after a night voyage downriver three canoes each carrying between sixty and seventy Waikato warriors are beached near Tuakau. The canoes are dragged up from the bank to e concealed in the bush for the river is now regularly patrolled by British craft. The raiders are met by warriors whose tribe has just been evicted from its land.  They guide the newcomers to the Alexandra Redoubt but there is no real battle plan – the fort is fired upon from the bush edge. The garrison returns the fire. An hour long gunfight ensues which produces few casualties for both parties are well protected behind timber. Eventually the raiders draw off to the north-east, crossing the slopes Pukekohe hill in search of easier pickings.

The raiders spend Sunday night in the bush but they are on the move again at first light. By 8am they have silently ringed the Pukekohe East church. The garrison is slowly coming to life, the fires have been rekindled and a cooked breakfast is underway.

The men of the working party are unaware that almost 200 men surround them. The annihilation of the garrison is seconds away – a coordinated charge will overwhelm them. Then a single shot rings across the clearing. Perhaps a settler saw a movement at the bush edge and loosed his Enfield at it – perhaps an attacker stumbled and triggered his gun by accident.

Breakfast is abandoned. The settlers snatch their rifles and scramble back over the wall. For those critical few seconds the attackers are non-plussed. The pakehas have vanished as quickly as rabbits down a burrow. Nobody moves. Then a row of bayonets slides out through the rifle slits. “Wait for the order..” Perry commands “..then fire independently.”

The assault comes in a rush. “Wait until I shoot…” Perry calls again. At thirty yards his Enfield cracks and the first warrior drops. The log wall is lit with individual flashes. The warriors shoot directly at the stacked trunks, their shotgun balls thudding into the timber – scattering chips of bark. The first wave of attackers surges up to the ditch, but men are falling.

There is something wrong, some lack of will. Two hundred against seventeen, yet the attack falters. There is over excitement, some type of confusion, of ill discipline. Warriors, whether in bravado or light headedness, stoop to gather up the breakfasts abandoned by the settlers. They are no more than fifteen paces from the defenders’ rifle muzzles. Point blank. Three are immediately shot down. Others throw themselves at the wall but they are bayoneted about the head and shoulders as they attempt to climb. The settlers are fighting for their lives, focused on loading and shooting, but the attackers seem to be uncertain of their goal – they lack decisiveness.

In minutes the assault has failed. The warriors fall back to take cover behind the tree stumps. They have suffered nearly twenty casualties with nothing to show for it. Sporadic gunfire continues, but Perry has his men controlled. He moves along the wall counselling each in turn. Take your time he instructs. “Aim your shots, don’t waste them.”

In the next half hour fifteen more warriors are shot dead.

A woman, Rangi-rumaki, shotgun in hand, a bandolier of cartridges around her waist, exhorts the warriors to attack again. She exposes herself recklessly to fire but there is no second charge.

Now a curious event occurs. Unseen by the defenders a white wood pigeon swoops across the clearing to land on the church roof. A symbol – the Maori are convinced that the bird has come to protect the pakeha. A chief orders that it be killed. A hailstorm of fire straddles the pigeon – the church roof is sieved, splinters of match lining shower down inside but the bird remains unharmed. It struts along the ridgeline pursued by shot. The defenders are mystified – they can only guess at why, despite the closeness of the battle, their enemies’ gun barrels are angled skywards.

But while the attackers concentrate on killing the bird the settlers concentrate on killing them. Joseph Scott and James Easton, holding the right front of the stockade, take the largest toll. The attackers’ casualty list climbs steadily into the thirties.

Cowan [an earlier historian] reported: ‘Hour after hour the firing continued in the smoke-filled clearing. The powder grimed garrison, with smarting eyes and parched throats, stuck manfully to their posts, firing with care for their ammunition was running short..’

At 1pm the first reinforcements arrived. Lieutenant Grierson and 32 militiamen had run across country from Ramarama. They bellied up through the bush, loosed a fusillade at the nearest warriors then sprinted across the clearing under fire to scramble over the wall. Once the reinforcements regained their breath and reloaded the gunfight intensified.

In 1920 Cowan interviewed a veteran of the battle, Te Huia Raureti, at his home on the Puniu river. By mid afternoon Huia told him, the men of his raiding party had suffered sixty casualties, forty of whom were dead. (Cowan I – V. 282)

But the fight was not yet over. There were still more than 100 warriors surrounding the church, and still shooting. A second detachment of militia arrived. Rather than making a run for the building they went to ground along the bush edge. The fighting was close for one man, shot in the leg, was tomahawked where he lay. The militiamen crouched behind stumps and fallen logs, adding their fire power to the defence. The attackers reacted by shifting their positions, spreading out into a semi-circle through the bush on the opposite side of the clearing.

At 4 o’clock, after being summoned by civilians who had heard the distant shooting and ridden for help, 150 British soldiers stormed into the clearing. They had marched from the new Tuakau redoubt seven miles to the south-west. During this final assault three British soldiers were killed outright and eight wounded, but their charge was carried.

The Forest Rifles lay their Enfields down. They have been on their feet shooting for eight hours. Between them they have fired over 1000 rounds, each load ram-rodded home from the muzzle; powder charge, patch and ball. Not a single man has been touched by a bullet. Their church walls are punctured by a frieze of holes at head height, just above the level of the logs, leaking powdered gravel. Inside, the building is a shambles of broken glass and splinters. Dust motes circle in the shafts of light slanting down from the bul]et holes in the ceiling.

Frontier may be ordered direct from Peter Maxwell, RD 2, Waihi 3682, New Zealand.

Email: nzguns@clear.net.nz

I chanced upon the above picture on the Empress Miniatures website today.  Whilst modern warfare is not my chosen wargaming period, I found this an intriguing miniature.

My fellow New Zealand readers will probably recognise this figure straight away as Corporal Willie Apiata VC, right down to the stalwart pose and steely gaze from the famous news-photo.  

Photo from: http://static.stuff.co.nz/1264718977/768/3251768.jpg

I had tons of fun tonight painting the Renadra barn to look unpainted.  And I’m really pleased with the way it has turned out.  Quite sharp, as one might say …

The Renedra ramshackle barn is a plastic kit aimed for use with 28mm figures. It only has a very few pieces, and so goes together very easily.

But it is the painting – er, un-painting – that is the most fun.   This is my recipe for painting something to look like it hasn’t seen a lick of paint for some years:

1. Undercoat with a flat black spraypaint.
2. Apply a heavy dry-brush of medium grey student’s acrylic paint all over the whole model.
3. Wash random boards and tiles with a range of different ink/wash colours (I used four inks: sepia, devlan mud, black and even some red ink).
4. Go round all edges of door frames, barge boards, windows etc with devlan mud ink to give an impression of shadows.
5. Wash the entire roof with devlan mud ink to pick out the tiles.
6. Paint in the rusty hinges, hanging ropes and other details. 
7. Cover everything (walls, doors, roof … the lot) with a light white dry wash.
8. Go over the roof tiles again with a light green dry brush.

And that’s it.  Apart from the black spraypaint, which I left to dry for a whole day, the rest took me only about an hour!

This photo shows my entire 18th century Austrian army.  Yep, these three generals are my Austrian army – all of it!  There is not one solitary Austrian infantryman or cavalry trooper amongst my miniature armies for them to command. Yet I have these three – so what’s the story?  

Why I bought these Minden Miniatures figures, I’m not entirely sure.  Whilst my ‘Barryat of Lyndonia‘ imagi-nation army is fictional, it is still based on the movie Barry Lyndon, and that movie isn’t exactly known for containing Austrians.  British, yes – French and Prussians too.  But Austrians, nary a one.

The answer is that Minden Miniatures don’t make any French generals (yet, I hope!).  They make a lovely set of Prussian general staff, which I’ve featured in an earlier post.  But they have no leaders for their French range to oppose the Prussians – only Austrians.   So, that means if I want some leadership on hand should I wish to split my Barryat army into two halves to fight each other for a game, Austrian generals it’ll have to be.

Of course, I could’ve gone for another maker, of whom plenty make French general staff figures.  But Minden Miniatures are so individual, being true 1/56th scale replicas of the human anatomical proportions, rather than the more caricatured (albeit charming) look of most other 28mm/30mm ranges.

Don’t get me wrong, I love other makes – after all, I own and treasure entire armies of them.  But for me, no other makers’ figures match in with Minden figures.  So for this particular part of my collection, it has to all be Minden or nothing.

So, there it is.

Now, imagine some strains of Mozart in the background, and meet my Austrian A-team:

• General Franz Leopold Nádasdy
• Field-Marshal Prince Charles of Lorraine
• General Gideon Ernst Loudon

Reblogged from The Woolshed Wargamer:

• 

The St. Helena medal was the first French campaign medal issued. It was instituted in 1857 by Emperor Napoleon III to commemorate the campaigns of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Some four hundred thousand were struck and issued to those who had served under Napoleon I.

The medal is of irregular shape, made of bronze. It is a medallion surrounded by a laurel wreath, tied at the bottom.

Read more… 213 more words

A military parade of the entire army of my ‘imagi-nation’, the Barryat of Lyndonia, has been long overdue.  But today a combination of being on childcare duty at home whilst my wife works, and some lovely autumn light for picture-taking, inspired me to set out all the 1/56th scale Minden Minatures figures I’ve painted so far.

To fill in those who don’t know about the Barrayat of Lyndonia (ie nearly everybody in the world), it is an imaginary nation – or ‘imagi-nation’ – I’ve created for my wargaming army, based on the Stanley Kubrick movie, Barry Lyndon.  

The Barryat does not recruit its own army, but instead contracts regiments from other states in Europe – which provides the backstory to allow me to mix and match whatever real-life nations’ units I wish.

Instead of pursuing historical accuracy when painting my figures, I’ve attempted as much as I can to depict my soldiers as they appear in the movie, historical inaccuracies and all.  Therefore when some expert in military history tells me that the turn-backs on my Prussians should  be red, not white, or that they can’t possibly have those three flags together in one regiment, I can point out my figures aren’t representing real Prussians, but rather Kubrick’s take on them.  

So, for your delectation, on with the photos of the military review (don’t forget to click on the pics to see them in their full glory):

The guests of honour are some famous personalities from nearby real-life countries, including the Prussian King Frederick the Great and the Austrian Prince Charles of Lorraine.   Also present are a number of the local gentry and their ladies.

A long line of red emerges from the trees, as Gale’s Regiment of Foot, a fictional regiment from the movie, approaches the parade ground.  By the way, I think that the above picture is especially cool when clicked on to bring it up to full size.

After having marched onto the parade ground in line, they’ve now deployed into column of companies (my infantry regiments have three companies per regiment). Headed by Lt Colonel Charles Gale, the officers include the Irish adventurer Captain Grogan, the foppish Lieutenant Jonathon Fakenham and his ‘particular friend’ Lieutenant Freddie, whose surname is not disclosed in the movie.

The movie depicts the drummers wearing tricornes instead of mitre caps, but I’ve kept to the latter because I like their mitres so much – and because that is the way the Minden drummers come.

In the movie, the regiment has no grenadiers, but I have added these, again simply because I like their colourful and intricate mitres so much – and what better reason could there be than that?!  They were tricky to paint, but I think the final effect is worth the effort, and they’re my favourite figures in the whole army.

Somewhere in the ranks will be Private  Redmond Barry, the main character in Barry Lyndon.  He joined Gale’s Regiment of Foot after being tricked into a duel back home in Ireland. Captain Grogan has now taken young Barry under his wing, and Lieutenants Jonathon and Freddie will later provide him with an intriguing opportunity for Barry to improve his status in life (you’ll need to see the movie to find out exactly how this happens!).

Following Gale’s Regiment of Foot,  the Régiment de Royal-Cravates enters the field.  In the movie, this is the French regiment that Barry faces in his first taste of battle, “only a skirmish against a rearguard of Frenchmen who occupied an orchard beside a road down which the English main force wish to pass”.  The narrator in the movie goes on to say that though this encounter is not recorded in any history book, it was memorable enough for those who took part.  

The drummers in their royal livery were tricky to paint, with all that red and white lace.  But I’m pleased how they came out in the end.

Whilst un-named in the movie, in the original 1844 William Makepeace Thackeray novel, the French regiment that Barry marches against is called the Régiment de Royal-Cravates, so that is who they are in the Barrayat of Lyndonia.

The Barryat of Lyndonia’s French regiment replicates the incorrect facings and flags as per the movie.  The flags are actually those of two real French regiments, the Grenadiers Royaux and the Régiment de Flandre, yet the uniform facing colours are incorrect for both.

The last foot battalion onto the parade ground is the Kubrick Infanterie Regiment, led by Captain Potzdorf on his distinctive white horse.  The movie doesn’t name this Prussian regiment, which Barry is forced to join after being captured as a deserter.  So in the Barryat army it is named in honour of the movie’s famous director, Stanley Kubrick.  I hope he looks down on this with approval! 

OK, so the movie doesn’t have any grenadiers in mitre caps.  But, like Gale’s Regiment of Foot, I really wanted some of those smart-looking guys, so I’ve conjectured how Kubrick would have shown them, had he wanted to.  Basically, they’re the same as his somewhat inaccurate Prussian musketeers, but wearing mitre caps instead of tricornes.

 The movie’s inaccuracies are all faithfully recreated!  The soldiers’ coats have the wrong coloured turnbacks, they wear incorrectly coloured straps, and carry mismatched flags (the orange, black and white flags in the movie are actually from three different real-life Prussian regiments).

The sound of jingling bridles and trotting hooves announce the arrival of the only cavalry regiment in the Lyndonian army, the  Truchseß Dragoons. This regiment is the first unit that veers away from the movie.  While there were some small numbers of rather plainly-dressed Prussian cavalrymen in some scenes in Barry Lyndon, I went for the real-life Prussian Truchseß Dragoons merely because of their splendid light blue and pink uniforms.  Another perfectly good reason!

In the finale, the whole army masses behind the two guns of the Barryat of Lyndonia army as they prepare to fire a salute.  The French gun in the foreground is modelled on one that appears briefly in the  movie.

The gunners in the movie wear the standard white infantry coats rather than the blue and red French artillery uniforms.  This is actually correct, because small battalion guns such as these were manned by men assigned from the regiment, not Royal Artillery gunners.  I’ve done the same with the British gun, manning it with crew assigned from Gale’s Regiment of Foot.

The visiting Prussian king, Frederick the Great, is so impressed with the turnout of the Barryat of Lyndonia army that he has instructed his hussar general, von Zeithen, to write a note of congratulations, which the latter is now handing to a courier to convey post-haste to the Lyndonian palace.

Juicy pics of exquisite scenery feature in this latest of my resurrected postings  from the old Kapiti Fusiliers website.  Originally posted on May 2008, this photo-article describes a describes my visit to the Pendon Museum of Miniature Landscape and Transport during a trip to the United Kingdom.  Don’t forget to click on the photos – I’ve made them quite big so you can get the full effect! 

Like many wargamers, I’ve always had a fascination with the hobby of railway modelling. As a child, I was presented with a beautiful book of photos of model railways from round the world. I recall being particularly impressed with the pictures of a layout of exquisite Lilliputian cottages known as Pendon. During my trips to the UK in the late 1970s and 80s, I tried to visit Pendon, but for some reason I never succeeeded in getting there.

For decades I never gave Pendon much more thought, until this year when my family and I went to stay with my sister-in-law in Oxfordshire for a week. I was idly browsing through a local map of their district, when the name ‘Pendon Museum’ jumped out at me. “Oh, that’s in Long Wittenham, just a few minutes down the road,” I was told.

So, a childhood dream came true when we drove into a pretty little village and parked outside a rather modern structure housing this famous layout. I dreaded that my family, who had also come along, would quickly get bored and want to pull me away to other sightseeing, but fortunately this turned out to be a magical experience that entranced all of us for hours.

When Roye England moved to the Vale of the White Horse during the 1930s, he was so concerned at the changes happening in the local landscape that he conceived the idea of preserving it in miniature. The result is a huge layout (some 2000 square feet) that depicts an imaginary tract of the Vale in 1:76 scale, with villages, farms, quiet lanes, a railway and all the other features of the 1930s English countryside.

Although the model was begun in the 1930s, and the museum itself established in 1954, the project is nowhere near finished. Each structure or piece of terrain is a mammoth project, involving many, many hours.

Of course, from a wargamer’s perspective, this model of an idyllic sunny summer afternoon in the mid-20th century Vale only lacks one thing: a shower of miniature German paratroopers dropping in on some stalwart British Home Guardsmen!

The village of Pendon Parva. The yellow building on the right is the Waggon and Horses Inn, finished by Roye England in 1936, the first model in the layout. Note: click on this and the other pictures in this article to enlarge them.

This house is known as “77″, and is a replica of a real building in South Marston. Like the other buildings in Pendon, it is made out of cardboard to a scale of 4mm to the foot.

This deceptively simple model of a Victorian cottage shows the delicately handpainted brickwork that is a feature of the Pendon models. Each brick, only 1mm high by 3mm long, is embossed into the cardboard and then individually painted with watercolours.

The farmyard at Bradbury Farm. I love the intricate cart models.

The thatch on the roofs of many of the Pendon models is painstakingly recreated using small bundles of plumber’s hemp. Every flower in the garden is individually modelled.

A chalky junction in the quiet village. Doesn’t it just need a jeep and a motorcyle courier, with the drivers looking at a map to see where they are, to complete the scene?!

A lane winds off into the distance. Note the vegetable garden – it is said that the smallest model in the layout is a moth on one of the cabbages.

A GWR delivery truck is reflected in the quiet waters at Upper Mill. And, yes, most of the trees being made for the layout these days are based on Woodland Scenics.

You can visit www.pendonmuseum.com to find out more about this wonderful museum.

Just to prove I haven’t been doing absolutely nothing of late, here is a quick progress shot on some general staff figures I’ve been (verrrry slowly) painting.

These are some more of the fabulous Minden Miniatures range of 28mm figures, depicting some of the real-life military leaders from 18th century Prussia and Austria.

On the left are the two Austrians –  Field Marshall Prince Charles of Lorraine and General von Loudon, in their spiffy white and gold uniforms with acres of gold rococo trim.

On the right are their Prussian opponents, in somewhat more muted uniforms – Major-General von Seydlitz and (most recognisable of all) King Frederick II ‘the Great’.

I now only have a couple of other staff figures from these two sets to finish painting, and then that is it – I’ll have reached the bottom of my lead mountain!  (For those visitors to this blog who aren’t wargamers, ‘lead mountain’ is the common nickname for the backlog of figures waiting to be painted, in many cases quite huge.)

True, I do still have a box of various miscellaneous bare-metal figures stashed away, but none of them are particularly required for any project.  And so with no desire on my part to get them done, they’ll no doubt languish forever in the bottom of my cupboard.

So, what now?  Well, to keep me from the reputed consequence for a wargamer getting to the bottom of his lead mountain (ie dying), I do currently have two Renadra plastic buildings on their way from the UK for my colonial New Zealand Wars armies.  These are their brand new ramshackle barn kit (isn’t “brand new ramshackle” an oxymoron?) and their wooden church.  OK, not lead, I know – but they’re still wargaming projects, so hopefully should count …

After that?  Well, truth to tell, I have lost my painting mojo so much of late that, truly, I am not really keen to start anything else at all.  I’m actually enjoying life without feeling the pressure of a painting queue.  

Plus in recent years I don’t feel I’ve been painting as well as I used to.  I’m not sure why – maybe aging eyes?  But overall I don’t feel as satisfied with my painting results as I used to.

Hmmm, does that mean I’m coming to the end of my tenure in the hobby?  After all, the other hobbies I’ve had during my life have generally lasted ten years before I got itchy feet – and I’ve been wargaming several years beyond a decade now.  

Anyway, let’s see what happens.  Maybe Empress Miniatures might come out with another release of figures for their superb New Zealand Wars range, and that’ll probably save me …  

I’ve just found out that an old police colleague of mine has written a novel set in the Indian Mutiny and the New Zealand Wars.  Ken Brewer’s book The Enfield Conspiracy is available on Amazon here:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Enfield-Conspiracy-Ken-Brewer/dp/1592324002

I haven’t read the book yet (after all, I only found out about it a couple of hours ago!).  But I’ll be ordering it, as it covers a military period I’m interested in.  

This novel is apparently going to lead on to sequels in which the hero eventually becomes a New Zealand policeman.  I think a colonial whodunnit series based on real history will be terrific.    

During the 1980s, when the New Zealand Police was celebrating its centenary, Ken and I both wrote non-fiction books on the history of our respective police districts.  In today’s belt-tightening financial climate, it is hard to believe that serving police officers were once given time to research and write books!

We were both members of the small police contingent who took part in the Treaty of Waitangi reenactment back in 1990.  So we spent quite some time together immersed in New Zealand history, as seen in the pic below (that’s Ken on the far right, and me on the far left – click to enlarge the picture).

I haven’t seen Ken for some years, so hope to renew acquaintanceship with him, now that I see our common interest in history has progressed in his case to novel-writing.   This is something I dearly would have loved to do myself, though I don’t think I’m enough of a natural story-teller.

New Zealand, seen by 19th century Europeans as an idyllic land on the far side of the world, was not immune to the scourge of war during the colonial period. This new Osprey Men-at-Arms book describes the fighting that took place between 1820 and 1872 in a series of wars between various participants.

The battles up to the 1840s were mainly inter-tribal, but the European influence of the musket changed the way indigenous Māori had fought each other for centuries prior. This also led to major innovations in the design of their traditional fortified villages (or ‘pa’), which were later to give the British some rather bloody noses.

The ever-increasing encroachment by settlers seeking land brought some Māori tribes into conflict with the British military, though others fought alongside imperial troops. On the British side, the 1840s ‘Flagstaff War’ in the far north was fought by red shell-jacketed soldiers, whilst by the 1860s the troops, now having discarded their traditional red coats for blue jumpers, were engaged in a series of small wars throughout the North Island.

Eventually the British regular troops were withdrawn, leaving the ongoing fighting to colonial New Zealand troops such as the famed Forest Rangers. Ironically, the final stages were fought mainly by Māori soldiers of the Armed Constabulary against Māori warriors.

Ian Knight is a well-known expert on colonial wars, and has long been interested in the New Zealand Wars (for example, I recently stumbled across his 1980 “Fire in the Fern” series in Military Modelling). His writing style is engaging and tells the complex stories of the wars in a logical manner.

Ian relates a brief history of the wars, and then goes on to describe the Māori warriors who fought on both sides, the British troops, and finally the colonial New Zealand troops.

The illustrations by Italian artist Raffaele Ruggeri really bring this intriguing series of conflicts to life. I’m particularly impressed with the way he has captured the look of the Māori warriors – their facial features are stunningly lifelike. He has also nicely caught the rather unconventional uniforms of the colonial troops, for example the shawls often worn instead of trousers.

I’m no expert on the New Zealand Wars, despite wargaming the period. So I am not well-placed to comment on the accuracy or otherwise of this book. However, a chap I know who is very much an expert has given it the once-over, and although he found a number of mainly minor discrepancies, he has stated that “overall, within the constraints of the Osprey MAA format, it is a good summary”.

My own view is that this book is indeed an excellent summary, breaking the complex story into a number of easily read episodes that fit together to paint the whole picture.

The description of the weapons and uniforms of the participants is particularly interesting, especially as many of these were unique to New Zealand.  And Ruggeri’s illustrations are simply the best I’ve ever seen of soldiers of these wars.

When you also look at the recent Ospreys by my friend Wayne Stack on New Zealand troops in World War I and World War II, finally this small country’s colourful military history is making it into the Osprey annals!

So I am happy to thoroughly recommend this book to anyone who wants to know a bit more about these odd colonial wars that occurred in this far-flung outpost of the British Empire.

It also provides exactly the information any wargamer would need to refight the New Zealand Wars, and even more so with Empress Miniatures’ recent wonderful  ranges of 28mm figures for the 1840s conflicts.