I also enjoy 54mm & 60mm Toy Soldiers from Tim Mee, Ideal, MPC, and Marx Toys! I have collected toy soldiers for over 55 years. You can eMail me at [email protected]. Thursday, February 10, 2011. Quick & Simple Wargame Rules for Everything Quick and simple wargame rules for everything. You need a six sided die, and a coin. We had a toy soldier wargame in the garden this afternoon – great fun. Have a look at my blog, I'm using Armies In Plastic and HaT soldiers and some simple made up rules. What is so great about 54mm wargaming, especially for some individuals like me is that I can see them clearly. They are also easier to handle. 54mm gaming can take.
In the past I have used a camping stove to melt metal for casting. However, they do have some safety issues with exploding gas canisters. My wonderful wife, concerned about my safety, urged me to buy an electric hotplate. So I recently bought a cheap double hot plate from Kmart. A quick test has revealed that it will melt casting metal, although more slowly than the gas stove. Better to be safe than sorry.The new mould is a recent purchase on German EBay.
It was made by a company called Scad that produced seemingly random moulds of semi round figures depicting various troops of the Napoleonic and Franco-Prussian Wars. Unfortunately the moulds are no longer produced and the company seems to be long gone.
Fortunately, it is still possible to pick up second hand moulds from time to time.The Scad mould is a French dragoon of Napoleon III from the Franco-Prussian War and will provide me with some more 40mm cavalry for the conduct of little wars. My small collection of Scad moulds is mostly a mix of 1 st and 2 nd Empire French. The moulds produce nicely detailed castings which paint up handsomely in a toy soldier style but can readily be painted in a more realistic fashion. Consequently, I am always on the lookout for more. Taking advantage of recent sales at Prince August, I have been most fortunate to add more moulds to my growing collection.
Cavalry have been added to the small stockpile of “Traditional Toy Soldiers on Parade” in the form of moulds for 54mm dragoons and hussars. The French & Indian War collection has been increased with the French infantry mould, my first purchase from the new 40mm Seven Years War series.I have previously purchased some of the 25mm Fantasy Armies series moulds, mostly as substitutes for various Dark Age types. I do have a few pure fantasy moulds, so an Orc mould has been added to them. The British infantry mould from the 25mm Battle of Waterloo series represents the start of an opposing allied force to the two French line grenadier moulds I already have.In the current May sale at Prince August, I have purchased moulds for the 25mm French Chasseurs of the Guard Trooper, British Life Guards Trooper and one of the Napoleonic Wars Horse moulds. So I am continuing to amass moulds whenever the opportunity presents itself.
It has been more than a few months since I last posted on this blog and many a moon has passed since I last had a wargame. The last game I played was over a year ago. It proved not to be an enjoyable experience, so I have not bothered with playing wargames at all since. My more recent lack of posts is largely due to a sense of wargaming ennui and some real life unexpected events.I haven’t been doing much painting either. Although I have made a little effort and daubed a bit of paint on some Tasmanian 40mm toy soldiers. Currently awaiting completion is the company of Launceston Rifles, that I started some time ago, and some Tasmanian Permanent Artillery.
There is also a painted but un-based and unvarnished Viking that has been waiting to be finished for a very long time. I’m not entirely sure what to do with it as I find that I now prefer and enjoy a simple toy soldier figure style.I have continued to develop a few wargaming related projects since my last post and have acquired a number of books as gifts and purchases. My collection of moulds for metal casting has been growing apace with acquisitions made from Prince August during their sales.
I really like the idea of moulds as they are full of potential and can just sit in a box until you need a few figures.The Prince August 54mm Traditional Toy Soldiers on Parade Colour Party was a particularly welcome addition. I have also bought some of Prince August’s 25mm fantasy moulds that I carefully selected for their usefulness in creating Dark Age armies. The cannon and crew moulds from the Prince August Wild Geese series have also been picked up to further round out my stockpile of moulds for the French and Indian War. I should probably explain that as I don’t think I have mentioned the project before.I have long desired to do some aspect of the SYW and originally I had intended to do it in 30mm, using a variety of figures including zinnfiguren and old Spencer Smiths. However the cost of going down that path proved too prohibitive so I started to look around for an alternative.
I then remembered Prince August had an assortment of moulds suitable for producing toy soldiers for the SYW in 40mm, a size of figure that I really quite like.So I narrowed down the focus to the FIW, making the project more achievable. As a result, I have been buying and stockpiling moulds from PA’s Wild Geese, French and Karoliner series, along with moulds from the old Holger Eriksson Cowboys and Indians range.
I chose these rather than the newer SYW range because they are more complete and being a bit more generic I can use them for both sides. However, I do want to collect the more recently released SYW moulds down the track.While my focus has been on stockpiling moulds, I have had other projects on the go. Some of my hobby time has been spent making alien style plants for future sci-fi battles. My major project, however, has involved the continuing effort to gather a 54mm medieval battle host using Britain’s Herald and Deetail toy soldiers.I am a natural collector of things but these will, I hope, occasionally see some table top action rather than just be dust accumulators. I will blog about those in more detail another time. I hope to resume casting in the autumn and I am rather looking forward to start casting some figures for the FIW. So, as you can see, I am still doing hobby related stuff despite my long silence.
During a recent sale on the Prince August website I was able to buy the boxed “54mm Toy Soldiers on Parade Moulds”. Indeed I was fortunate enough to have a voucher which meant I only paid a couple of dollars for the set, including postage.
I’m looking forward to casting some figures from the moulds and painting them in the full splendour of the shiny toy soldiers that captured my imagination so long ago. The moulds don’t represent a move to another size of wargames miniatures; they are simply a welcome return to creating and collecting traditional toy soldiers. I completed the 40mm French Napoleonic voltigeurs some time ago but only finally varnished and photographed them in December of last year, so I thought it was about time I actually posted them. I am very pleased with how they turned out as they capture the shiny toy soldier look rather well. The figures are home cast from Zinnbrigade moulds and painted with acrylics and then gloss varnished.The voltigeurs will join the nascent French army opposing the equally growing Tasmanian and Imperial forces. They will of course, and despite any anachronisms, participate in future battle games involving a fictitious Victorian conflict after the fashion of “The Great War in England in 1897” by William Le Queux.On a more frustrating note, a few hours before I prepared this post I was moving stuff around and managed drop a tin full of the 20mm WWII British that I posted about last November. It proved to be something of a disaster as I now have a tin full of figures with chipped paint and bent weapons.
There is also one figure that will probably require some deft work with the soldering iron. The temptation is simply to ditch the figures and buy replacements to paint or to strip them back entirely and repaint them from scratch.I have, for the moment, set them aside until I can do an assessment with a calm analytical eye. I may simply get away with careful retouching of the damage but it is still immensely disheartening. Needless to say it will be a long while before my WWII British will be ready to take to the field again. This batch of toy soldiers are from Irregular Miniatures’ 42mm Franco-Prussian War range that I have painted up as some better equipped Garde Mobile from 1870. They are, as usual painted using acrylics and varnished liberally to give them that glossy toy soldier look that I have come to preferThe Garde Mobile came into being in 1868 to provide the French with an army reserve in the fashion of the Prussian Landwher.
However, they were a somewhat neglected force and the quality of training and equipment they received was quite variable, those from rural areas being worse off compared to those units from the large towns and cities.I also have some more French in the form of home cast Napoleonic voltigeurs but I haven’t photographed them yet. They will be the subject of my next post. For my first batch of 40mm home cast toy soldiers I wanted to do something unusual but meaningful to me. I decided my first lot would have to be a Tasmanian colonial unit. I chose the Tasmanian Volunteer Rifle Regiment / Southern Tasmanian Rifle Regiment.Until 1870 Tasmania was protected by imperial forces but in 1859 the Hobart Town Volunteer Artillery Corps was formed.
This was followed by more local units, including quite a few of rifles. In 1878 the Tasmanian Volunteer Rifle Regiment (TVRR) was created with four companies based in the South and two in the North.In 1880 the two northern companies were split off to form the Launceston Rifle Regiment and the remaining companies became the Southern Tasmanian Rifle Regiment.
In 1897 the regiment was incorporated into the Tasmanian Regiment of Infantry of the Tasmanian Defence Force. (The Queen’s and Regimental Colours of the TVRR were eventually laid up in St. David’s Cathedral in Hobart in 1922 and 1949 respectively).Tasmanian contingents served with distinction in the Second Boer War and earned two Victoria Crosses and battle honours. After the formation in 1901 of the Commonwealth of Australia, the successors of the Tasmanian Volunteer Rifle Regiment continued to serve with excellence and are now represented by the 12 th/40 th Battalion Royal Tasmania Regiment.The figures are home cast from Zinnbrigade moulds depicting late nineteenth century Prussians and glued to standard size MDF bases. They were painted using acrylic paints in the fashion of the old toy soldiers manufactured by Britains. The figures were then lavishly varnished to produce a suitably high gloss. I thoroughly enjoyed the process of casting and painting these figures and I am now looking forward to completing some more and having a game with them.
In the meanwhile my first company of TVRR shiny toy soldiers stand ready to defend Queen and Empire against all comers. Some time ago I contemplated my approach to this hobby and what I wanted out of it now and in the future.
The first of my deliberations was on what gave me the most pleasure. After some thought I concluded that I simply enjoy playing games, particularly with toy soldiers, and have done so for as long as I can remember. That simple pleasure was best expressed by my love of traditional brightly coloured, jewel like, glossy toy soldiers. The second consideration was how to continue collecting and playing with toy soldiers long term while keeping expenditure to a minimum. The answer was to cast my own from moulds. I considered 54mm figure moulds that would fit with standard toy soldier ranges but after some research concluded that the cost of the moulds and the metal would be prohibitive. Further research revealed a fairly wide range of 40mm moulds and 42 mm toy soldier ranges that would address my needs.So over the past year or so I have been seeking out and acquiring home casting moulds for toy soldier style miniatures.
This has not proven an easy task as I have had to purchase them via German EBay when I could. Despite the difficulty, I have managed to build a reasonable collection of moulds for casting.
The moulds include Napoleonic, Franco Prussian War and late 19 th Century figures in fully round and semi round forms. In order to supply metal for casting I have been melting down old miniatures from long abandoned projects and I am now considering the fate of a number of projects that have stalled and may be better pursued in other ways.For inspiration I have chiefly looked to “Little Wars” by H. Wells and “The Great War in England in 1897” by William Le Queux, along with “Vanished Armies” by A E Haswell Miller and “Armies of Europe Illustrated” by Fedor Von Koppen. I have decided that the figures will be painted in either the old British or German fashion (although more neatly), as fancy takes me, with plenty of gloss but without any black lining or shading, for that proper traditional toy soldier look. As yet I haven’t decided on any of the available rules but will give the matter more thought as the project develops.
Alternatively, I will draft a set of my own or cobble a set together from aspects of different old and modern rule sets I like, as a sort of Frankenstein’s monster of toy gaming rules. I have, however, chosen to organize my units along the lines of my childhood forces. So my units will be formed around six man infantry companies and 4 man cavalry squadrons with officers, musicians and standard bearers extra.
Is there a 'Mainstream' anymore?Once in a while I ponder upon the hobby we are involved in. It is not enough - for me- to simply sit back and as one chap once put it on TMP 'Don't think about it just do it'- surely as asinine a line as you will see anywhere. However having said that- don't make the mistake of thinking-A/. That it matters in the real worldorB/. That I really care other than from the perspective of an interested observer of the Human species- or even Wargamers- not always the same thing in my experience.orC/.I expect anyone to change the way he or she indulges merely because I'm not a fan of Dwarf- fiddling or Badger mumbling or Interstellar Steptoe and son or whatever other off the peg brain free 'game' you decide upon.
In that respect my opinion is not to the point. After all if you choose to be a consistently lightweight mere consumer that is up to you.orD/. That I won't take the mickey out of everything I see. Let's be honest I find an awful lot of the current crop of stuff very very gamesy and quite risible, designed by and for people whose first and sometimes only interest is the actual game to the exclusion of all else. Nothing wrong with that as it stands but far too narrow for my taste. Now to explain why- take Pikemans Lament and Lion Rampant. I choose these because I own copies and both purport to be periods that interest me and that I know something about.
The following remarks do for both sets as they have very common roots. As simple games they may be OK assuming you know nothing nor want to know anything about the periods in question. As introductions to gaming they are not bad. As introductions to gaming their supposed periods they are at best mildly misleading- that would be Lion Rampant at worst actually running very much counter to the type of warfare they purport to depict. Basically Pikemans lament is a fantasy game in 17th century clothing. I have seen it argued that they 'got me into the period' - this may be true but if you did not explore the period further than that they failed to get you into it Three dozen soldiers fictitiously organised does not a period army make.
But as 'toe dippers' simple fare they are doubtless successfulSo what I see these days are various chaps trying to shoe- horn everything they see into one so called broad church - cos its all gamin' innit. The reasons for this are often- though not always- commercial and out of this commercialism has arisen the idea that if it is popular it must somehow automatically be good.
Hence the drivel that is Cold War Commander or the Twaddle that is Pikemans Lament both of which may or may not be good 'games' but neither of which bear much historical examination but I'm supposed to like this dross because others deem it popular and it's all gaming. I beg to differ. I don't do 'gaming'. I'm not interested in 'gaming' for its own rather nebulous sake.
I do not have a 'gaming' licence!!! Nor do I want one. I'm not even sure I actually LIKE 'gaming' as currently so often portrayed in the pages of the magazines.
I find quite a lot of it completely vacuous and with roughly the same intellectual level as a backward haddock. Apparently these days I'm supposed to like it because it is 'fun'and because the mysterious fun police tell me to. Well lots of it isn't, it is often simplistic and risible so I prefer my own kind of fun thanks.So what is my kind of fun then I hear you ask- aside from taking the piss you mean? Well at least some or perhaps most of the time I prefer something with at least some intellectual meat upon the funny bones. This does not always mean complicated rules or 6 inch thick rule books with an additional 10 volumes of supplements and army lists - often quite the opposite. It does mean rules that either have a good grounding in the chosen period or can be made to be so after a few local amendments to suit our view of what went on then and there. It does mean an Umpire who knows his stuff.
It often means that the all elusive but vital 'period feel' is far more important than mere dice rolling. That the look of the thing is more important than somebody else's army lists. It also often means a decided choice not to baa like the other sheep. To paraphrase Orwell 'Gamin' good thinkin bad' seems to be today's fashionable mantra. I choose not to comply so it must be room 101 for me then where I would be, devil a doubt, forced to play Lamentable Rampant or Horror of horrors warhammer 40k with some overweight but underwashed drooling GW fortysomething fanboy until my brain turned to porridge (assuming it has not already.).Another thing that seems to have disappeared in our 'adventure gaming niche leisure market' (thanks for that nifty Mr Preece) is reasonable debate and discussion.
A recent example which I found quite eye-opening in a depressing sort of way was a spat on FB- apparently you are not allowed to criticize GW in any shape or form. Now my poor opinion of 40k especially is well known but these fellows are so thin skinned it was astonishing, merely stating this opinion resulted in bad language and accusation and the stricture that if I don't like something I should ignore it. I find the 40k 'universe' dark, nasty and cruel, full of pseudo religious twaddle and desperately short of jokes. The actual game system is slow and clunky in my very limited experience.
Quite why I should not be allowed to share this is beyond me and equally why the fanboys are so small minded that they choose to take it personally is also baffling.Not that this narrow attitude is confined to our hobby by any means- see a recent post from the Tantobie Internet Tattler for example outlining his similar experience in another area. One does wonder if some of the younger generations are actually equipped for the hurly-burly of the real world if they cannot handle such minor differences of opinion as this then what happens when something important arrives within their limited ken? Further, the idea that you simply ignore something you don't like leads us to the possibility of going down a dark road indeed. Surely you discuss debate, take the piss, and hopefully something different and better may emerge both within the hobby and more importantly out there in the real world.The Death of Debate?I did think about calling this piece 'The Problem with Fantasy and the Death of Debate' but the death of debate is not simply a sci-fant problem (after all look at the total mess our selfish and idiotic political classes have got us into) and the problem with much fantasy gaming these days is that - paradoxically- it is far far more restrictive than much Historical gaming.
The reasons for this are actually pretty simple when you think about it. Much, but not all, sci-fant has ONLY the game to lean on. This is especially true of many of the one off skirmish a likes that we see today.
So the game is all there is in terms of background and depth which is possibly why they all look so samey. Now this is less true of say LOTR or even the various GW games which have fairly consistent and deep backgrounds that the more open minded can explore but speaking personally I do find so much sci-fant very thin on content. Which is why on my very rare excursions there I prefer my own back stories cobbled together from various sci-fi novels and a set of generic rules rather than some other blokes view of how I should do it. Yet having said that there is no doubt that in terms of general miniatures gaming varios sci- fant is very much in the commercial driving seat. After all with history you have to 'know stuff' and that is definitely out of fashion in the internet age. 'Knowing stuff isn't cool innit'In this I find I agree with Phil Dutre's point that many more 'modern' wargamers are simply consumers of what is placed before them rather than what he calls 'tinkerers'. This is a fair point.
Speaking personally I'd much rather be a tinkerer, putting my own stamp on something rather than merely a consumer of someone else's often very shallow fare. Indeed I'd go further and say that without the tinkering and the modelling and the collecting and the research I simply would not bother with the hobby at all as there would be sod all in it to interest me. After all, rolled one dice rolled 'em all.Some chaps seem obsessed with 'mechanisms'. I'm not, a mechanism is merely a tool and how is a hammer interesting of itself? Equally what- essentially is the difference between rolling a couple of D6 and as it oftens seems, standing on one leg and rolling 15D19 in succession to get the same result. This was highlighted to me in a set of ECW rules I recently purchased.
'The Kingdom is Ours' is supposedly fast play. Now leaving aside the silly formations and the huge number of pages wasted on advertising the range owned by the rule writers, How in the hell is rolling 17 dice in 3 or 4 groups to resolve one single attack fast play? Repetitive yes, tedious certainly - especially for those of us who do not regard dice rolling as an intellectual exercise. Since I am also informed that Cruel Seas also takes 17 dice to resolve a single torpedo attack I wonder if 17 is the new 42 (If you have never read Douglas Adams you may not get that one ) but more likely this is merely another facet of the current fad for replacing dice rolling for actual thinking or period knowledge. It may also mean that 'fast-play' actually equates to 'rolling dice instead of thinking' or indeed doing anything rather than thinking and further putting Joe Wargamer in the hands of game designers rather than in his own hands.Once again I choose not to comply. At least not all of the time. I want more from my hobby than mere dice rolling.These days you get an awful lot of 'I don't have the time' based excuses used for not doing whatever the person in question does not like or want to do.
Be it figure painting or reading or indeed anything but actually rolling dice, seemingly. Now sometimes you actually DO NOT have the time as work and life and other assorted bullshit(usually government crap in my case) intrudes so you do have to tailor your hobby to what is available to you. BUT does that HAVE to mean going intellectually down market?
Playing ONLY another skirmish - a - like. But then perhaps you have a very high boredom threshold. Personally again I choose not to comply. Hello sir:First time reader of your blog, found a link here in the blogroll of Monsier le Rosbif's Naps blog. Good read, I found it quite stimulating.I would only say that the place for the 'Rampant' style of books, and I think everything has its place, is as club rules for games of 2-3 hours max, as is the case with my current situation.
That being said, I do find endless games of Something Rampant to be a bit tiresome, even if it is a quick-playing set of rules, and like you, I hunger for the more complex. Hopefully I can scratch that itch in a year or two when retired.Keep up your writing, I look forward to following your blog more regularly.Mike. Hello Mike- If I may- welcome.
I see your point discussion and debate about our hobby is one o the functions- hopefully - of this blog. It is not merely 'Something Rampant' that I find rather taxing but the whole down market 'gaming first innit ' ethos which IMHO denigrates a lot of what many wargamrs do. Yes there is a place for wargaming lite as you say in the competitive environment of some clubs.
My group isn't like that fortunately and as you will see if you read some older posts -it is not about complexity for its own sake but not just about simplistic dice rolling either. Variety is the spce of life- and even wargaming. An interesting read. My only addition concerns the era of Pike AND Shot. There was a skill and development in the combinations and ratios of the two.
However a number of recent rules seems to have try to simplify things by putting troops in units of Pike OR Shot and separating perhaps not quite 'what god has put together' what acted together. It's thrown me back on looking for my own solutions which are not over complicated but treat the whole unit as a unit not a number of scarcely related bits. The commercial options I've tried and I haven't bought and used them all just left me puzzled and unsatisfied.Thanks for the encouragement to think through what I want to see unfold across the fields of Mars.Stephen. Andy,I only read this now (I have a huge backlog of blogposts I marked for reading:-)), but anyway, thanks for the nod in my direction!I do think that indeed more wargamers should actively think more about what they want to portray on the gaming table. It could be history, it could be fantasy, it could be a hollywood movie - but all these require that you know your background well before translating it into game rules to portray that particular (invented) period and style. The thinking bit requires that think about whether rules x or y has meaning within this framework. Do the rules reflect the relative power of various arms, or do they reflect tactics of the period etc.These days, there are too many games that have become self-referential.
Flames of War is not about gaming WW2, but has become about gaming Flames of War. The game itself has become the ground truth, rather than history or a fantasy universe such as Middle Earth. You might differ in opinion about what periods or fictional universes you like better, but if you can justify your game by referencing the game itself, we have lost something.As for history as a ground truth for wargaming, there is of course a spectrum, also depending on what you like to emphasize. Some like hardware such as tanks and guns, some like command issues such as orders and morale, some like the flow-of-the-story focusing more on a chain of events.
In my book, that's all fine, as long as you pay enough attention to developing elegant mechanisms that are easy to learn, fun to use, and offer a significant decision space for the player. Phil Only found your comment today. Your point regarding self reference is very well made indeed and had not really occurred to me in that manner but is absolutely to the point.
Parts of the hobby as a whole now feeds solely upon itself. Equally your point about emphasis is also cogentand here again variety is the spice, so personally I would emphasise different aspects in different games and different scenarios especially as I view myself as - in your terms- much more of a tinkerer than a mere consumer.