I was googling around for alternatives and I came upon Armies in Plastic 1/32 toy soldiers. And then I found a Belgian dealer, good prices and easy on P&P. I needed a plan, other than buying toy soldiers to play Little Wars, or maybe Glossy Coats and Shiny Bayonets style gaming.
Not much worried about the historical context, I ordered some boxes to make a blue/grey army and a khaki/red army. The reasoning was I could paint them in the 70's Britains Deetail style...just the weapons, skin and some details...the soldiers' plastic would be the main uniform colour.
- And so it begins - |
Right, step 1 finished. Now I needed some kind of setting to do some mini campaining à la One-Hour Wargames (by Neil Thomas, nice little book, rules might just work for some 54mm gaming). I settled on a Crimea / Balaclava inspired setting where one force is harassing the outer perimeter of a beseiging army. They are the advance forces of the army that is trying to link up with encircled Petropolis. The skirmishes and at first smaller engagements are happening in the Table Valley and Wood Valley. That settled, the brave little toy soldiers need something to fight over.
-Aldi Emmenthaler cut in strips- |
-I decided we needed new placemats- |
- The gouache pots / placemat gabions being tested for size, I still needed to tease out the top to simulate branches sticking out- |
Looking good I thought...
-I found an acrylic wall paint tester, just about the right shade of brown, to simulate 70's brown plastic toys- |
Then I found some cardboard boxes and made some rough and ready buildings:
-A fort- |
-House searching in the village of Valcona, notice green cheese hedges- |
And there you have it, humble beginnings.
Now let me share this with you, Paul supported me to restart this blog, only for me to discover that he is way ahead of me. I forgot to ask him what rules he uses for his games. Maybe we should have a game together.
I'm so very lucky to be able to do all this, must keep the momentum up...the armies need to be ready for the grandchildren to play with, granddaughter is three and a half , grandson is minus two weeks, ETA 2nd July...
Happy gaming,
Pjotr