In Parenthesis is a site that offers free ebooks with Enlgish translations of literature from around the world. Much of it should be of interest to wargamers. There’s Old Norse, Arthurian, Chinese Drama, Medieval Canadian, Medieval Castilian, Medieval Catalan, Middle Dutch, Middle English, Old English, Ethiopian, Middle French, Old French, Medieval German, Gothic, Greek, Medieval Irish, Medieval Italian, Medieval latin, Japanese, Malayan, Peruvian, Medieval Russian and so on.
The Redjak site has an interesting concept for tracking the status of figures and units during a game: he attaches vertical wires to the bases and slides colored beads on as indicators. Take a look at the pictures.
The UK Battlefields Trust has an extremely interesting site with information, maps, ground and air photos of English battlefields from the Celtic and Roman periods through the Stuart uprisings.
Displaying game rules information on a white board at a convention is a great idea that I’ve seen done on a number of occasions.
Unfortunately, white boards can be very expensive. Here’s a set of instructions for building cheap ones. Heck, at those prices, you can put up a whole wall of white boards in your basement for the kids to draw on.
Manybooks is a website dedicated to free ebooks. There are quite a large number in many different categories, and they’re available in a wide variety of formats
Every wargamer I know also is a bibliophile. We’ve got dozens, if not hundreds of books that we’ve read and set aside as we moved from period to period. So here’s a way to get rid of some of the books you no longer want and pick up some others that you do.
BookMooch is a site that facilitates the online trading of books. You sign up, type in the books you want to give away and get points when you mail them out. You can then spend the points to request books of your own.
Miniature Wargaming is part of the "adventure games" hobby, which includes r ole p laying and board games. Wargamers recreate battles on the tabletop with toy soldiers, like a more complicated game of chess. Models range in height from 6mm to 28mm tall, with 15mm and 25mm being the most popular. There also is a growing interest in toy soldiers and military models, such as the 1/32 and 1/35 scale plastic soldiers from Conte, and Marx.
The most popular miniature wargames are fantasy and science fiction based, such as Warhammer, Warhammer 40K, Warmachine and The Lord of the Rings. World War II games such as Flames of War and Axis and Allies are new favorites. Other favorite historical periods include Napoleonics, the American Civil War, and ancients, such as Romans or Greeks. Other gamers enjoy miniature naval wargames, recreating battles like Trafalgar, Jutland and the Coral Sea.
Hobbyists research historical periods and paint their tiny soldiers in accurate uniforms. Others develop "historically realistic" rules sets or build scale battlefield terrain using model railroad techniques.
For pictures, visit the gallery.
Some of the bigger hobby companies are Games Workshop, which produces Warhammer, Wargames Foundry and Old Glory Miniatures. Wizards of the Coast produces several lines of pre-painted miniatures games, such as the Star Wars and Dungeons and Dragons miniatures games, and a historical game with pre-painted miniatures: The new Axis and Allies game. Wizkids produces a fantasy collectable miniatures game, such as the Mage Knight and Heroclick fantasy games, the science fiction games MechWarrior and Rocketmen, as well as the quasi-historical Pirates of the Spanish Main.
