WWII in the Desert by Andy Singleton appears to be the first in a new series of books from Pen and Sword called Painting Wargaming Figures.
The subject of the book should need little explanation, covering the four major forces in the desert campaign of World War Two. British and Commonwealth (including Canadian, Australian, Indian, South African, as well as Poles, some French and others), Italian, United States, and German.
The layout of the book has been well thought through. The book is split into two sections, Basics, and the actual Painting Guides. The Basics section covers the various tools, paints and varnishes that will be needed and then goes on to explain how to prepare and assemble figures before the painting begins. This covers metal, plastic and resin miniatures and so all bases have been covered (well actually, basing the figures is covered at the end of the painting guides, but you know what I mean...).
The painting guides themselves are well laid out with a brief introduction and history of the various forces and their involvement in the campaign. This is a nice touch, as it would have been very easy to skip this and dive straight into the guides, but as the book is probably going to be read by wargamers just getting into this period it gives that extra level of information that will help build a wargames army. In each guide, Andy takes us through the painting process at three different levels. A simple basic paint scheme, a more advanced scheme that will give a good tabletop standard, and then the truly advanced scheme, which would probably be best kept purely for command figures or special characters.
Each guide shows the full process of painting the same figure at each level. Although there are four different factions, there are five guides as the fifth guide shows the painting of camouflage for the later part of the Desert campaign, when the German paratroopers arrived in theatre. Now, clearly, there is a fair bit of repetition as you read through each of the painting guides, if not exactly in colour, but in the technique used. However, the reader is likely to be following only one of the guides and is unlikely to be painting all the forces, at all the different levels in quick succession, so the repetition only gets boring for a reviewer reading the entire book, without actually using it to paint their army.
The author also points out that a lot of the uniforms faded in the dust and sun of the desert campaign and many of the soldiers chopped and changed items of uniform so it would be rare to have a standard scheme across an entire squad, let alone larger forces. Therefore, the painting guides are just that, guides, they can be mixed and matched, within reason, to achieve a more realistic look.
The final pages of the book are given over to a reasonably thorough list of manufacturers who produce ranges of wargames figures for the Desert Campaign, at various scales.
It would have been nice to see more than one figure for each force, as clearly the uniforms varied a lot over the campaign, and we just get one (except the Germans who also get the camouflage scheme). It would also have been good to have seen one or two reference pictures for each of the uniforms, whether that be illustrations like those found in the Osprey Men At Arms series of books or photos of re-enactors etc. Also, obviously these guides are all written by one (very capable) author and, as any experienced painters knows, there are endless numbers of different ways to paint a figure, so it might be nice to see a book like this written by several different painters, offering different ways to paint similar figures.
Still, these are minor quibbles and overall, I would highly recommend this book.
So, in conclusion, this is an excellent beginners guide to painting figures for the Desert Campaign. It covers everything that someone just venturing into this area would need to get going with a new army.
You can check out the book for yourself HERE.
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