History of Wargaming Project

The History of Wargaming Project

The project aims to make the largest possible collection of wargaming books and rules available to the modern reader. Ranging from second editions of wargaming classics, to professional wargaming rules used by the military and innovations in current wargaming.

Documenting the Development of Wargaming

Recreational Wargaming...Tank Battles Series

Donald Featherstone's Tank Battles in Miniature Vol 1 A Wargaming Guide to the Western Desert Campaign 1940-1942 12 July 2010
by Donald Featherstone
Edited by John Curry

'Don's experience of the campaign shines throughout this scholarly work on wargaming the Desert War and for me, this book is one of his greatest works of military history and wargaming.' John Curry, June 2010 Editor of the History of Wargaming Project

Donald Featherstone's Tank Battles in Miniature provides an authoritative guide to the momentous battles between Rommel's Afrika Korps and the 8th Army, together with numerous suggestions as to how these events can be reproduced realistically on the table top as wargames. The Western Desert campaign contained many unique features which render it especially suitable for wargaming. A war of movement and material, with infantry playing a secondary role to the tanks which roamed at will over the empty wastes. These factors are well brought out in this book, which is aimed at giving the wargamer insight into the human problems of mechanised warfare under desert conditions.

Chapters include: a summary of the actual campaign,technical specifications for vehicles, tanks, guns and aircraft, terrain, communications, visibility and navigation, firing tank and anti-tank guns, 'brewing-up', air operations, the Long Range Desert Group and minefields and supply.

The book is available from Amazon and other online book stores.

Product details:
     Paperback: 183 pages
     Publisher: History of Wargaming Project
     ISBN: 9781445790640
     Dimensions (cm): 15.6 wide x 23.39 tall

Supporting Material

Review by Dave Smith May 2011 "This book is one of Mr Featherstone’s finest works. He served in the campaigns discussed and this really shows. The discussion of the experience of being in the tanks is first rate and the best I have seen even after many years of reading about the desert was. The book discusses communications, logistics, locating the enemy, mines, tank recovery and all those areas that most history books miss out. The rules are good, but I prefer my own. But then I am an old wargamer.

Paddy Griffith’s Elite 162: World War II Desert Tactics (Osprey Publishing) is an excellent concise summary of how the battles were fought.