Spending a whole day just enjoying yourself can be quite exhausting, but that's what the various members of the Little Wars Revisited group (and a few others) did last weekend at the LWR Forum 2019 Games Day in Woking. The event boasted five games played using 54mm toy soldiers and here's a taster of how it went:
Eric Kemp put on a skirmish game using his own rules set in the Schleswig-Holstein War and featuring his rather superb conversions
If you want to refight an obscure period like this in 54mm you have to go with metal figures (expensive and heavy to transport) or plastic conversions (requiring skill and time to make) so skirmish games rather than big battles are the order of the day. And this shows what a spectacle you can provide with just a 4'x4' table and about 20 figures a side.
Anthony Morton brought out his "Little Legions" Zulu war collection for the Battle of Isandlwana using "The Portable Wargame" rules by Bob Cordery.
The modular terrain blocks are made by Mike Lewis of Black Hat Miniatures (who organises the Woking Wargames Day) and provides an infinite variety of options for landscaping a battlefield, its also idea for grid based games like The Portable Wargame.
Mike Lewis, mentioned above, staged a 19th Century game using his own Little Wars Revisited range of metal figures using a draft version of "A Gentleman's War" rules which are due to be published right about now by Howard Whitehouse.
Keen eyed readers will recognise this layout as the battle of Hook's Farm from H G Wells' "Little Wars" an ideal scenario as A Gentleman's War is played in much the same manner as Wells' rules.
As you can see here, smaller scale buildings work perfectly well with 54mm figures, well I think so anyway.
My own humble efforts using Britains Deetail and various other converted figures,
the rule system was "Battle Cry" by Richard Borg and the scenario selected was The Battle of Falling Waters
The beauty of a system like Battle Cry for an event like this is that it's very quick and easy to pick up an understanding of the rules. On this occasion my opponent was already well versed in the Ancients version of the game so had a feel for the order of the game and lead his Confederates to a resounding victory over my numerically superior Federals.
Tim Rose offered us "A Very British Civil War" using his own rules the game is set during the 1937 Tithe Wars in East Anglia, never heard of them? me neither but Tim gave us a very interesting potted history on the background of them.
I played this game in the afternoon session and thoroughly enjoyed it, it's a true toy soldier game with each individual figure counted as using whatever armament he's been made with, be it a grenade, rifle or anti-tank weapon. It's all very 1930's and introduces lots of factions like Fascist Blackshorts, Foresters, Yeomanry, Territorials, Anglican League and Communist Militia.
Tim did an admirable job as umpire, controlling the chaos we were making on the table and occasionally adding to it by feeding in unexpected reinforcements. A fast free flowing game and great fun.
It is nice to get your toys out of the shoebox once in a while and play with them.
