Osprey "Renaissance Armies in Italy 1450 - 1550" review

I just received the recently published Osprey Men-At-Arms 536 "Renaissance Armies in Italy 1450 - 1550". The book presents the usual MAA format and it is tightly packed with historical information, uniformologic details and beautiful illustrations.

The author is G. Esposito, and the booklet is preciously illustrated by the skilled G. Rava, one of my favourite historical illutrators.

You can find details about the main armies of the periods, both Italian (Milanese, Florentine, Papal, Venetian, Kingdom of Naples) and Foreign (Aragonese, French, Imperial German). The illustration are well researched (the commentary plate is one of the most valuable asset of this series), and very inspiring (for those interesting seeing them translated into the wargaming table, check my post). The book also contains other illustrations, also in colour (differently from older Ospreys), but in this volume mostly from the same source/style, I would have preferred a little variation and some real piece of armour, instead than nineteenth century impressions.

Lastly, the book share the the same issues as the previous books about Italian history (e.g. Italian Medieval Armies 1125–1325 and Italian Unification Wars): too much events and armies in the frametime and to little space to deal with them! I understand the limitation imposed by the series format, and I think the author managed to squeeze the essential in it. For this reason I would have loved a longer bibliography, which is instead limited to a couple of volumes for each army involved.

Overall I value positively the book, mainly for its illustrations, for many player it will be a nice introduction to this period.

Images taken from author Facebook page for his concession.

New project: Rebels and Patriots

Recently Dalauppror announced a new ruleset from Osprey Wargames based on the same mechanics of Lion Rampant, by Dan Mersey: "Rebels and Patriots", going to be released early 2019. The rules will adress the wars in North America from about American War of Indipendence to American Civil War at a large skirmish level, as Lion Rampant, Pikeman's Lament or TMWWBK. The temporal span covered by Rebels and Patriots is about 110 years. During this period some major changes in both technology and tactics occurred, but I believe Dan and Michel will be able to abstract a good Horse and Musket ruleset.

I'm not particularly keen on American Warfare, but considering the level of abraction of these rules, I'll definitively give them a try for Italian Wars of Indipendence (Risorgimento), since there was plenty of small clashes and few big battles.

I recently started collecting figures for that period, specifically Garibaldi's campaign of 1860 in Sicily, so expect more updates on this project in the next months! For the first time in my short wargamer's career, I aim to be able to play with a new ruleset at release day one!

Italian Wars of Unification from Osprey!

Armies of the Italian Wars of Unification 1848-70 (1)

(by Gabriele Esposito; illustrated by Giuseppe Rava)

Last month, Osprey published in its Men-at-Arms collection the first of a two books series about Italian conflicts of XIX century.  

Italian Wars of Unification is a subject always neglected by the international publications, at least from a uniformologic point of view. Of course in Italy it's a more common theme, but it's really cool to start seeing it arising some interest abroad. The Italian Wars of Unification lasted about 22 years and saw the birth of Italy as a Nation. They offers a wide choice of scenarios for wargamers of any nationality. The numbers of factions involved, the many different uniforms (essentially a mix from original Italian design and foreign inspirations) have the potential to please both the warfare and the  estethic lovers.

Of course there is still a lack of appropriate models, but there are some "promising" signals, I will talk about them in a separate post (stay tuned!).

The author, Gabriele Esposito, has done a great job of sinthesis. In fact describing the 1848-49 war as a single war is misleading. There is a proper campaign (Kingdom of Piedmont against Austrian), but there is an insurrection of Sicily (proclaming indipendence from the Kingdoms of the Two Sicilies) and many national uprising, in Rome (Republica Romana), Venice (Repubblica di Venezia) and other cities. So regular armies and volunteers twingles in confusing years. 

Remember: the booklet is the first of two. In this one are described the armies of Piedmont and the Two Sicilies. For both you have a nice (even if schematic) introduction, organisation and different specialities are treated in order (infantry, cavalry corps, engineers, etc...) and then there is a short chapter about weaponry. Comparing it to other Osprey MAA, the uniformology is quite "light". Honestly it'd have been difficult to be more specific with so many troops to treat. Just assume Austrian armies of roughly the same period are treated in two different books (The Austrian Army 1836(1), for infantry and (2) for cavalry) and that's just one Nation! So I appreciate even more the skill of the author to concentrate the informations, many of them added in the description of the pictures inside the text or the plates, painted by Giuseppe Rava, probably the most skillful Italian military painter, compared to Angus McBride himself.

The plates are fantastic, they are a really great added value for the book, historically accurate and characterized by a great vivacity. In addition the booklet features a large number of illustrations and drawing from the period.

The next booklet will be focused on Papal army and volunteers.

My only complaint is about the chronology: the usual introduction about the conflict, more necessary because this is a greatly neglected conflict, has been splitted between the two books, thus in this one only 1848 events are described, the other years will be treated in the second one. I understand the choice from the point of view of the publisher, to respect the number of pages Osprey standard imposes. But this fact made me feel the book some of incomplete. I suppose is something it will be solved when this book will be placed in the shelves next to the second part. Luckily we shouldn't wait too long, I don't remember the publication date, but if I recall correctly should be available in some months time.

All the images are used with consent of G.Rava, taken from his official Facebook page, which I kindly suggest you to follow. The author is at disposition for any request from the Publisher.

PS If you're looking for the Austrians who fought the Italians (Kingdom of Sardinia at the beginning of the period), look for Osprey MAA 323 and 329! So actually we can consider Italian Wars of Unifications from Osprey to form a quadrilogy!