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Thursday, 30 April 2009

Bish Iwaszko

The following three posts comprise a series of articles in Miniature Warfare from 1971 by Bish Iwaszko. A leading light of the London Wargames Section, he was the author of their Modern Rules (essentially late WW11 and post war). These were notable for using a logarithmic ground scale (no, I have no idea what this means either).


Bish Iwaszko is on a par with John Sandars for the quality of his modelling, particularly when you realise what was available in the early 1970s. These articles are profusely illustrated with photos of all kinds of intersting kit and give an idea of the quality of his work. They do however seem to stop a bit abruptly: I have checked later issues of the magazine but this seems to be where it finishes.

Iwaszko was also the proprietor of Miltra, a military training aids company, which produced a range of 1/72 figures, originally for museums, then made available to wargamers and modellers at the end of the 1970s. These were popular with modellers and dioramists as they were mainly in relaxed poses, and were customisable with separate weapons and equipment.

I have posted some information on the Miltra figures ranges over on The Old Metal Detector.
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4 comments:

  1. Stryker30 April 2009 at 19:43

    As a teenager I was fascinated by the articles by Bish Iwaszco in MW but mainly I was facinated with his name. I remember that somewhere my brother and I read that he made his great looking terrain using sheets of the sort of foam blocks they used in florist shops. We tried the local interflora but were met with blank stares...

    Ian

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  2. DC1 May 2009 at 13:27

    I must have read the same piece as Ian - i think that green foam stuff was called oasis(?). At the time my (non) budget couldn't stretch to big blocks of the stuff so i never got any further than 'borrowing' small pieces from my mother. Handy stuff - though expanded polystyrene insulation sheets remain a more practical and much cheaper option.

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  3. Fire at Will16 May 2009 at 22:13

    A log scale is simple, 10yds = 10"; 100yds = 20"; 1000yds = 30", etc. just think of a slide rule. It enabled mixing of weapons with a wide variation of ranges/speeds to be used on the same table What got confusing was a the distance with which a vehicle/man could advance over several moves e.g. in three separate 10yd moves it would effectively move 1000yds away from it's starting position.

    Will

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  4. Anonymous15 November 2009 at 08:08

    I played with Bish Iwaszko in Richmond in 1969/70. Yes there were huge blocks of foam, great models and conversions - we cast our soldiers sometimes, a logarithmic scale, and twenty sided dice - we had to make those by hand.

    The PS game Sudden Strike was the one which looked most like those old Richmond battles.

    David Tallboys

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