Wednesday 11 March 2020

Paraguayan War Book

On 29 February  I took advantage of the Foundry Leap Day 20% off sale and ordered “The Paraguayan War” book.  I had heard good things about this work, but my expectations of presentation was not high - probably a low cost print with maybe a spiral binding, despite a relatively high price - you know what most books outside of the Osprey range are like. When I unpacked the parcel today I was very pleasantly surprised.



I was presented with an A4 sized hard bound book of 188 pages, printed on quality paper, with hundreds of black and white line drawings,  detailed uniform descriptions, orders of battle, maps, sketches of gunboats, descriptions of campaigns and battles. Too often I find that with similar books that the content order is so muddled that you have to look in several places within the book to find what you need and even then some important detail will be missing. Since my day job is presenting and publishing technical documentation I can say with a degree of professional appreciation that this book appears very well structured, delivering the right information in the right order.


I can see this is going to be an invaluable source for the Great Paraguayan War collection.


Those gun boats are looking might tempting...I can feel the urge to do a bit of scratch building...

12 comments:

  1. Seems like quite a decent book Mark....erm, haven't you scratch built a gunboat or two already....? LOL

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    1. Just the one...Can you have too many gunboats?

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  2. A nice purchase, and reminds me of one of their similar titles 'Armies of the 16th Century' which I also picked up in a Foundry sale. As you say, quality binding and very well-organised and written, although looking at it now the pages appear to have yellowed a bit, which is strange as it has been barely opened. I'd love to see you take on gunboats for the period, especially after your superb work on those for your East Africa games.

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    1. I had a look at some gunboats last night. They are quite big - up 200 feet in length so that is somewhere between 700-800mm when scaled. I will have to look at how I can scale it further so that it is no bigger than 300-400mm. Might be a good project if I have to self-isolate!!

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  3. Your not helping the urge Mark to give this period a try...
    Cheers
    Stu

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    1. It might seem like I am on commission for every gamer I convert but it’s not true...although I do hold on to the faintest of hope that if there are enough referrals that I may be able to convince them make a range for 1859 one day!

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  4. I also have this book ...
    What butterfly in their right mind would be without it...
    I love the fact that Terry Hooker has covered a lot of the earlier 19th century uniforms as well...

    All the best. Aly

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    1. And that early stuff looks really interesting too!

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  5. It's a great book. I have to admit, I felt the same way about the gunboats. Especially seeing as they were actively involved in bombarding trenches and landing troops.

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    1. The gunboat is looking more and more like a reality.

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