Thursday 25 June 2020

Toy soldier fun

It all started bout two months ago when I was looking for inspiration and examples for the 42mm project I introduced in my last post, I found a number of lots of 54mm Britains Toy soldiers for sale at  very resonable price. I almost bought a number of boxes, but even at those give away prices, it would have been a serious investment. And then...

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

14 comments:

  1. To me, it looks like some good fun ahead!

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  2. ps you didn't really use real cheese for hedges...did you? It does look a lot like foam...(which is what too much of our cheese tastes like...)

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    1. Yes I did, cut to shape, leave out in plastic bag for 10 days et voilà...Leerdammer works too, but is not as cheap.

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  3. Lovely terrain pieces Pjotr, I am impressed!.

    I used Funny Little Wars recently with some tweaks and very condensed measurements to fit a game on my little 120x90cm table. In the past I have used home brew rules and even Charge!, anything goes.

    I am really looking forward to see what you do with this project.
    Regards,
    Paul.

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  4. Great project, interesting terrain (/especially the gabions) and I really look forward to seeing this continuing.

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  5. P.s I am still confused about the cheese.

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  6. The gabbions and fort are brilliant! We use various sets of rules for 54mm games, One Hour
    Wargames works very well. You might find the Little Wars Revisited forum interesting.

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  7. Excellent Gabions and Fort! Thank you.

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  8. Thank you all for the kind words and advise. I haven't tried Funny Little wars, nor Little Wars Revisited. Initially I'm looking at Bonny Blue Flag, Glossy Coats and Shiny Bajonets (or is the other way round) and the One Hour Wargame (and other 19th C Neil Thomas rules).
    I don't like Charge enough because of the fiddly number crunching. I was thinking of Little Wars, replacing the canon shots with a d6 or similar, but maybe a bit to gamey, could be a laugh though, stretched out on the floor, cursing cat and dog...

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  9. It's very nice to be back - feels comfortable here. Missed this blog, Pyotr.

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  10. How are you doing Pjotr, it's been a while since we heard from you.
    Regards,
    Paul.

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    Replies
    1. Paul,
      it has been a while indeed. I guess a certain moment real loife just takes over. Hope you are doing well.

      Regards

      P.

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    2. Yeah, real life has to come first. My mother died recently and it has been a tough time for us.
      Also I find that a real war puts me off gaming war.
      It's nice to hear from you Pjotr, take care.
      Paul.

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