When I was growing up, every WWII documentary was in black and white, so I — along with everyone else — just assumed there was no color footage. Happily, over the past couple of decades, lots of color footage has surfaced.
These clips are from the Battle of the Philippine Sea, June 19–20, 1944, also known as the Marianas Turkey Shoot. The ground campaign of the Battle of Saipan too place 15 June – 9 July 1944.
Color also makes the horrors of war much more apparent.
Justified Ancients is a set of free wargames rules for simple ancients battle games. The author writes:
Justified Ancients is a fast paced element based wargame that takes simple mechanics to produce a beleivable result. Easy to learn they are percet for filling in that last half hour before the Pub or playing a huge battle in two hours.
To Glory We Steer is a well-done set of rules for the age of fighting sail:
From the period where the mighty multi-oared Galleys had almost faded from memory other than a coastal raider, to the days where black funnelled Ships of the line belched out sparks and smoke, there existed two hundred years of an Age of Sail. …
This set of rules takes from many contemporary accounts of battle, to gain a whiff of the sea air in themechanics, Hopefully threading through it enough realism without baffling a Landsman who knows little of the Age of Sail.
As you give your crew orders to “Man the Halyards” or unleash a perfectly timed broadside, I hope that some of this may come across and that those who know their foretops from their gaff sails might gain some pleasure from commanding. This said, many compromises have been made in the way of a playable game that is challenging and involving for players.
You are not pushing a model and rolling dice. You are a Master and Commander in the Heat of Battle!
More and more board games come with plastic miniatures that just beg to be painted. Here’s how.
Les Trois Mosquetaires is a set of free wargames rules for skirmishes in the world of Alexandre Dumas’ Three Musketeers