[General Slade]

Thanks for the replies guys.

The riders do look a bit like Hinchcliffe/Heritage but the horses are very different (the Hinchcliffe/Heritage mounts always looked more like rocking horses than real horses to me).

 

[General Slade]

I find eBay works pretty well as a time machine.  All the things I wanted but couldn’t afford as a kid seem to turn up there eventually.  Mind you, sometimes it is a mistake to go back. I’ve bought a few things purely for nostalgic reasons and then thought what on earth did I do that for when the item actually arrived.

[General Slade]

Unlike the French, the British artillery would of course, if forced to abandon their guns, regroup somewhere and make tea . . .

http://movieclips.com/H4vVb-a-bridge-too-far-movie-a-cup-of-tea-cant-hurt/

Not the RA but you get what I mean.

[General Slade]

I had the same problem with a post with multiple links.  It kept disappearing every time I hit submit.  Eventually I tried it with just one link and it worked fine.

[General Slade]

Hi William, it will be a case of finding them first and then painting them.  But if I do track them down I may well give it a go.  Mind you, I’m not sure my painting has improved much since I was a kid.  Back then I was a perfectionist with good eyesight, these days I’m a bit more slapdash but I figure it is okay because everything is a bit of a blur anyway.

[General Slade]

Thanks Peter. I’m a fairly obsessive collector of Minifigs but I don’t really know much about the history of the company (beyond the potted history on the Caliver website)

[General Slade]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the information.  That explains why they are such a good fit with Minifigs.  I always thought that after the very early days all Minifigs were sculpted by Dave and Dick Higgs; did one of them leave the company and branch out alone?

Stephen

[General Slade]

I don’t think a proliferation of boards would be a good idea. If your topic is broader than Napoleonic why not post it on the General Horse & Musket board? If it is even broader than that why not post it right here on the General/General board?

[General Slade]

willz wrote:

That’s what e-bay was invented for to get rid of disappointments.  

eBay is quite good for unloading stuff you regret buying but even eBay cannot erase the memory of the disappointment I felt when I opened the long-anticipated package and found I had wasted my pocket money on some mis-shapen blobs that looked like 3D representations of cave paintings.

For those of you unfamiliar with the figures, this is a fairly representative example:

The weird thing is that looking at them again I actually feel a bit nostalgic about them and feel half-tempted to rummage through the loft and see if I can find them  . . .

 

[General Slade]

Adam,

Are these the elephants you remember?  They are produced by Viking Forge and I am not sure whether they may have started life as Asgard or Tabletop …

[General Slade]

They really are very nice figures.  When I first saw them I was absolutely convinced they were 2nd gen Minifigs.  The horse poses are almost identical and even the faces of the figures are done in a Minifigs-style.   The only noticeable difference is that the riders don’t sit the horses quite as well as the 2nd gen Minifigs and the hand that should be holding the reins is rather a long way away from them.

[General Slade]

I’d go back and get lots of Minifigs Valley of the Four Winds figures (everything except the Swamp Lords – I always thought they looked like something out of Dr Who rather than a fantasy game).

And if the machine could take me far enough back I would un-buy those Peter Laing Carthaginians that I ordered sight unseen. Boy was I disappointed when those dropped onto the doormat.

[General Slade]

Cerdic wrote:

I would favour re-naming the ACW board the 19th Century board. Generally though…..More boards. Lovely.

I think that’s a good idea.  Keeps the number of boards the same but creates somewhere for Crimean War, FPW, Old West, Colonial etc.

 

[General Slade]

A post about Tags would be a very good idea. I haven’t been using them because I wasn’t sure what they were for.  Maybe it could go in a general post collating advice about formatting, embedding links, posting pictures etc.

[General Slade]

I’d rather not have anymore compartmentalisation. Personally, I would prefer just to have a Horse and Musket board with no further sub-divisions.  I don’t really see the need to have separate 18th Century, ACW and Napoleonic boards.

[General Slade]

Hi Jeff,

I checked out your blog and I am really enjoying reading about the conflict between Alpia and Stagonia.  I’ve got to the point where the first big battle is about to start and I will read the rest this evening.  It’s nice to see some 16th century imaginations for a change.

Stephen

[General Slade]

Victory Without Quarter by Clarence Harrison seems to be popular and they are available to download for free.  I’ve read them but haven’t played them (ECW is one of those periods on my ‘to do’ list).  You can find a PDF here: Victory Without Quarter

Stephen

[General Slade]

I think cutting him from his base might prove tricky. Why not just cut the base back to the edge of his feet, that will stop the overhang from being so obvious.

[General Slade]

Jeff, were you by any chance trying to post something with more than one embedded link?  I only ask because when I tried to do this my posts kept disappearing completely.

[General Slade]

A nice irony of the Puckle Gun was that square bullets are hopelessly un-aerodynamic so whilst it might have been passably efficient at killing Christians it was absolutely hopeless at slaughtering the infidel.

[General Slade]

 

Hi Glenn,

Have you tried 15mm.co.uk? Copplestone also do dwarves and  Irregular  Magister Militum and Ral Partha all do dwarves and goblins.

 

[General Slade]

There is Tusk from Irregular Miniatures, which is described as “the classic game of mammoth hunting from 12,000BC to 1914AD (and on into the future).” I haven’t played it but I assume it would include rules for caveman on caveman action. http://www.irregularminiatures.co.uk/ They also make 15mm figures to go with the rules.

[General Slade]

I’ve stumbled across the answer to my own question.  It turns out that all of the figures (including the cavalry which I was absolutely convinced were 2nd gen Minifigs) are Asgard/Tabletop, which are now produced by Viking Forge: http://www.thevikingforge.net/historical.html

I’ve never heard of this range before.  I thought Asgard just did fantasy figures.  However, these are really good sculpts, very nicely proportioned and size-wise a perfect match for old Minifigs.  Did Asgard/Tabletop just do Renaissance ranges in 15mm or did they do others as well?

 

[General Slade]

Henry Hyde wrote:

Does this mean I should throw away the Humbrol Polish Crimson as well…?

No, guard it with your life.  That stuff is like gold dust.

 

[General Slade]

Hi Henry,

I’m glad to hear there are other butterflies out there flitting around. Among my many ongoing – or, more truthfully, abandoned – projects is 10mm ACW.  Here’s a few tips I gleaned from my reading at the time (it was quite cursory so I certainly wouldn’t dignify it with the name of research):

You need to use a bit of caution with the older uniform guides, since they tend to repeat the same mistakes.  I used Philip Haythornthwaite’s ‘Uniforms of the Civil War’  (Blandford) and so the first unit I painted was the Irish Brigade, complete with green collars and cuffs, which it turns out they never had.  The next one I went for was the Louisiana Tigers in their rather fetching brown jackets, which it turns out really should be blue.

The current thinking also seems to be that the whole ‘ragged rebs’ and Confederates in butternut thing has been a bit overdone in the past and that the supply system in the South my not have been as bad as it was once thought. I think supply was also the responsibility of the individual states so there could be variation within the army with regiments from some states being better equipped than others.

Finally your biggest challenge is finding the correct shade of blue for union uniform trousers. Sadly they are not the  sky blue of the Britain’s toy soldiers I had as a child. Finding the correct colour is a bit like trying to find Polish crimson for Napoleonic lancers, whatever shade you opt for it will not be quite right.

Stephen

[General Slade]

I checked out the Essex Zulus and they do look nice. Can’t stay I’d fancy gluing the shields and spears on 400 of them though.   You’re a braver man than me. Did the words “Zulus – thousands of ’em!” just  keep going through your head over and over again?

[General Slade]

Thanks Iain,

I recently picked up some of the Guard Grenadiers on eBay and I wanted to check the organisation to make sure I had got the right number of figures before I started painting them.  I can’t wait to get going on this lot.  I love their uniforms.

I hadn’t really planned to create a Westphalian army but I seem to have picked up a fair few of them along the way.  So I think now may be the time to get on with it.

Stephen

[General Slade]

Thanks Iain, much appreciated.

Stephen

[General Slade]

I’m really not keen on Blue Moon figures.  I admit I haven’t seen them in the flesh but I have checked out the pictures of them and the shafts of the weapons are a bit thick for my taste.  Also, the faces just don’t look very African to me. But it may be that the photos don’t do them justice.

[General Slade]

Thanks Will.  Since asking the question I have done a bit of reading up on the subject and it seems that the neighbouring tribes mainly fought with light javelins, which don’t sound as if they were particularly effective, and the Zulus aimed to close to melee as fast as possible, so there wasn’t any real need for long range missile fire.

Another point I really need to bear in mind when thinking about these things is that the Zulus weren’t looking at DBA army lists, browsing through everyone from the Sumerians to the Burgundian Ordonnance and thinking maybe we should balance our force out with some psiloi . . .

[General Slade]

Thanks Blackhat,

I’ll take a look.

You’d think it might have occurred to me to look in the colonial range in the first place . . .

[General Slade]

Hello Truscott,

I think you might be on to something with that. Last night while I was painting I listened to an old In Our Time radio programme about the Zulu nation’s rise and fall and it said before the Zulus started to build their empire warfare in the region was quite ritualistic, designed to prove the bravery of a warrior, so I guess that would help to explain why missile weapons might be frowned upon.

Hi Warren,

I had a look on the Black Hat website and I couldn’t see any Zulus.Which range are they in?  I’m planning to get them in 15mm so I will probably just use Minifigs (I use them for everything else so why change the habits of a lifetime!).  I won’t be using them as Zulus as such so I will be able to add some bows and slings if I can finds some figures that don’t look out of place next to them. In fact I’ll probably also have a king riding on an elephant because I like elephants.

 

 

[General Slade]

Good point. What about slings? They don’t grow on trees.

[General Slade]

I’ll buy that. Now of course I’m wondering what kind of trees they made their spear shafts from?

I’ve got a bad feeling I might end up having to read a book or something …

[General Slade]

That’s impressive modelling. Airfix kits never looked like that when I used to make them.

[General Slade]

Thanks Henry,

Much appreciated. Thanks for laying it out so clearly.

Best wishes

Stephen

[General Slade]

Magister Militum do some Halflings but no gnomes that I know of: http://www.magistermilitum.com/era/fantasy.html#order=Name&limit=36&p=1&dir=ASC&cat[]=59974

[General Slade]

I’m a fairly obsessive collector of old Minifigs and though I occasionally buy figures from newer ranges most of the money I spend on wargaming goes on the old 2nd generation 15mm Minifigs I buy from eBay. I also have quite a few of the Minifigs Pig-Faced Orcs and Valley of the Four Winds figures.  I think the latter was one of the best ranges ever made. I just wish my painting did the figures justice.

[Author]

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