December is here and it is a slow month for new releases (what do you expect? Great Britain closes this time of year). This is a good time to cover a few products which have been overlooked, but are worth mentioning. Essex has come out with some nice Dark Ages sailing vessals in 15mm. The first one is a nice Viking long boat complete with dragon figure head. The boat is approximately 90mm long and will stand 70mm tall to the top of the mast. The sail is cast in the furled position and them are 5 shields for each side. The planking for the floors and side are sharp cast and there is no flash that I can find on the ship. The second boat is identical to the first but without the dragon figure head. If you like skirmish action in the Dark Ages or need a camp for your Vikings in DBA, for $13.99 you can't go wrong. To go with the boats, they also have a 9 man crew of 8 oarsmen and one for the tiller. The scale out at 16M, are well cast and have a variety of head gear. At $5.49 a set, they compliment the boats and are another good offer from Essex. On the rule set scene, Emperor's Press has released -Warfare in the Age of Discovery concerning the Renaissance era (1470-1690). This is a nicely organized and seemingly playable system. The charts are on two pages and there are very nice sets of orders of battle from the Burgundian army of Charles the Rash to the armies of the 30 Years War. The OBs use a good system of formation diagrams are very useful for determining how many figures are to a base and how many bases are to a unit. There is random terrain generating chart. The down side to the system is the usage of "Up/down" dice to modify dice rolling. I guess that makes these rules WRG Lite. Also their choice of an example scenario, the Battle of Panama, 1671, would not have been my first pick. Still, at $22.50, it's not a bad deal for an era that has surprisingly little available. On the 25mm side of things. Old Glory has a very nice, but little known, split rail fence. For those of you doing ACW or Wild West, they can't be beat. The price is $15 for 30" of fence, which in my opinion is a pretty darn good deal. With the improving quality of terrain on our gaming, this is a great addition. Also, Dixon is casting a range of AWI figures. There are 19 foot and 5 mounted figures, which are all up to the usual Dixon high standards. They scale out at about 24M on the Barrett scale and the Varatt of filaw. cmittstaorts and head gear as outstanding. On the foot side there are 2 different officers a fifer and drummer, and the balance in regular infantry poses. There are mounted dragoon officers, 2 buglers, and 1 mounted dragoon. The prices are $1.49 per figure and $2.69 per horse casting. Now the bad news. What you see is what you get. According to Johnson Hood, the sculptor Trevor Dixon has lost interest in this range. Now this does not mean there will be no more AWI figures, but there will no be any in the near future. According to Wargames, Inc., he has seen the new Osprey Elite "Pirates" book. I can see a new era to do looming on the horizon ..... Back to Dispatch Feb. 99 Table of Contents Back to Dispatch List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 by HMGS Mid-South This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com