Book Review: Heroes for Wargames by Stewart Parkinson

Heroes for Wargames, by Stewart Parkinson. Paper Tiger, 1986.

An old school classic. Happy days, right? Well, the problem is, in many respects it's not a very good book.

What? What's your problem? How can you even say that! It has page after page of lavishly painted miniatures!

Very true. It does have page after page of some of the most beautiful and memorable painting I've seen. Everyone who's seen the book remembers the amazing Orc with the Thatcher banner. (What they might not remember is that the very next image is so dark that the banner can't be seen at all, one of a number of very poorly lit photographs.)


It also contains interesting reflections on painting from Kev Adams and John Blanche, as well as several pages of Blanche's concept sketches. As this book had pride of place in our toilet for a year or so, I've spent a good deal of time poring over these while enthroned. Enough time to almost forget that many of the illustrations (e.g. advertising footage of GW boardgames) are irrelevant filler.

Seriously, what can my problem be?

Well, a lot of it has to do with the fact that it's called Heroes for Wargames, but there's very little that really brings to life that models are characters in heroic dramas and not just virtuosically painted metal sculptures.


I mean, look at that caption. Just look at it. Has there ever been a more boring, less heroic caption than "Minotaur, Troll and Dwarf showing relative sizes"?!? And that's one of the more descriptive ones! And the black backgrounds. Those bloody awful, boring black backgrounds. Everything's completely robbed of context, of setting, of any narrative interest.

And this, ultimately, is my problem with the book. It doesn't matter how good the painting is - if there's no story, there's no soul. And none of these photos tell any story, it's just figure after figure plonked there. (Compare with Martin Hackett's book Fantasy Wargaming, where the figures are far more crudely painted, but each and every illustration tells a story that inspires you to want to game.)

It's also very badly laid out, and many of the photos are either too dark or too small to do justice to the contents. In the first part the chapter on dioramas, one of the few sections that tells a bit of a story, we read through 6 pages of 'The Web' (the story that inspired a particular diorama, that of an Elven Prince sent to prove his bravery against a giant monster)... only to find at the end that they've only given us a 3' x 2' photo of the diorama, where none of the detail is visible!


Now I'll be honest: I know I'm not going to be able to dissaude a single one of you from wanting and from cherishing this book. And I'm not even sure I'd want to. It's a unique historical document. So instead, I'll just put up a picture of my own hero, painted in a way inspired by the step by step painting guide of this very figure on pages 74-75. Nowhere near as beautiful as anything you'll find in the book, but nevertheless presented with a proper narrative caption and a background that's not just a black shelf - the way I think a hero ought to be.


Lord Aquila ponders the value of a human life.

Ok, maybe this photography and caption writing thing's harder than it looks.