7YW Prussian assault pioneers

Some time back, a 7 Years War siege game we were planning called for an assault on a breach in the walls of a fortified city, so I bodged up these figures for it.

All these conversions started life as 54mm plastic toy soldiers of the American Revolution made by Louis MARX.  The figure on the left was advancing with musket at the ready, on the right he was stabbing down, their muskets have been trimmed away and hats carved off, to be replaced with spare mitre caps from the HaT 7YW Prussian infantry set, then its just a case of assembling and pinning the ladder (a spare form the TIMPO Fort Apache set) to them, their hands have also been built up a bit with milliput.

The sappers with axes are the same two MARX poses used for the ladder carriers, again they've had their muskets trimmed away and headgear replaced with HaT spares, the axes are from the TIMPO Vikings and the leather aprons are cut from cartridge paper stiffened with PVA.  The chap throwing grenade is the British officer from the same American Revolution series, his cane has been cut away and a grenade made from milliput, the fuses are made from old fashioned fuse wire (can you still get that?).

We all have to get our ideas from somewhere and the inspiration for these conversions came from a book illustrating old German Tin Flats, these conversions were previously shown in an article I did for Plastic Warrior magazine but I didn't get to show where the idea came from.

The book is Soldaten des Rokoko by Waldemar Piecha, published in 1982 (ISBN 3-423--02874-2), it contains 72 prints like these, each depicting different Regiments and formations of the Prussian army.  It's a great resource for uniform info and every figure illustrated is unique so it's a goldmine for ideas.  

Tin Flats were relatively cheap and easy to manufacture, the designs were drawn and then engraved into slate, so the mould making process is relatively quick and inexpensive.  Designs were often copied from antiquity as well as period art sources which gives them a sense of the times they depict.  The collecting potential for Flats is enormous, covering every historical period, they are very well documented and books on Flats are by far the largest section of my toy soldier library,  yet they are a section of the hobby that has been virtually bypassed by the world outside of Germany.

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!

The Romanians are coming!

Plans are afoot for a wargame set in the Crimea during WW2 using 54mm plastic toy soldiers, it's a way off yet but it will still need a bit of preparation.  Fortunately the game will require little in the way of air and armour units, but it will require some Romanian infantry and I can't think of any firm that made such troops, therefore some sort of bodge is called for.

 Taking the Osprey book as my source for uniforms I trawled through the mountain of junk figures I keep for such purposes and came up with several bags of these Hugonnet figures.  I bought them for a few francs a bag in a supermarket, on a booze cruise to Calais forty years ago, and they have been languishing in the back of a cupboard ever since waiting for me to come up with a use for them.  I've included the header card from the bag which shows the Hugonnet/Feral logo quite nicely in the bottom right corner.

The Romanian uniform comprised a full length jacket and short gaiters, so we're okay on that score, Mountain Rifle Regiments wore a large floppy beret, so that's good too.  Only problem is with the regular infantry units who wore a variety of helmets including the French "Adrian" and Dutch models, I have some metal heads in Adrian helmets so could do a few quick swops for a bit of variation but the current helmets are fairly indistinct so I may just leave them as they are.

Here are all the poses, Hugonnet were notorious for making piracies of other firms figures, mostly Starlux but also Cofalu and Cherilea.  The first three figures in the top row are copies of Starlux and the rest are all copies of Cofalu modern French army toy soldiers.

Moulded in green and tan these are very much the French equivalent of "Army Men" cheap toys in plastic, colour coded to provide two distinct armies.  They are crude, anatomically challenged and badly moulded, many carrying the deformity of being injected into an overheated mould.  But for all that I have a certain fondness for them, the poses are very dynamic and I've always felt they had potential, I just never figured out what that might be.  Well, we'll see.....

Still limping on the long road home from Moscow

For Napoleon's Grand Armee, the humiliating retreat from the Russian capital is about to turn in a nightmare of epic proportions. 

While the muffled boom from the Russian guns, harrying the rearguard, drifts across the endless plain, the Cossacks look for any opportunity to pick off stragglers or fall on unescorted wagons.

The Cossacks attack in waves but are easily held off by formed up bodies of infantry, or scattered when they come under artillery fire.  An unfortunate salvo from the rearguard falls near the wagons and sees a unit of Cossacks driven off by friendly fire!

The Bavarians trudge on, shadowed by the menacing Cossacks, they know their only hope of salvation is to stick together.  Ahead of them in the right foreground the Russian main army is approaching from the flank and has set up a Grand Battery to ward off any attempt by the French to rescue their supply train and come to the aid of the rearguard.

Unprotected wagons are easy prey for the Cossacks, who suddenly appear like ghosts out of the swirling snow fluries.

………and never miss an opportunity for plunder.

The Russian main army makes it's appearance on the field...….

While the Grand Battery prepares to face the French relief force, which has now been spotted racing to save the supply column.

The column escort has now splintered into isolated pockets of resistance which are systematically picked off one by one

A unit of Saxon infantry, allied to the French, take shelter in the ruins of an abandoned monastery.

The Cossacks continue to plunder the column.

Nearing the end of the game, the French rearguard, seriously depleted, stood it's ground heroically just as it did in 1812.  While the Emperor and his staff, in a moment of distraction, fell prisoner to a passing Cossack patrol, okay that didn't happen in 1812 (but it could have!).

And suddenly it was all over!  Time to pack away all the toys and sit down for tea.

The rules used for the game were a Napoleonic variant of Funny Little Wars which are as yet unpublished and are here being playtested.  One new development is the use of polystyrene foam balls impaled on a matchstick (shown here in the centre foreground) so they can be fired from a cannon, this makes their flight rather erratic but it also makes it much easier to see what has been hit.  The figures were drawn from too many sources to list, and included many conversions, but most sharp eyed readers will be able to guess their origin (and if you're really stumped you can always ask!)

Limping back from Moscow

Somewhere in the deep expanse of Russia the Grande Armee of Napoleon I has begun the long march back to it's homeland.  A successful invasion had seen the most glittering army ever assembled in history, chase an elusive foe all the way to the gates of Moscow.  But then the snow began to fall........

A French column is strung out on the march struggling through the drifts and eddies of snow, danger on every side form wolves, partisans and the dreaded Cossacks.  The slow lumbering wagons must be protected at all costs, they contain the food and ammunition essential to the survival of the army, not to mention all the loot plundered from the city.

Much of the Armee is composed of foreign contingents pressed into the service of the Emperor, here the Bavarians show good order as they trudge through the endless bleak landscape.

A French rearguard screens the column from the pursuing Russians, led by the redoubtable Marshal Ney, who is seen here on the left, conferring with Marshal LaSalle (quite amazing really, seeing as the later had been dead for three years by 1812, but history is a minor inconvenience when it comes to playing with 54mm toy soldiers!)

The well supplied, hardy Russian infantry catch up with the column and start to exert pressure on the rearguard.

The Russians throw themselves at the French oblivious to casualties, buoyed up with vodka and inflamed with patriotic zeal.

The French rearguard fall back steadily, contesting every inch of ground, selflessly sacrificing themselves to buy time for the rest of the army.

The column marches on but now stragglers are falling by the wayside with every turn.

The Corsican ogre watches in dismay as his grand ambitions begin to unravel and his army starts to  rapidly disintegrate.

Lurking in the shadows and on the flanks are the ever present and watchful Cossacks!

It was originally going to be a quick game put together at short notice between a couple of players, but such is the enthusiasm of the Funny Little Wars aficionados that it quickly escalated to seven players pitching in a few hundred figures on a thirty foot snowscape.

Well what else are you going to do on a wet, windy Monday afternoon in London?

TAG Cossacks

I'm about to embark on a new project which involves painting up a load of Cossacks, happily there are lots of figures available thanks to the current Russian manufacturer Engineer Basevitch who has included several in his many excellent and unusual sets.  The problem is that I want them to be a generic unit that can be used from 1800 through to 1930, so what colour do I paint the tunics?  When in doubt I always look at what the toy manufacturers have done in the past, not always historically accurate, but good enough for me and with that in mind I dug out my old composition Cossacks made by TAG.

The figures I'll be painting are all wearing the distinctive cherkesska tunic with sown in cartridge pockets like these above.  The first two figures here are TAG and I assumed the third one was too when I bought it, but when I put them all together I see it's very different, obviously shorter with finer detail and made from white plaster, it's very TAG in style so it could be a later improved line of production but I'm just speculating here.

I've never been entirely sure what this thing hanging on their back is meant to be but I assume it's meant to be a traditional bashlik hood.  I'm not sure this exercise is helping with my uniform colour quandry!

While I had the Cossacks out I thought I might as well photograph the rest of my TAG figures,  These are curious creatures, made in England after WW2, but beyond that nobody seems to know much about them or who made them, the only clue being the large "dogtag" they wear tied around the neck which proclaims them to be "A TAG Educational Toy".  From left above are 2 Royal Armoured Corps, a paratrooper and an infantryman.  I've always been curious, on what basis TAG could claim these to be educational?

Mostly they're made from a green/grey composition material very similar to Milliput which put me in mind of the gunk people used back in the old days to repair the rusted patches and rotted wheel arches on their car.  Other materials such as plaster are also used.  I think the MP in white helmet is just an ordinary infantryman who has been embellished by a previous owner, I'm not the culprit on this occasion but I have to admit to ruining many a good toy soldier with dodgy painting in my schooldays.  The center figure is a British Military Police "Redcap" (factory painted) followed by two rather robust Guardsmen.

The reverse side of the "dogtag" gives unit information.  I wouldn't normally bother showing a back view but on this occasion I was quite taken with the detailing of the parachute harness and sten gun slung on the MP, it shows a modicum of research and modelling on what are otherwise very crude toys.  I've never consciously collected TAG figures, I don't really like them and I'm not even sure how I came to have these.  I guess you just acquire the odd figure here and there then before you know it a collection has quietly crept up on you.

Milliput or Green Stuff?

For several decades now I have been happily converting toy soldiers using the two part modelling compound known to all as Milliput, which does have it's limitations and sometimes causes a bit of skin irritation.  In the meantime, the rest of the world seems to have passed me by and moved on to using a similar product known as Green Stuff.  Not wanting to miss out, I wandered down to Games Workshop to see what all the fuss was about and bought some.

I spent much of last year basing and painting up just about every Viking, Saxon and Norman figure that I could find, so in order to get a bit of variety I started combing through the junk boxes at toy soldier shows looking for damaged figures to repair and anything that might be easily converted without too much effort.  My first attempt with Green Stuff was just adding beards and extra hair, nothing too ambitious!

In The Works (a UK book, toy and craft shop) I found some rather useful little wooden disks, they come in three sizes, the middle one is perfect for circular shields on 54mm toy soldiers, while the small one is good for bucklers etc and the largest I will use as an alternative to metal washers for bases.  The same store also provided "Pearl Stickers" I'm not sure what you are supposed to do with these but they are little half domes of plastic, sticky on the flat side, and perfect for making shield bosses.

The look I was going for was a sort of generic Hiberno, Celtic, Pictish barbarian look.  The first two above started life as Indians in the Jean Hoefler (German) Wild West series, with feathers and trouser fringes trimmed off, then facial hair, shields and suitable weaponry added, the monk was a Hoefler nativity figure of Joseph who has had a crucifix on a pole added.  Finally, a Cherilea (UK) Saxon, who had lost his spear has been rearmed then given a shield and painted up as a "Wild Irish" noble.  

Another wild west Indian, this time by Cherilea, brandishes a new sword while hurling insults at the enemy.  A Cherilea Saxon archer who had lost his bow is now throwing a dart, a peculiarly Irish weapon of the time, the scar from the quiver trimmed off his back has been hidden under a shield which is hung on a strap cut from metal foil.  Next a REAMSA (Spanish) Viking is unaltered, just painted up to join the Irish warband.  The last figure is from a recent wild west set made in China, I think sold under the brand name Supreme, the rest of the range are really rather poor but I quite liked the pose of this one thrusting with a spear.

Three more recruits for the Irish warband, a Hong Kong copy of a Marx (USA) Viking has been given a long handled axe, another REAMSA Viking just given a paint job and a Beja Tribesman made by Armies in Plastic (USA) who is suitably barefoot and ragged to look the part.

Getting back to the Green Stuff, I found it easy to mix and easy to apply but it hardens much faster than Milliput so you have to work fairly quickly, I wasn't expecting that and I don't see how some modellers on other blogs can do such extensive and intricate work using it. I guess it's a bit of a learning curve but on balance I think I still prefer the Milliput.

This lot would never win any prizes in a modelling competition (not that I go in for that sort of thing) but I think I'll get away with it when they're all mixed into a horde on the wargame table.  At the end of the day it's all just a bit of fun...……..isn't it?

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?