by Ian Heath. The complete title page lists the topics dealt with as: "Organisation, warfare, dress and weapons 133 figures, 41 illustrations, 12 maps" and the contents list: under Central Asia. Bokhara, Chinese Turkestan, Kashgaria, Khiva, Khokand, The Kirghiz, Kuldja, The Turcomans. Appendix Central Asian Tents and a bibliography. And under The Himalayan Kingdoms: Balistan, Bhutan, Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, Nepal, Sikkim, Tibet and a bibliography. One hundred and sixty seven pages packed with information. All these people seem to have spent a great deal of time fighting each other or the Russians or China – a wealth of campaigns and scenarios for wargamers and, for those who enjoy it, a mass of conversions to carry out to produce weird and wonderful armies or trawling through manufacturers catalogues to find "maybes and almosts". I have no doubt The Foundry will try to produce some of these but with their huge present productions bodies like the Victorian Military Society wargamers need to write in with requests to give Foundry an idea of worthwhile ranges for the future, or individual wargamers. I would love some Tibetans myself to see if I could give Younghusband's "expedition" a thick ear and "send him home to think again", (to quote "O Flower of Scotland"). A few times there is an irritating "consult volume 2 for more details" remark: but there, Ian Heath says in his introduction that he is limited in what he can fit in about the vast subjects he has tackled, generally successfully. I find his sticking to the Wade-Giles system of writing Chinese names "a bit off" when the Chinese themselves say the Pin ying system is more acceptable, e.g. Beijing (PY) = Peking (WG), Mao Zedong = Mao tse tung. British people are always a bit like this. The drawings are excellent and give a lot of information useful to wargamers. The maps are well drawn and clear even though there is no colour to assist clarity. One doesn't get a clear idea of the contours included in the maps – too difficult to include so a reference to a physical map will help when laying out terrain. In places like Nepal and Tibet don't think of "3 miles an hour" for marching pace, more like "3 hours a mile!" Logistics means even more in Central Asia. Various Russian armies of "expedition" or "pacification" were destroyed by terrain more than the indigenous opposition. I would congratulate Ian Heath on a magnum opus and recommend readers to buy or borrow the book from a library. Back to Table of Contents -- Lone Warrior #128 Back to Lone Warrior List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1999 by Solo Wargamers Association. 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