I’ve been collecting various Mid-War Flames of War armies for a while now, and had already grabbed myself the individual countries’ African campaign books (Armoured Fist– British, Fighting First– American, Avanti– Italian, and Afrika Korps– German). However, I was a little disappointed that none of them offered soft-skinned transport options as seen in previous editions of the game, as I think that this kind of vehicle adds a little character to a force.
It was around this time that I became aware that there was a compilation book, North Africa, which included all of the previous books, along with some new content. This must be where to find what I was looking for, I thought, so I ordered a copy from the always-excellent Wayland Games, my go-to wargaming and miniature stockist.
Contents
The book arrived, and I cracked it open … only to find there were no options for the soft-skinners I was looking for. Although oddly enough, I wasn’t really disappointed. As previously mentioned, North Africa collects the four countries’ armies together nicely into one convenient package, and there are plenty of extras, primarily in offering various airborne formations. My only real gripe here is that coming in at 300 pages, the book is huge, and thus carting it around to games meet-ups might be something of a pain (a fact exacerbated by Battlefront keeping the various countries’ catalogue pages in this new combined edition). However, if you have access to the unit cards and/or the forces builder website, this shouldn’t present a problem.
Everything is well laid out with clear references on force organisation charts as to where in the book to find the units you might be looking for, there’s plenty of beautiful pictures of miniatures, painting and basing guides for each faction, and the quality of materials used in the book’s construction is well up to standard, with a thick, durable cover and nice glossy paper stock.
Summary
Definitely worth considering for anybody who wants to collect an African campaign army for Flames of War, with everything contained in one book. Now to try and hunt down those command cards which actually do contain the soft-skin army options…