Elastolin style trenches

 Following on from the previous post, here is a command post I made many years back in the style of the old Elastolin modular trench sections:

For many years (more like decades!) I had been bidding at various auctions on original Elastolin entrenchments but without any success.  It's not that they're rare, they come up all the time, it's just that they are desirable and always sell for silly money.  So I decided to make my own.

Based roughly on an original model from the 1930's the basic structure is formed from polystyrene packing, the whole thing then covered in papier mache and sprinkled with sawdust for texture.  The entrance posts and lintels were provided by the stick from a firework rocket and the steps just cardboard folded into a concertina shape.  The paint scheme follows the original, an overall wash of earth brown with a drybrush of grass green and the odd highlight of drybrushed yellow.

The only problem is storage, the figures are 7cm tall so it's a big old piece of kit and the only place I can find for it at the moment is balancing rather precariously on top on another glass display case!

Shell craters

 Feeling the need for some crafting therapy I cast around the projects I've started over the years but left unfinished, there were plenty to choose from.

Motivated by the recent acquisition of some rather neat First War tanks I opted to finish the shell craters I started before lockdown.

Several years ago I started making modular trench sections in the style of the old Elastolin accessories, (they've still yet to be completed) and these shell craters were to be  an addition to the project.

The wooden tanks are decorative items, artisan made, in a small workshop which I have been unable to track down.

The figures are mostly conversions of Armies in Plastic and various Cherilea bits, the explosion is a resin recast of an original Elastolin item. 

This is how they started life, various sized circular lids glued to cardboard and bulked out with polystyrene packing chips (this was as far as I got before getting bored first time around), an irregular shape built up with air drying clay, the outer walls given a coat of PVA glue then a mix of sawdust with scatter sprinkled over the top.  I gave the crater a coat of  burnt umber with a wash of black around the inner walls to simulate the heat of the explosion and dry brushed grass green over the sawdust on the outer slopes, the centre painted dark grey to represent pooled water.

Already feeling better for having achieved something.

Plastic Warrior 2023 - Conversions

 Apart from collecting old toy soldiers and gaming I also like to convert and paint figures, sadly I don't get enough time for this part of the hobby but it gives me a great appreciation for the work of other people.  Here are some I picked up at the show which will be gracing the games on my table at some point in the future.

These British cavalry and the German infantry below are the work of Eric Kemp, owner of Helmet Models and well known converter of plastic figures.  The riders are made from Armies in Plastic mounted of horses from various makers, they will form a reconnaissance unit, shame there were only three, if there had been more I'd have bought the lot.

Not sure what part these will play but it never hurts to have the odd vignette for table dressing and I just couldn't resist this pair, the dog and motorcycle are metal castings.

Eric's painting style is very distinctive, especially the faces, I've picked up some of his figures before and you can tell it's his work the moment you see them.  I bought a dozen of these, enough for a Sturmer unit, the kneeling officer is a metal casting.

Another modeller with a very distinctive style is Vince Mattocks, who made these knights from the Hundred Years War, again I'm a great fan of his work and pick them up whenever I can. 

The donor figures will be easily identified by most collectors and have had only minor changes but enough to give them a unique character of their own.  

Vince is very knowledgeable of this period, all the coats of arms and liveries are accurate, which saves me an awful lot of work.  Helpfully he also writes the name of the knight portrayed under the base and signs it.

I don't know who made these, the Roman sling thrower was made in Russia (but I can't remember who by) and isn't a conversion but I might use him as a pattern to make some more, the mounted Roman can take command of a Legion I've been working on and the French standard bearer will join the ranks of the 7 Years War collection.

Peter Bergner came over from Germany with a box full of these Cafe Storme figures, beautiful sculpts by military artist Eugene Leliepvre, they were oddments and damaged, so came cheap as chips and just what I wanted for a number of conversion I have in mind.

That's all for this year.

Austin-Putilov made in Russia

 Austin-Putilov armoured car made by MKI the Moscow Toy Plant, it's plastic and looks like the chassis and turrets have been produced in blow moulds.  Collector Aleksey Dmitriyev in Russia tells me that it was made in the 1970's or 80s, it feels much earlier to me but there you go, I know virtually nothing about Russian toys, except that I like them!  I found these pics while idly searching the net (as you do) and fell in love with it, so I thought I'd share it.

You can just about make out the makers mark on the right.  If you want to buy it you'll find him on Meshok.net which is a kind of Russian ebay current bidding is just over £106 good hunting.

Toy Soldiers of the Great War

An early birthday present to myself (because I'm worth it), "Les Petits Soldats de la Grande Guerre" has been out for while but I've only just come across it, the cover announces that it includes 800 toys of WW1 so I had to have it.

Published in 2013 by Editions Glenat, A4 format, it has 256 pages illustrated in full colour throughout, ISBN 978-2-7234-0700-2.  Written in French only but light on text so not too challenging for anyone with with a smattering of the language and a grounding in the Great War.  The pic below gives an example of the layout and quality of the illustrations.  The cover price is 39 Euro, which I would say offers very good value for a book of this size and quality, I got my copy on ebay France, new and still in the cellophane wrapping for 19 Euro plus 9 Euro P&P from seller "Book77".  Bargain!

There are 12 chapters looking at different aspects of the war, into which the toys are conveniently slotted.  The cover gives little away and I half expected the book to include every type of toy from diecast vehicles to dolls and teddy bears, but fear not, apart from a chapter containing tinplate tanks and ships the rest is all toy soldiers.  

You can expect to see the perennial favourites from Britains, CGB Mignot, and Elastolin  but they don't dominate, it's packed with figures of every genre: paper, flats and semi flats, conjoint tin, wood, hollowcast and solid lead, composition and even a little plastic and modern white metal (but not much).  The more I flick through it the more I enjoy it, I reckon you will too.

HMS Neptune saved form oblivion

Another model ship, another cutting, this one has almost faded and sunk into to mists of time, but has been salvaged by the heroic efforts of digital technology.

The caption tells us this is HMS Neptune, which was a Collosus class Dreadnaught, launched in 1909, and saw action in the Battle of Jutland.  There is no indication of scale, you could assume the sailors were standard 54mm but I don't recognise the pose so they might have been homecast just for this model, in which case they could be any size, still it's a nice chunky little model and I wouldn't mind having it in my fleet.  The model is signed "Charles Ashley, 1916", the year of Jutland, it's reasonable to suppose he made it, maybe he even served on Neptune during the Battle, who knows?

What happened to these ships?

The Royal Navy can float a Battleship anywhere...….and they have some very nice toys!

I really want one of these!

Here the Royal Navy are launching model Battleships into the fountains that surround Nelson's Column in London's Trafalgar Square (see the lions in the background), so I'm guessing that it might be a fundraising or morale building event for Trafalgar Day.  From the cut of the uniforms, the bulk of the ships and the omnibus in the background it possibly dates from about 1910-20 but it could be earlier, what do you think?

I'm not sure where I found this picture, probably the Illustrated London News or something like that, as I've been collecting hoarding articles and cuttings of anything relating to toy soldiers and wargaming for the past 50 years.  Now I'm not the tidiest or most organised of people, so to say that this hoard is a bit of a mess would be something of an understatement, but in these times of self exile I need something else to do beyond painting toy soldiers and so a big sort out is called for.  This clipping is already fading into oblivion and so I felt it behove me to sharpen it up and preserve it in ether before it's gone forever.

It may just be me, but it feels like there's been a marked slowdown in postings on the blogosphere lately, almost certainly due to the unprecedented upheaval hitting all our lives. Shows and group gatherings are being cancelled right left and centre so there is much less news to be reported, and people's routines have been turned upside down.  I feel I should be doing my bit by posting more, but apart from being disorganised I am also fundamentally lazy so you can expect to see more cheap posts like this in the future!

Stuart Asquith's Big Wars - Battle of Tanga 1914

Across the blogosphere collectors and wargamers are running games in memoriam to Stuart Asquith who sadly passed away recently, I hadn't cleared up after our recent game set in North Africa so decided to play a solo game using the Big Wars rules written by Stuart and Jack Alexander.  Big Wars covers the period 1880 to 1914 so I thought the Battle of Tanga fought during the WW1 campaign in German East Africa would squeeze under the wire.  I had to take a few liberties historically but here's how it went:

In November 1914 Britain sent an Indian Expeditionary Force of about 8,000 men to invade German East Africa, the plan was to make an amphibious landing at the port of Tanga then advance north to meet up with troops marching south from British East Africa, trapping the German "Schutztruppe" in a giant pincer movement.  A simple plan, what could go wrong?  Er….. plenty apparently.

There was an unofficial Coastal Truce agreement under which the Royal Navy were required to give the Germans 24 hours notice of any intended attack (I kid you not!).  On 2nd November 1914 the Navy demanded unconditional surrender of the town and port, this was ignored and next day the IEF began landing, no resistance was expected from the token garrison.  However, on receipt of the demand the German commander had called for reinforcements and started digging in (well you would wouldn't you)

Tanga was the coastal terminus of the Northern Railway and the Germans began rushing troops by train, around the clock, to the port.  The initial IEF landing on 3rd November was supported by salvos from the supporting naval escort, it had little effect.  Above, the German Askaris were armed with the obsolete model 1871 rifle which fired black powder rounds, clouding them in smoke with every volley.  

Here the IEF debark from their landing barges.  I played the game on an area of about 5' x 5' which I found from previous experience is fine for Big Wars, movement distances are quite short and casualties from firing fairly light until you get to quite close range, so you really need to get troops into melee to get a decisive result.

A couple of liberties taken here for the benefit of a good game.  German naval units fought on land throughout the campaign, but not at Tanga, also the Germans had two field artillery pieces but they arrived too late to take any part in the battle.  On the British side most of the units were from Indian Regiments but I have included units of the Kings African Rifles who also fought throughout the campaign but not at Tanga.

The Askaris fall back steadily while keeping up a steady fire at close range which begins to blunt the advance.  The rules allow artillery and machine guns to move or fire, but movement rates for MGs not mounted on carriages are short so the British support units fell far behind the infantry advance.

The IEF occupy part of the town and the Ghurkas hoist the Union Jack but their success is short lived as German reinforcements continue to arrive and a counter attack throws the British back.

A fun game, quick and easy to master, and a good scenario for solo play as there isn't much scope for tactical movement.  I playtested the rules quite a bit when they first came out in 1993 and used them in a "play by email" game that I hosted a few years ago (see Big Wars link in right hand column) but apart from that they've been rather overlooked, perhaps it's time they got a bit more of a regular outing.

In 1914 the IEF outnumbered the Schutztruppe by 8 to 1 so, not unnaturally, the British Staff believed the battle would be a walkover.  The Navy were ordered not to support the attack so that the town might be taken intact for use by the occupying force, for the same reason the IEF mountain batteries were not landed.  The result was that the entire IEF was evacuated on 5th November leaving most of their equipment behind, perhaps not the most ignominious feat of British arms, but well up there.

WW1 Austin armoured car.....sort of?

I have always been drawn to car boot sales, charity, junk and aquarium shops, in fact anywhere that might offer something which can be used to enhance my toy soldiers. Over the years I've accumulated a whole pile of what might loosely be called crap which "might be useful one day".  I suspect I'm not alone in this, at least I do hope I'm not.  This is the sort of stuff I mean:

A wooden car, some sort of tourist tat but the right size for 54mm figures turned up in a charity (thrift) shop for £2 (yes I know I was robbed but it is for charity!).  The transparent spheres are lids from toothpaste dispensers and the block of wood is, well........a block of wood.

The champhered front planes of these toothpaste tube lids just screamed out to be used as turrets for an armoured car, the MGs are made from bits of chopstick from the Chinese takeaway and the pointy ends from a cocktail stick.  Sometimes an idea just comes together from out of the blue, as I become increasingly aware of getting older I've started to make a list of these projects and I'm working my way through them. A major stumbling block is my own lack of confidence that an idea will work.

The almost finished item, posed with a DeAgostini figure of a Russian Company Commander 1919, it maybe needs a lighter green paint scheme, some Cyrillic graffiti and a big red flag.  It's only a bit of fun and it's very robust so perfect for wargaming in the garden.

Will the real Mr Churchill please stand up?

I've had these three little chaps tucked away for a very long time, they came to me as "extras" in a collection of early composition I bought at auction many moons ago and they've lain undisturbed until the latest round of my never ending tidy-up.  

I've never seen their like before and don't know who made them, anyone out there got any ideas?  They stand about 60mm and are made of a plaster material, similar but not as dense as the figures made in France by Bon Dufour.  They look to be caricatures and have indents in their backs that suggests they may have had a pin to be worn as some sort of broach (although they seem rather large for that) or perhaps they were pieces for a toy theatre, who knows?

I took them along to a recent collectors show where one of the German dealers remarked that the first one looked like Kaiser Wilhelm II in pre Great War Landwehr uniform with tschako.  The middle one reminded me of the well known photo of Winston Churchill standing alone after he'd been captured by the Boers, but of course the uniform is all wrong for that.  The Poilu on the end had us foxed, any ideas anyone?

As an aside

 I have recently been suffering from "the tyranny of the blog", a change in circumstances caused me to stop posting for a short while and then I found it very difficult to get back into it, the longer this went on the harder I found it to put fingers to keyboard.  I'm sure all bloggers get this at some time, there has been lots to report in the interim, shows, new toy soldier books and magazines, acquisitions and figure conversions, new projects started (then abandoned) but sadly not much in the way of gaming.  So this post is a sort of gentle slip back into the blogosphere.  I think going forward there may be more pictures and less text here, that's more the sort of person I am.

Battleships belching Smoke and Flame by Heyde?

This rather nice little set of Battleships has left me with something of a quandary. 

I think they are meant to be Pre-dreadnoughts (though I am no expert in ship design) and show two ships of the Imperial German Navy battling it out with a sole Frenchy off the coast of Denmark, as denoted by the lighthouse sporting the Danish flag.  But what does this group represent?  I don't think it could be a Franco Prussian War encounter because the ships look much later and anyway the Imperial Navy wasn't founded until 1871, also I can't find any mention of an action between German and French Naval forces in the North Sea in WW1. 

Who made them?  Well Haffner and Spenkuch seem to have been the the main providers of semi flat battleships but I've looked through several books on early German leads and the examples I've found by these companies don't look anything like the above.   The nearest thing I could find in terms of sculpting and paint style is by Heyde, which is curious because this firm mostly made it's vehicles, vessels and accessories 3D in tinplate.

A great set, I particularly like the ram on the French ship but the secondary armament firing from a cupola half way up the mask seems a bit incongruous to me, is this correct? 

King & Country Charge of the Australian Light Horse.

King & Country are a current manufacturer of white metal model soldiers, I'm not sure if they would prefer me to describe them as toy soldiers but they're not in the toy style so I won't.  Since last December K&C no longer sponsor the London Show but they still have a large presence at it, taking up the best part of one hall where they display their wares in mini dioramas like the one below

I don't really go in for K&C figures personally as they are a tad too large and too expensive for me but they do enjoy a large folowing among todays collectors and produce some unusual ranges so I feel they should regularly get a mention in any show report.  Also I find they often give me inspiration for some of my own conversions.

London Toy Soldier Show 3rd December 2011

The London show organised by King & Country is being held at the Royal National Hotel this weekend but sadly I will not be there.  The December show is by far the best one of the three they run each year (in my opinion) and this will be the first one I have missed since this event began over a decade ago.  If anyone who is going plans to put a report and photos anywhere please leave a comment to let me know where it's posted so I can have a look, alternatively if anyone wants to send me the details I will happily post them here.

In the meantime here are some pics I took of one of the Skirmish Wargames Group's games at one of last year's London shows.

The SWG put on a different game at each of the three K & C shows held each year and they are always a highlight of the day for me.  Spectators are encouraged to join in but I have to admit that I strugle to follow the workings of the rules (because I'm a bit thick when it comes to that sort of thing) but the terrain and figures are never less than inspiring.

Seen at the London Toys Soldier Show, June'11

The King & Country Toy Soldier Company who sponsor the London Toy Soldier Show display their wares in a series of stunning doramas, the two pics above show their "Streets of Hong Kong" range. I don't collect K&C but if I did it would probably be this particular range just for the colour and vibrancy that they bring.

The two pics aboove are some of K&C's WW1 series, a rather nice late war machine gunner and a vignette of the German General Staff, the Kaiser in the middle and Von Mackensen on the right.

WW1 machine gun team

This semi flat composition machinge gun team were made in Germany around 1910 by Mars Hindenburg. They are depicted from the waist up as though firing from behind an earthwork and wear the flat topped felt Jaeger helmet, which is correct for mg crews of the period, rather than the leather spiked picklehaube. I rather like to see groups of figures that have been sculpted to sort of morph together or into their surroundings, it somehow adds something to the design for me.

Mystery Medics

These stretcher bearers and nurse are solid lead (and very heavy!), they stand about 50mm high and the scuplting is very crude to put it mildly. I've never seen anything like them so they could be home cast or some sort of artisan production, they were included in a larger lot of British made figures that I bought but I assume them to be French because of the horizon blue uniforms but the strange shape of their peak caps makes me wonder about that, perhaps they could be WW1 Austrians or Romanians.

The King and Country London Toy Soldier show is being held this Saturday and I hope to attend, if so I'll post a report. I say hope to attend because the show clashes with our annual street party at which I have unexplicably and utterly stupidly agreed to take part in a cake baking competition. The competition is only open to the men of the street and the only rule is that wives may not assist in any way. I don't bake, in fact I barely recognise the big metal box that is our cooker, I am told there has been a very low level of entries, in fact I may be in a class of one, needless to say I am desperately trying to back peddle out of this.

A Bolshevik Tachanka

This horse drawn machine gun cart is part of an extensive set of semi flat plastic toy soldiers made in the old USSR to depict the Russian Civil War.