100 Beautiful Dioramas

 The latest edition to my bookshelf, building dioramas has always been a prominent feature of the toy soldier collecting scene in Germany and this book illustrates 100 of the best from museum exhibits to examples in private collections.  30mm flat tin figures predominate, as you might expect, but there are plenty that include modern solid figures from 54mm down to 20mm.  

The architectural and landscape features are often the most impressive elements in the displays but what they all have in common is that they are exquisitely executed.  The dioramas are organised in chronological order of historical period depicted from prehistoric times to WW2.

The subject won't appeal to everyone but if your eye is pleased by pretty pictures of miniature figures then it probably will.

Compiled by Dr Egon Krannich and Walter Brock, 114 pages, illustrated throughout with about half the pictures in full colour.  The text is in German but after the Introduction this is mostly limited to a description of the diorama, who made it and where it is, finally there is a directory with brief notes on the diorama builders and other books in the series. ISBN 3-933124-07-7 I bought my copy through Amazon.de

A sample page from the book.

Battle of the Little Big Horn

Anyone who was a schoolboy in the 1960's will remember the Waddingtons board game of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, it came with some rather nice 40mm figures of General Custer, his 7th Cavalry and the opposing Sioux and Cheyenne Indians.  Well sometime last year Anthony had the original board copied onto a 6'x4' mat for use with 54mm toy soldiers but the ensuing pandemic has prevented us playing it, until today, which by the purest of coincidence happens to be the 145th anniversary of the actual battle.

The Indian camp beyond the Little Big Horn river, the red triangles show the starting places for the Braves on foot, the blue triangles are the starting positions for Custer and the 7th Cavalry.  Model trees and tepees give a bit of definition to the flat board.

At the other end of the board the red triangles show the starting places for the mounted Indians and their Chiefs, rock formations give a 3D effect to the board.

The figures we used were from the Britains Deetail range, the beauty of these is that they have metal bases which prevent them falling over all the time.

Victory conditions for the 7th Cavalry is either to escape across the river and exit the board with their flag or kill all of the three Indian Chiefs.  Victory conditions for the Indians is to kill Custer, his two officers and capture the flag.

 

We played a trial game with the original rules and number of figures, we were surprised at how subtle and tactical the rules were, mistakes were inevitably made on both sides but in the spirit of good gamesmanship we helped each other to avoid the most disastrous outcomes.  The game took about two hours to play and as you can see above it reflected the historical outcome.  It was great fun, surprisingly challenging and we felt the game system could easily be adopted to other low intensity irregular conflicts, I already have a late 1940's French Indochina project in mind.

For those who like a bit of toy soldier trivia with their wargame reports this is the first version Zang/Herald tepee from the Indian encampment set.  I don't know if you should call this rare or just hard to find but it differs from the ubiquitously common second version by having a short entrance flap with four diamonds above while the later one has a larger flap with just two diamonds above.  Not many people know that.  You really do have to be a boring old fart to be interested in this sort of minutiae! 

And yes, it really was a complete coincidence that we played this game on the anniversary of the actual battle. We got so drawn in we could almost have been there on that fateful day in 1876, imagination can take you to these places, good job they don't let children get a taste of it.

Lancers of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw made by PZG

Two more examples from PZG (Polski Zwiazek Gluchich), they need no introduction, just beautiful figures.

The markings on the underside of the base.

Beautiful sculpting for toys, amazing that the swords and plumes have remained intact down the years. 

King Richard the Lionheart

 A recent acquisition, and one I've been after for a long time, is this figure of King Richard the Lionheart as a crusader, made by Cherilea.  It's made in hollowcast lead and has been repainted, but quite sympathetically, so I can live with that, what a shame they never made him in plastic.

This figure often gets listed as part of the Cherilea Baronial series, but it's not or at least it's not listed as part of that series in the catalogue.  But you can see why people might think it was, the sculpting of the horse is superb, way above the usual standard for Cherilea and a similar style to the three figures in the Baronial Series.  Also it's slightly smaller size and a single piece casting while the others have separate horse and riders.

The back view, the shield is nicely engraved with three lions, I must remember to pick that detail next time I have my paintbrush to hand.  Cherilea used to produce the moulds for Richard Courtney, who is famous for his models of medieval knights, and I can't help wondering if he didn't have a hand in the sculpting of some of these finer pieces, of course that's just speculation on my part.

Paint a toy soldier and win a car, or two!

 The French take their coffee and their art very seriously, if you have ever doubted this just take a look at the handbills below.  In the 1950's, Mokarex along with several other French coffee manufacturers gave away unpainted plastic model figures as advertising premiums with packets of their coffee.  Collecting the figures and painting them became a national pastime, to such an extent that Mokarex sponsored a painting competition for their figures:

First prize was a Versailles, a luxury saloon car manufactured by Simca, second prize was a Citroen 2CV, which I understand is also some sort of car, the next four runners up each won a television set!  Don't knock it, bear in mind this was 1956, my family didn't get our first tv set until 1963, and even then it was second hand.

Another version of the handbill for the same competition, which was to be judged by a jury made up from members of the Societe des Collectionneurs de Figurines Historiques.

The all important terms & conditions were printed on the reverse of the handbills, for those interested in such things.  For anyone interested in seeing more about these very fine models, known affectionately by the French as figurines publicitaires there is a very good website here: Mokarex