Osprey Chaco War

[huascar]

For those who follow the requests thread you will know I have been banging on about the Chaco War for some time - so I was very pleased to see Osprey release this month The Chaco War as part of their man-at arms series.

Like most Osprey books it is a great resource for pictures of the conflict and the colour plates provide all the info any wargamer would need to paint figures for the conflict (hint, hint). However, the text is somewhat disappointing. The course of the war is sketched at the highest strategic level in the barest detail - with no real information on any of the battles or tactics used. The author also devotes an oddly large amount of space to the Paraguayan navy - which, though significant in size, played a vey minor role in the conflict. On the plus side the author has clearly done some work to try find detail on the use of armour and airpower â€" both of which are often left obscure in other works I have read.

I don’t read too much Osprey so I may have been expecting too much from this book. If you are interested in the conflict it is well worth having as a reference work â€" but you will need to read something like The Green Hell by Adrian English if you want to understand the war and what happened.

[FierceKitty]

Chaco....is that a type of flour and water pancake wrapped around grilled meat with a chillie sauce, or an insult implying sexual deviance on the part of the recipient's grandmother?

[goat major]

huascar I think this is fairly typical for a man at arms book - a high level overview of uniforms with some supplementary information. For history/battles/ tactics etc you have to look to series such as Campaign. I don't think there's anything due on Chaco in the near future