One Hour Wargames in the Dark Ages

With the Christmas break a distant memory it was time to get the new gaming season off to a start, and as Anthony had recently acquired a collection of Saxon and Viking toy soldiers made by Expeditionary Force of Singapore we had to give them an airing.  Here's how it went:

We chose to play Fighting Retreat, (scenario 20) from One Hour Wargames by Neil Thomas, which sees a small Viking warband falling back while delaying a larger force of pursuing Saxons, thus allowing the main body of raiders to escape to their longships laden with the plunder.

Above, the raiders have crossed the river and their skirmishers have occupied the woods ready to surprise the Saxons who are just approaching the ford in the river.

Here the mounted raiders are putting distance between themselves and their pursuers while the slower moving footmen, realising that they risk being ridden down, have turned and formed a shieldwall.

We have used this scenario before for a medieval game (OHW link on the right should find it), but this time it played out very differently.  The thing we like best about OHW is that it uses the same basic rule structure for every historical period, but there are subtle changes to how the rules work, within each particular period, to reflect the developments in weaponry and tactical practice as military science evolved.  

The Saxon host cross the river at the ford, cavalry in hot pursuit, followed by fleet footed skirmishers and finally the mass of infantry.

So the basic game is very quick and easy to master, but what intrigues us is testing out the effects of those subtle changes to see how well they reflect the chosen period.  In this case we found the unit movements were much more fluid and less formal than in the medieval period, also the skirmishers of these Dark Ages were much less effective than the bowmen of the later period.  But the most notable difference was the resilience of the infantry formed up in a shieldwall, which was very hard to crack.

The Viking shieldwall braces itself for the impact of the Saxon cavalry, but holds without difficulty. The supporting infantry, following close behind, are forced into a bottleneck created by the ford and don't have enough room to manoeuvre around the melee.  Looks like I didn't think this move through  very well!

The Viking shieldwall has finally broken, but the Saxons have lost their cavalry and time is running out to prevent the raiders escaping, the Saxons surge forward and easily brush aside a unit of skirmishers.

The Saxons form sheildwall and face the remaining Vikings, they realise that the main body of raiders are clean away with the plunder, and that they will be advancing uphill fighting at a disadvantage...........so they decide to pack up and go home for tea.

These plastic Expeditionary Force figures are described as 40mm but they are clearly bigger than that, we compared them against my 40mm Elastolin Vikings and they towered over them (should have taken a pic for comparison, sorry about that!).  They come factory painted in the neat flat style you see here, personally I would give them a wash of brown stain (which is what Elastolin used to do) to give them a bit more definition, but they're not my toys so that won't be happening.

Anthony has mounted them on circles of MDF which provides greater stability on the table and also give them more of an "Old school" look.  This is the full range here; cavalry, infantry and archers for both Vikings and Saxon, that's the full extent of the range, shame they didn't extend to Normans but as Expeditionary Force have now moved upscale to 54/60mm figures this may be all we'll ever see from them in this size.

These were the first range issued by Expeditionary Force and were aimed at wargamers, the sculpting is excellent and while the plastic weapons look rather fragile they are in fact very robust.  Just wish we could find some other ranges (plastic or metal) that would compliment them, A Call to Arms Normans are a little too large, while the old Kellogs/Rubinstein "Warriors of the World" figures are about the right size but they are limited to just one Viking and one Norman.  Ho Hum.

Figuren Magazine

To complete the line up of toy soldier publications, Figuren Magazine popped through the letter box last week.  This magazine has been published since 1973 (originally under the name "Der Lineol Soldat) which I guess makes it the longest running publication for toy soldier collectors.  In the early days the coverage was predominantly German composition toy soldiers but over the last ten years or so a younger generation of contributors has broadened the scope.

Above, Sitting Bull graces the cover of the latest edition, the two page spread below give an idea of the layout and format of the magazine, in this case it's a report on the collectors show at Friedburg by Andreas Dittmann.  Other articles look at composition Ethiopian cavalry from the Italo-Abyssinian war of 1936 by seven different manufacturers, 1930's wooden cut-out soldiers, paper cut-out Wild West figures from the 1890's to 1950's and an offering of seasonal Nativity figures.  There are three different articles showing exquisitely made large dioramas, which are a very popular feature of the German collecting scene.  Several other show reports also include 7cm resin figures, made in the style of the old Elastolin plastic production, these high quality figures are a popular new stream of collecting in Germany but don't seem to have taken off anywhere else.

The text is all in German and some of the articles can be quite lengthy so it's a stretch if you don't know the language (although toy soldiers seem to have their own universal vocabulary), 50 pages in full colour.  There are four issues a year and cost with postage is 30/39 Euro depending on where you live.  For more details and to subscribe see their website: Figuren Magazin.

I know that many people who occasionally look in at this blog have also been active participants on the Collectors and Wargamers forums provided by Yahoo Groups.  For reasons which I don't entirely understand, Yahoo has decided to effectively close down the Groups and delete all existing content.  In fairness I think the Groups have been in decline in recent years since the emergence of  blogging, which seems to have become prominent on the web, but it is still a great loss of information and opportunity to comment.  I guess the same thing could happen to Blogger one day, all the information that people have contributed over the years just lost at the swipe of an executive decision somewhere far away, and that's why we need to support magazines like this and all the others that provide a permanent record of our hobby.  Makes you think doesn't it?

Eurofigurines - French toy soldier magazine

Following hard on the heals of Die Zinnlaube in the last post came my resub notice for the French magazine Eurofigurines which is issued four times a year and mainly covers hollowcast and solid lead, aluminium, composition, plastic and pressed tin toy soldiers.  As you'd expect, many of the manufacturers included are French but the firms featured will be familiar to most people and that makes this magazine more accessible to the majority of collectors 

The front and back covers (above and below) of the latest two issues give a taste of the quality and format of the magazine.  I'm not going to go through the table of contents for these as it would take too long but I will mention something of the house style for articles, which is to pick a subject and then illustrate as many figures relating to the subject as they can find.  The articles are short on text and long on pictures, for example in the latest issue an article for the 250th anniversary of Napoleon's birth ran to 13 pages with 105 pictures of figures from 12 vintage manufacturers.  The pictures tell the story, this is my kind of magazine.

The text is in French but, as mentioned before, there isn't a lot of it so it's easy enough to follow or translate using Google.  On average there are 30 pages, in full colour, plus a separate wadge of advertising and collectors wants/sales lists.  Cost is 45 Euro (including international postage) by Paypal for 4 issues, the subscription runs for the calendar year so if you subscribe in July they'll send you the first two issues for that year and then your next sub is due the following 1st January, it's a neat system that works well.  For more details and to subscribe see their website: Eurofigurines

Die Zinnlaube - German toy soldier magazine

The last month has seen quite a flurry of activity in the world of toy soldier magazines, it kicked off with Plastic Warrior, which came through at the start of December, see the blog links bar to the right for details.  Followed on Christmas eve by Die Zinnlaube, this German magazine is only issued roughly once a year and isn't widely known so I like to give it a bit of a plug.  The toys covered tend to be early, predominantly German made, flats, solid lead and composition figures, so it aims very much at the top end (read expensive) of the collectors market.  Still it's nice to see lots of unusual toy soldiers that rarely get an airing elsewhere.

The front and back covers (above and below) show carved wooden figures by the French firm Giroux, I do like the "rocking horse" pose of the mounted Cossack.  

Articles include: Editorial, Obituary - Roland Umhey, Italian Composition Figures, Giroux Soldiers, Advertising figures from the George Spenkuch foundry, Diorama with Heyde figures celebrating the 250th anniversary of the explorer Alexander von Humboldt, the "Saxon artillery kettledrum carriage" made by Heyde, the French conquest of Algeria made by J E du Bois of Hanover, Paris World Exhibition set by Krause, figures from the collection of Peter Hofmann, interview with Danish collector Mogens Hvid, Austrian General Staff of 1859 in flats, homecasting moulds made made in France by Scad, figure identification page and Heyde 75mm personality figures, 

The text is now just in German and English (French has been dropped) which covers 90% of the readership, and anyway it's worth getting just for the pictures.  Cost is 20 Euro (including post to UK) by Paypal and as it only comes out once a year I feel it is worth giving yourself a treat at Christmas.  It's a high quality publication, runs to 96 pages in full colour and it's available from Freunde alter Spielfiguren

Hark the herald.................

This trumpeter comes from a set of Winged Hussars, not surprisingly made in Poland, and invariably attributed to the manufacturer PZG.  The figure has been gilded and was originally mounted on a plinth to be sold as an ornament or tourist item.  It's part of a range that I assume was inspired by the Siege of Vienna as it includes a personality figure of King Jan Sobieski, Winged Hussar, Dragoon, Standard Bearer, Kettle Drummer and Trumpeter.

PZG is the Polski Zwiazek Gluchych (Polish Associaton of the Deaf) which ran workshops producing all manner of goods to provide employment for people with hearing disability.  Founded in 1946, the Association is still going strong today and during the Communist era produced various ranges of toy soldiers.  These days collectors tend to label all Polish made plastic figures as PZG, even though very few are actually marked as such, due to the dearth of information on who manufactured them.
                                                                                                      

The elegantly sculpted horse has damage to a couple of his legs from where he was prised off the original plinth, another project in the queue is to repair, rebase and repaint him, perhaps I'll actually get around to doing it next year.  To get an idea of what he should look like when painted up take a look at Eric's Blog here.