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.

Canadian conversion conundrum

Back in June I had an email from Jeff Chorney of the "For Honours Sake" blog to say that he was getting out of wargaming and would I like his collection of 54mm figures.  "Well of course I would but are your sure?" I asked.  Jeff explained that he had too many hobby projects on the go and needed to focus elsewhere, I guess we can all relate to that, so for just the cost of the postage I was please to take delivery of the following:

Possibly more than one unit here.  The numbering on the Union flag (XXVII) leads me to surmise that at least some of them represent the 27th (Inniskiling) Regiment of Foot but don't hold me to that.  I foresee these turning up in Crimean and Sepoy Mutiny scenarios that I've been mulling over recently.  I particularly like the staff officers in the foreground. 

Royal Horse Artillery?

I'm guessing that these chaps in top hats and variously armed are the Fenian Brotherhood or some such other rebels.

These chaps have me foxed, green tunics with yellow facings and dark grey trousers, does anyone out there have any ideas who they are meant to be?

And finally some local militia, no prizes for guessing the original figures they were made from but it's interesting to see the variety that can be achieved with little more than a head change and how a uniform painting scheme can make diverse figures look like a cohesive unit.

There is more but these are the units that I'm struggling to identify.  Jeff told me they represented the Fenian raids in Canada and the War of 1812, and were the work of Ross Macfarlane so I'm hoping to get a bit more background on them.  I was sad to hear that Jeff was leaving wargaming and closing down his blog but I'm grateful for his generous gift and at least I can assure him that they have found a good home where they will see plenty of table top action!

Oh, and my apologies for the rather naff title of this post.

German East Afrika in 40mm

I spotted this rather nice collection of German Colonials at the London Toy Soldier Show in March but somehow the pics slipped below my radar and have just come up for air.  They are mostly Schneider semi-flat homecast figures but they've been converted to Schutztruppe etc. which I think is rather neat.  

In the foreground and left native figures provide the Maji Maji rebels, behind them the German Colonials in tropical uniform and squeezing in at the back right are the Schutztruppe Askaris

A closer look at the Askaris with some rather nice standard bearers line infantry and jaegers.

"Hey they gotta' band"  well sort of.

The natives work tirelessly in the cowrie shell fields.

There was also a clutch of scratch built buildings to go with the figures, this is the Colonial Government House and to the right of it is on of the native huts.

Lets face it the original figures are so crude and common that they're barely worth the metal they're cast from but with a bit of work and imagination there's a lot you can do with them, why did I never think of doing this before?

Plastic Warrior Show 2014

Well, as I said in an earlier post, the Plastic Warrior Show is over for another year and I am late in getting around to commenting on it so here are a few pics I snapped to give a flavour of the event:

A Roman marching fort (from Hadrian's Wall?), it looks like an upscale of the Airfix 1/72 model much beloved in my youth.  There is an article on the building of this fine piece in the latest issue of Plastic Warrior magazine.

One of the rather more organised tables.  PW is a fairly small show, relatively speaking, with rarely more than 60 sellers and over the years has resolutely resisted the temptation to expand in order to specialise in old plastic toy soldiers (from 1/72 to 12") exclusively.  It is a place where most tables are taken by collectors looking to turn out their spare or unwanted items so you never know what is going to turn up.

This table is more typical of the eclectic mix, piled haphazardly box on top of box, it is a burrowers cornucopia.

It's always worth a look under the table too!

A rather nice old zoo made by Binbak, the entrance gatehouse has a revolving turnstile which I thought was a nice touch.  Behind that some Marx 12" WW2 British infantry, only issued in the UK and not seen very often, complete sets of the 12" WW1 French infantry and Highlanders had already sold by the time I got my camera out.

I didn't catch the name of who made this rather fine circus train but I think it is French, anyone from the Soldat Plastique 1/32 forum able to help with this?

The star of the show as far as I was concerned was this boxed Cherilea Cleopatra set.  Previously I've only ever seen a smaller boxed set containing just the Egyptian figures with the sphinx (lower left and  right) but the palm trees are a nice addition as is the pet cheetah.

A close up on the cheetah, I think it's actually the lioness from the zoo set but with a bit of chain wrapped around it's neck and spots painted on, now that's what I call adding value!

That's all from the show till next year folks.

War Game of the Middle Ages and Ancient Times - part 2

So how did the rules work out?  Well I have to admit when I was drafting the quick reference sheet I had grave misgivings.  Players dice to see who goes first in each game turn, the winner moves, fires and melees, then the loser does the same, actions are consecutive not simultaneous.  Movement distances and terrain penalties are sensible and not over complex, the same goes for firing ranges and effect, so it's all fast moving.  So far so good.

The French Battle advances, crossbow companies in the lead followed by knights on foot and heavy infantry.  The mounted knights hold back while the footmen test the softness of the ground and clear a path through the English men at arms.

The only difficulty we had was with the melee system, the rules state that when a figure from one side moves to within half an inch of an enemy they create the "contact point" and that all figures within an infantry move (i.e. 12 inches) of said point are included in the melee. Seems straightforward but in practice so many troops are drawn in that it just becomes one almighty bundle, perhaps it works better with 30mm figures?

First blood to the archers, three companies of French crossbows get off the first string of arrows and annihilate the Burgundian bowmen.  Realising the threat of being unable to reply to the enemy archers the English light horse charge and catch them unsupported in open ground as they ride them down.

The melee is a two stage process, first you asses which side has won then you calculate the casualties.  And this is where the difficulty comes in, different troop types (see QR sheet at bottom of post) have combat values which vary depending on the troop types opposing them.  This is fine when both sides have the same troop types in the melee but with the 12 inch inclusion zone described above it is inevitable that you will have mixed arms (heavy/light cavalry, heavy/light infantry etc.) on both sides and we found it nigh on impossible to figure out who had won the melee, try it yourself and you'll see what I mean.  

To simplify the situation we broke the melees down into a unit on unit calculation rather than the 12 inch free for all and it seemed to work okay.  Once the winner has been decided, casualties are based on a simple calculation which ensures that the larger side always wins, very similar to the system in H G Wells "Little Wars"

The footmen of both sides lock horns as they slowly splash through the soggy marshlands.

In the melee we found that when the heavier armoured French eventually came to grips with the enemy they bludgeoned their way through the lines but the greater numbers and mobility of the lighter Allies meant that they could quickly plug the gaps to blunt their advance and wear them down by attrition.

Four companies of English men at arms hover like mosquitoes around the edges of the wetlands.

Over the years I've been picking up bits and pieces of Timpo knights on the cheap - a pair of legs here, a torso there, from the junk boxes at shows and when I started to put all the bits together I found I had a decent enough quantity to field an army with no painting involved.  The only drawback being that there is a preponderance of Crusaders which seem to have been very much more common.  The idea of using them as a Crusader army in the Holy Land doesn't really float my boat and I can't see me picking up enough Timpo Arabs to make that feasible so I have decided that any figure in a white tunic with a red Cross of St. George will be English.

After riding down the French archers the English cavalry have overreached themselves and are charged in the flank by the French heavies.

I think it's fair to say that some rather basic tactical errors were made on both sides, notably advancing archers unsupported in an attempt to close the range for them (I might consider extending the bow range to 3 feet in future games).  With the loss of all the archers the game turned to one of local melees erupting all over the field and with no morale rules to break the tension these became a fight to the finish slugfest.

The English numbers hold up well against the heavier strength of the French knights and both sides are worn down by attrition until the allies decide to slip away leaving the French in command of the field but too depleted to follow up.

So all in all a fun fast play game, we both agreed the rules worked well as the core of the system but they need a little bit more built around them like something to cause a unit to break and run or even refuse to fight.   Our aim was to play the to game as close as we could to the original rules, or at least our interpretation of their intention and I think we achieved that, although I would love to have tried them using 30mm flats.  This was just a trial run so we kept the scenario simple but tried to include as many of the troop types and terrain features as possible, the original manuscript offers additional features such as constructing earthworks, sieges, supply etc. And for the Ancients there are chariots and auxiliaries, all the more reason to buy the book (see last post)

The quick reference sheet for the rules, should anyone wish to give them a spin!  Oh I think I forgot to mention that the loser of a melee falls back 1 move, quite important that.