Toy Soldier Battles II, Antonio E. Belmonte Cerezo, ISBN 9798272688880, 95 pages, illustrations designed and text translated by Copilot, Microsoft's AI assistant (one paragraph has been missed and is still in Spanish!).
This is a strange one, I saw it advertised on facebook and thought I'd give it a punt as I fancied trying some simple, fast play WW2 style rules, which is what these are, but not in the way I'd imagined.
The coloured illustrations throughout are quite charming and drawn in the form of Army Men toy soldiers like the ones shown on the cover. And that's a good introduction to what the book is about, go online, buy a couple of those big bags of green and tan Army Men, the ones that come with tanks, jeeps, planes, helicopters and bunkers, grab a couple of dice then settle down on the floor with the kids and have yourself a wargame.
There's a bit more to it than that, units are given a profile based on their armament, mobility and resilience/armour, casualty modifiers affect range and cover, dice for random event activation and there are Victory points at the end. Officers play specialised roles with eight different strengths they can bring to a unit like; Medic, Communications, Mechanic etc. There are chapters for Army Lists, running a campaign and four trial scenarios. It's all stuff we recognise in a set of wargame rules but it's all kept fairly simplistic so it's easy for a newcomer to pick up.
So it's more than a stand 'em up and shoot them down toy soldier game but I'm not sure it's one that will appeal to regular gamers.
