New Great Italian Wars Osprey

[Leman]

This is a heads up as I have only just ordered this book, having found out about it only a couple of days ago; a new Osprey Men at Arms book on Renaissance Italy. Entitled Renaissance Armies in Italy 1450-1550 by Gabrielle Esposito. When it arrives in the next couple of days I will do a review.

[Steve J]

A period that has always tempted me from a purely visual point of view, so look forward to your review Andy .

[Glorfindel]

Had this for Christmas - nice surprise !   Now of course, I am really looking forward to some 10mm
figures...(even though I know there are various proxies).   


Phil

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Review from another source was Meh.
Will await with interest

[T13A]

Hi Andy

Will look forward to your review. A period I know virtually nothing about but Simon Miller (of 'To the Strongest!' rules) is currently working on a new set of rules to cover this period.

Cheers Paul

[Leman]

Steve, there are a wealth of suitable figures in the Flodden and later Middle Ages ranges, plus some very useful cavalry and pikemen in the Elizabethan range, particularly EL1, 5, 6, 21  for the Spanish. Combine EL5 with ER10 (Flodden) European pike for Spanish pike. EL10 for Italian and French Stradiots and EL20 for any nation's mounted arquebus.

[FierceKitty]

My longest-serving 10mm armies are renaissance Italian, French, and Spanish. Reliably good games.

[Leman]

Well, pretty much a curate's egg this one. Some very nice original artwork, but only one illustration of a pikeman and strangely a Swiss from 1476 when the Swiss were fighting in Burgundy!? Very nice Venetian stradiot and arquebusier but where are the pike. No mention anywhere of Romandiole pikemen. Some reasonable stuff on army organisation of the major Italian states, plus France, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, but too much emphasis in the latter three on their armies before they were used in Italy. My main interest is in the period 1494 to 1515 and this is very thin in the book. I found the page illustrating the Florentine army very strange - one figure was from 1510 and the others from 1530, yet they were all wearing what looked like post 1540 pluderhosen. This seemed totally wrong for the figure from 1510. The other original artwork pages seemed ok but only one pikeman seemed an obvious ommission to me, particularly as there were a few illustrations of troops from very small guard units. Something I've never seen before in a Men at Arms book was the very large number of other coloured illustrations spread throughout the book. Unfortunately these appear to be Victorian renditions of the costume of the time, so not entirely accurate. This is even acknowledged by the author and apart from eye candy I don't really know why he used most of them. Again, only Hans Holbein's famous battle drawing and the equally well-known woodcut of Fornovo were used to illustrate pikemen. Can't help feeling a golden opportunity missed and probably far too broad a brief for a single Men at Arms book. No pretty pictures, but F L Taylor's The Art of War in Italy 1494-1529, written in the 1920s, is still the best book on the subject in my opinion.

[Steve J]

Thanks for the review Andy and I will give this one a miss.

[T13A]

Thanks Andy.

Cheers Paul

[Glorfindel]

>>and probably far too broad a brief for a single Men at Arms book.

I have to agree and we saw the same issue with the single volume on the Great Northern War.   Although the source information
for both periods is certainly there, I expect the breadth of coverage per volume is a measure of expected sales (at the other end
of the scale we have some Napoleonic ospreys just covering a single Regiment).



Phil

[Orcs]

Thanks for the review, I had considered this, but agree with you that it seems  a missed opportunity