Sunday 26 September 2010

Usborne Battlegame books



Usborne are a UK children's publishing firm who in their time have produced much of interest to wargamers, including their Make this... series which included medieval town, village, cathedral and castle titles, some of which have been reissued.

The Battlegame books - Wild West, Knights at War, Galactic War, and World War II - by Andrew McNeil were published in 1975 and each included four simple but effective battllegames. The rules and counters were included in the centre of the book. I have posted a little on the contents of each title below.

Their serious credetials included illustrators including Gerry Embleton and Angus McBride, and Games designed by Dave Rotor and Citadel Boardgames, among others.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

These were good books with some imaginative concepts in the games.
I'm pretty sure that there was also a fifth title published well after the others- ?perhaps the first of further series which never took off. Exactly the same size and format as the others.

IIRC it was naval warfare over various periods-(think it had dreadnoughts on the cover) but I never picked it up, and the series disappeared from view soon after.

Seneffe

Alonicus said...

I've only just found this blog, so forgive me for gravedigging an old post !

I'm almost certain there was another title in the series; ICBM. It was a nice little Dr Stranglove game where 'victory' is achieved by inflicting nuclear devastation on the enemy and using ABM systems to shoot down a variety of enemy weapons and bombers. I'm sure I've got a copy in the loft somewhere, as well as a copy of their 'Galactic War' (an eminently playable game).

Edgardo said...

Oh men I have a lot of fun in my teens with this games. I loved it.