HOWARD HUES PO Box 20915, Dept M Oklahoma City, OK, 73156: At the '86 LITTLE WARS Convention, I had the chance to meet Jeff Howard, who was then peddling his wares via the Iron Brigade, which has since sold out to someone else. Jeff now :s selling his paints on his own. Anyway, I purchased a large number of his paints and have been using them almost exclusively on my Napoleonics, except for Ral Partha gold and steel. These to me are excellent water based paints and are quite inexpensive at $1.25 per bottle (one oz). There is quite a wide selection as you can see from the ad on page 68; they spread well, keep for a long time, and I really like them. Jeff included a number of samples, French Blue, Buff, Flesh, Cavalry Yellow, and British Red and I have the White, Leather Black (very good), Military Leather (perfect for Napoleonic backpacks), Ruddy Flesh and many others. I don't think you can go wrong with these water colors. Highly recommended!!! RAFM 19 Concession St., Cambridge, Ont., Canada, N1R 2G6: RAFM has released 11 packs of ancients consisting of Barbarian command pack, early German Infantry in lion cloth & trousers & fur, later German infantry with axe, Dacian with falx Dacian throwing javelin, Dacian archer, German cavalry, and heavy & light Sarmatian cavalry. The German cavalry can also be used for Roman auxiliaries. The light Sarmatian cavalry should, in my opinion, be used as heavy cavalry because of the armor they have. Their Scythian range makes good light cavalry types. These figures are excellent and the best on the market! $4.00 for 6 foot or 3 cavalry. (Mike Adams). GARRISON Garrison has released 25mm Mycenean Greek 1600 BC to 1150 BC figures. There are six figures, all of which I found to be flash free although they seem to suffer from weak ankles. Foot figures are .75 while cavalry are 1.65 with a chariot going for $6.95. Available from Soldier World (see ad on page 37. (Mike Adams) GAMES, CRAFTS. HOBBIES & STUFF 9220 Lackland Road, Overland, Missouri 63114 (1-314423-2199): From Kevin Fitzpatrick this issue comes a 2-boat pack listed as 15mm ACW boat set from Greenfield Hobbies. They are different sizes and cost $5.00 per pack. I am going to use them with my French-Indian war setup as 25mm rowboats. Very good! Also enclosed was a copy of HAMMER OF GOD: The Yom Kippur War, October, 1973 by Frank Aker III. This soft cover book is $5.00 and covers the Yom Kippur War. I personally have no interest in this period although I did enjoy looking through it and especially enjoyed the personal accounts of combat soldiers interspaced throughout the book. Also included was Zap/CA or Zap-A-Gap glue, mentioned by Doug Ziprick in MWAN #24. Have not had a chance to try it but Doug speaks highly of it! ($3.29). BATTLES IN 1HE CIVIL WAR Paddy Griffith's latest book, a 48-page book on Generalship & Tactics in America, 1861-65. I greatly enjoyed this book, it has great illustrations done by Peter Dennis which anyone interested in the ACW should like to have. The book is in four parts, The Army Commander's Problem; the Army Commander's Battle, Corps & Division Command; and the Regiment's Battle, and Paddy covers every facet of ACW battles. Rules writers would really relish the data presented in this fine little book. Highly recommended. I think the US price will be $10.00. THE THISTLE & THE ROSE MINIATURES 3079 Bridgeton Court, Woodbridge, Virginia, 22192 (703-490-4753 EST 7-11 PM & Weekends): WOW! Remember I mentioned these miniatures being available last issue? Well, I received every figure they make and these 15mm figures covering Normans, Vikings, Saxons/Anglo Danish, Slavs, Scots, Irish, Russ, Welsh, Picts & Generic figures are the best I have ever seen in 15mm! Highly detailed, no flash, great animation, character, etc. etc. etc. I can't say enough good things about them. If I did not have 25mn armies for this period, I would no douot buy these figures - they are that good. A wide range - almost 100 figures - you couldn't ask for more. The horse figures & riders are not up to the standards of the foot and Jamie McLaughlin Fish, owner, is having them redone at present. He is asking gamers to contact him ASAP with your name, address, phone on a 3X5" card with the armies you'd like to see in the future. Would also like you to give your permission for him to pass your name on to others in your area. Highly recommended figures. If you are at all interested in this period and want to go with 15mm, this is the line for you. I suspect that we will see more out of this company in the future if their early releases are any indication of things to come! .25/figure. LYZARD'S GRIN PO Box 14522, Oklahoma City, OK 73113: Haven't heard from Richard Houston of Lyzard's Grin for some time but in the mail came a very nicely done French 75mm Puteaux Field Gun M-1897 in 25rrm. Richard has a very good selection of hard-to-find Colonial items (see ad on page 24) and as a number of MWAN readers have reported, provides very fast mail order service. Am unsure as to the price of this fine gun but drop Richard a note. FRONTIER MINIATURES 343 Branding Iron, Canutillo, TX 79835 (915-877-3048): From Atley Turner of Frontier Miniatures came a large package of sample figures for review. First of all in 25mn from the Sudan Range are BS5 Fuzzy Wuzzy, BS8 Dervish with rifle, BS10 Egyptian Infantry firing, BS32 Highland Advancing 1898, and SS37 British Camel Corps Dismtd, Advancing. All of these are very fine figures indeed. Atley had a good Colonial Range out over a year ago and redid the entire line and they are not up to Frontier's high standards of excellence. The figures had no flash, the natives are animated while the professional soldiers are in the usual advancing/firing positions and detail is very good. Ten foot figures are 5.50. The range is quite extensive for the Sudan from Frontier and bears reviewing if this is your period. Secondly in 25mm are figures from the Crimean War 1853-56. I have a fine article by Frank Chadwick on the Crimean War which I hope to run at some point in the future by the way. Frontier offers British (10), Russian (8), Turks (3), Sardinia (3) and French (5) thus far. Included for review were CW2 British infantry w/pork pie cap, CW5 British Highlander w/bearskin, CW 12 Russian Caucasian Rifleman firing, CW19 Turkish infantry, and CW23, Sardinian Rifleman firing. Again, all fine figures and if you are interested in this period, you will want to check out their listing. Foot are 8 for $4.99 while cavalry are 3 for 3.99. In the 15mm area, Frontier included a number of figures from their Franco-Prussian War. These are again very good figures being well detailed & the line is fairly extensive as regards the type of available units. You may well wish to mix them with Falcon's fine line for this period as I think they would mix well. The Frontier horses are especially well done, I think! 20 foot for $4.00 and 8 cavalry for $4.00. Also included for review were 15mm figures for the Mexican-American War and Frontier certainly has the l5mn line if you are interested in this period. There are 44 different packs and again, you couldn't go wrong with these figures. Hard to believe that we have 15rrm figures available nowadays that we would have been more than pleased with ten years ago in 25nm and Frontier certainly is doing its part in this area. Check out their latest catalog, you won't believe the number of periods they have available! Back to MWAN # 25 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1987 Hal Thinglum This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com