And the depression begins!

 T’other night, I was doing something vaguely useful (but distinctly masculine) in the kitchen when I noticed it was pitch black outside. So I went to collect Smaug from whatever destructive activity she was engaged in to take her for her bedtime Jimmy Riddle, when I noticed the time: 20:05.

Ohhhhh, FFS. Summer has buggered off and the days are slowly descending into darkness and November, the most depressing month of the year.

But it is ‘Spray September’, so while there are some decent days left it’s time to get out and prime as much as you can. In my case, this means digging out some desert stuff to do over Christmas, which enables me to look at sunny photographs, even if they are black and white. Nearest I can get to the seaside.

So I have wrestled some RUBs full of 1/100 tanks down from the loft and have begun sorting them into Rapid Fire formations.

The old family picnic table fits nicely on the green bin!

I’ve probably gone OTT again. The Stuarts are drying in the garage.

Joining them will be some new Humber Armoured Cars from Tabletop Workshop which I bought from Bovington a few weeks ago. These are lovely little kits and take me back to my Matchbox version, which was the first vehicle kit I made from start to finish, including decals and scenic base. That was exactly 50 years ago! I already have some TW Matildas and they are nice models. Bit fiddly in places (probably because they were initially designed for 1/72) but a little bit of patience brings great reward. Photos will follow later in the year, but you can catch a glimpse in the top photo.

Meanwhile, here is my test chart of sandy something paints. I'm going to have to go a shade lighter than I did for my 1/72 (and 1\56) so I will need to play about before mass production. I’m trying to avoid mixing, although the big blob on the left is Richard Marsh’s recommended brew for Italian armour; a 50:50 mix of Vallejo Dark Sand and Middlestone. I think it looks rather nice, so will find my half empty tub of Dark Sand and squirt some Middlestone in it. I will probably use Beige instead of the (excellent) AK light stone, otherwise all Caunter colours will be from the AK box.

Do this sort of thing on plastic card, not paper card. Paper card makes the colours darker, so you don’t get an accurate match.

If you are wondering what has happened to the WSS, they are all prepped and ready to go in October, when I'm due to undergo my fourth and final knee operation. Hopefully, it will not be so painful that I can’t slap some colour about. But that’s what I thought before…

Onwards and upwards, Mes Braves!

1983 Retrospective (or something like that)

 As mentioned in the previous post, the descent into A Levels, hunting for a part time job and joining a club for ‘proper’ wargaming began in September and I can reasonably claim that was the point at which the childlike joy of toy soldiers began to fade into ‘serious’. At 60, I look back and wonder if that is why I am now so jaded with the gaming element of the hobby. John Ruddles got it right.

One of the things that amazes me was how I managed to experiment with so much in the first half of the year: Pony Wars, AWI, Zulu Wars, Commando raids… All on a shoestring budget! I think the inventiveness that characterised younger wargamers in the 70s and 80s has been lost. How many wargamers nowadays start off looking at magazine photos and aim for that, buying into whatever ‘system’ and it’s associated figure ranges has the best advertising, rather than chopping up cardboard boxes and raiding bins (especially the bins from Skool woodwork and art rooms - yes, I did do that) for useful bits and bobs. Or spun through a loo roll if they needed a lighthouse.

Perhaps I’m being unfair, but it would be nice to see people struggling with hair roller armies, or trying to create pipe cleaner cavalry for pipe cleaner infantry. I can do both 😉.

My main inspiration in those early years came from films, comics and Commando books. Of course, I was reading ‘proper’ history books and building my library (courtesy of Bryan Forbes’ bookshop) but who wants to do a ‘Dark Age Infantry Slog’ when you can be Gregory Peck and David Niven? This game was a mix of all those influences.

Sadly, the music which powered me through all my experimentation up to September rapidly went downhill, UB40 being the catalyst (can’t stand them!) and the excruciating Flying Pickets giving the year a musical coup de grace. There were a few honourable exceptions - Lionel Richie, Simple Minds, Assembly - but even groups that had come up with earlier belters were scraping the barrel. Compare Let’s Dance to Modern Love: even Bowie was letting us down! Little did I know Queen were limbering up to save the world…

However, worth a mention was the late, great Bonnie Tyler, whose Total Eclipse of the Heart video was filmed up the road from me in what was Holloway Sanitorium! I actually visited there on a skool trip once. Yes, St Ann’s Heath Middle Skool thought a great day out for the kids was a trip to a functioning mental hospital. Mind you, it’s where most of the teachers should have been.

1984 would see an improvement musically, academically and financially over the final months of 1983, and I mostly enjoyed my Friday nights at Staines, although it was clear I was not part of the ‘in crowd’ and I would not make any friendships, lasting or otherwise. From a gaming perspective it did introduce me to different periods and scales but I’m not sure if I spent my years there just going through the motions and doing what I thought was expected of me, because no matter what I played there was always something missing…

It was the smell of French Marigolds as you rummage around to find a paratrooper with a broken leg.

Anyway, a quick visit to the loft and I found these survivors from the raid. Enjoy!

Lloyd, Ravenwood, Marion & Doctor Jones

Written in 1978!

German mobility!

If I look harder I may find some more bits. Note my WSS generals are being prepped…. 

For men of a certain age…

Let me take you back to… August 1983

 The summer of 1983 was probably the warmest and sunniest since 1976. This was ideal for my purposes as I could set everything up and leave it out overnight, giving me a whole day to play and time to savour every event. In many ways, it was the last gasp of toy soldier innocence: in September I would join a club, start A levels and planning for life in the real world. It would also be the last gasp of cracking chart music as UB40’s awful droning kept Madness off the number one slot, Culture Club’s soft poppy nonsense appeared and the year ended with The Flying Pickets destroying Only You with their bing bong bobbly bollocks. This might be worth a full post later…

Anyway, on with the show!

The Plan

The commandos split into three teams: 3 men (including the sniper) would be parachuted into the jungle to set up a block or ambush on the coast road, the main group would land at the port, which would be secured by the local resistance (leaving a signaller to alert the sub for extraction), and head for the radar station. They would enter as stealthily as possible, take anything of interest and blow up the rest before racing back to port.

All the baddies’ reactions would be diced for - nothing was fixed, I would make it up as I went along, using Recon’s figure skills where I could. After all, I wanted a few surprises! If all went well, it would be a boring game: but the dice gods were not going to let that happen…

This is roughly the makeup of the teams. Sadly, I did not keep all the stats or write a battle report, so this is all from memory. All the commandos and resistance had names, but I can only remember a few.

Team 1: Captain, Lieutenant, RAF Sergeant (Howard), Radar Expert (my Australian officer conversion to Indiana Jones!) with the remainder mostly Australians with one US infantryman (following the US involvement in Take or Destroy. He was named Lloyd, after Jim Lloyd, a character in Centennial which I wrote on his base in 1978!). There was also RSM Peacock, the Matchbox 8th Army Bren gunner who looked like Jack Watson.

Team 2: Sergeant, OR, Sniper (Shepherd) - all Australians.

Team 3: The resistance and Signaller (Thomas).

Act 1: No Plan Survives…

Although the mission started on time and there was perfect coordination between the sub and paras, the parachute landing was chaotic, with the three paper discs going all over the shop and Shepherd breaking his leg on landing, so one down already (very Dirty Dozen)! The others were widely separated, but they eventually managed to work their way to the road. There was a much bigger problem, though: the DAK spotted the parachutes and quickly arranged a force to investigate.

The Italian reaction was… stay in bed.

The main group landed successfully to find only two resistance fighters that answered the call: Ravenwood and Marion (you can see the heavy influence of Raiders on my teenage years!). The captain judged this would not be enough to guard the port, so along with Signaller Thomas one man was left (any more would weaken Team 1 too much). But that should have been enough as was no sign of the DAK and Team 2 was OK, wasn’t it?

Team 1 quickly set off for the radar station, while the DAK assembled a strong search team for what they thought was just bailed aircrew. This force was a Hanomag, a Kubelwagon for the Kapitan and sergeant (Airfix, the sergeant being a DAK grenade thrower that Paddy the moggy had chewed the grenade hand off!) and a Bedford, all fully loaded. There was also a Stalwart but the dice said no.

Team 3 set about fortifying the port as much as possible, fortuitously including a roadblock. At this point, there was still no sign of the enemy, but I thought that would be the most sensible course of action. With Team 2 still scrambling about the French Marigolds, it would prove a good call.

Act 2: Ambush!

The DAK quickly motored down the coast road, reaching the barricade without incident. The hanomag passengers dismounted to clear the obstruction, but luck was with the commandos this time as the DAK Kapitan failed to smell a rat and dismount his remaining troops. Suddenly, Team 2 arrived and all hell broke loose, with both teams pouring fire into the hanomag group, catching them in a crossfire. Despite the good start, the armoured support soon told and the hanomag’s MG blasted the defenders with accurate fire. 

Now, the action remains a bit of a blur, but the commandos were getting the worst of it. Despite lower skill ratings, the ‘quick casualty’ method I used for the baddies was to D6: 1 = no effect, 2,3 = pinned and 4+ out of the fight. While this was easy to manage it meant they had a 50% chance of surviving and doing further damage, while the commandos could be weakened by wounds.

When Team 2’s sergeant saw the DAK dismounting the Bedford, he knew he had to act, so a heroic action was needed… He charged the hanomag, tossed a grenade to kill the crew (4+ all round, I think!) and turned the rear machine gun on the Bedford, scattering the DAK. Sadly, he missed the KW which had driven off road and a blast from the MG killed him outright.

It was now a matter of mopping up. The remaining commandos and resistance were either dead or seriously wounded, but they had halved the DAK and the Hanomag was burning and blocking the road. The Kapitan now realised there was more than downed aircrew and the radar station was at risk, but it took the DAK some time to clear the obstacles and that all helped Team 1.

The Italians slept through it all…. Mostly.

Act 3: Charge!

Team 1 made good time to the checkpoint and managed to stealthily ‘remove’ the guards with some ease, but the sentry on the main gate was either eagle-eyed or heard the port battle, because he raised the alarm and sleepy Italians stumbled out of their barracks to take up their posts. At this point, the commando captain realised there was no other option than a rapid and violent attack, so with Peacock leading the charge they stormed the gate and made short work of the unfortunate Italians with only a couple of light wounds to show for it. Peacock took two commandos to the rear where the colonial troops completely ignored their officer and charged up the mound to retake the station. Peacock & Co made short work of them, including their brave officer who fought on alone until cut down by a Tommy gun burst. As Jones and Howard went to work on the radar, the prisoners (yes, I gave the pinned Italians the chance to surrender) were locked in their barracks and Lloyd volunteered to slow down the vehicles that could be heard revving their way cross-country to get round the still burning hanomag.

Lloyd was confident his Garand had range and rate of fire to make a nuisance of himself if he hid in the rocks. He also took a 2” mortar (the nib and cartridge of a Parker Replay pen which, when the nib was held back and released, would spring forward about 4 feet!).

It was now obvious there was trouble at t’radar, so the Kapitan sped forward in the KW with the Bedford following close behind with the handless sergeant. Lloyd waited until they were in range and fired the 2”: it landed straight in the front passenger seat of the KW, killing everybody aboard! In true James Coburn style, Lloyd cursed his luck: he was aiming at the Bedford.

The DAK sergeant, thanking his lucky stars he changed his ride, ignored the KW wreckage and sped onwards, the DAK passengers shooting at Lloyd, wildly but close enough to keep his head down.

Act 4: Finale

Now the game was in the balance. There were not enough DAK to retake the station but not enough commandos to blast through the DAK, so if the DAK played it smart they could corral the commandos long enough for me to make an umpire decision on the result (considering there was another Stalwart’s worth of DAK available!). But I had reckoned without Peacock, who with a sharp burst of fire killed the Bedford’s driver causing it to crash. Again, the commandos reacted quickly and rushed down the mound, using fire and movement and Peacock’s covering fire to keep the DAK down. The DAK could only respond with a few pot shots, so the sergeant and two surviving men ran to the nearest cover (I think it was my heel print in the spoil heap) where they were safe but unable to influence events. Or so I thought…

Charges successfully placed, the surviving commandos withdrew, but as Peacock turned to leave the last DAK rifleman took a chance and fired off a shot at extreme range. Peacock fell dead, a fluke headshot.

Soon after, a large explosion shattered the radar hut (no Italian prisoner were harmed) and the surviving commandos returned to the port. They found Thomas wounded in the Airfix Strongpoint and I judged he was fit enough to signal the submarine so ended the game there.

Epilogue

This sort of game could never be reproduced on a table or played anything other than solo. The nature of the garden gives the kind of terrain no table can provide and the solo element allows a single vision that can easily be tempered by the Recon system, flexible thinking and dice. It’s obviously not something that can be thrown together in an evening; it involved a lot of planning, but the end result was worth it. If I had my time again I would love to have a crack at a John Ruddles garden, but time, age and my crumbling knees are against me.

But while I could, I did. And I will never forget it.

 Please note the numbers on the counters are only a vague indication of strength!

Last of the Line

 A quick break before the penultimate 1983 post, here is the final batch of WSS units which would be fully prepped if I had not run out of black primer! All are plastic Warlord/Wargames Factory and most are destined to be Portuguese. I have a pile of generals to do too, but these are Front Rank. I could have used the excellent Ebor miniatures, but I wanted them larger than life. Never been a fan of Front Rank, but their WSS and 9YW ranges are wonderful. Service from Gripping Beast was top notch.

Black! Black!

Let me take you back to… the end of July 1983

 Fresh back from holiday, and unemployed as I had lost my shared paper round (my chum had got an apprenticeship and we were both replaced by someone younger and cheaper! It was also the last I saw of the local paper; an early lesson in how the nation works today), I began to put my plan into action.

So, here is the map my imagination transferred to my dad’s beautifully kept garden with some photos I found as close to 1983 as possible, as there was a fair bit of transformation going on in the 80s. My dad had just built a base for his new greenhouse on the site of my sister’s old Wendy house, which was lifted and shifted to the position on the map, along with a pile of the original crazy paving. That part of the garden was now basically a spoil heap, which would prove ideal for wargaming.

As far as the kit was involved, the radar station was two bricks on a mound of spoil from the greenhouse base, surrounded by barbed wire made from garden wire I wound round a broom handle! The bridge and lookout tower were from the Airfix Checkpoint set, the ‘resistance house’ on the port was my sister’s Britains farmhouse. The German camp was bare concrete as it was just a starting point and the Italian colonial troops (all the dismounted Airfix Indians!) lived in tents made from folded cardboard. Otherwise, the Italians guarding the station were Airfix (roughly 10 figures), the Germans were something like 20 Airfix and Matchbox DAK transported by the Airfix Hanomag and Bedford and the Britain’s Kubelwagen. The Good Guys were a mix of Airfix (mostly Australians), Matchbox, Timpo and Britains and totalled (eventually, as the resistance would be DAV x figures strong)15 figures.

All the goodies had individual stats in accordance with the Recon rules, but for the sake of my sanity, the baddies had group stats, with the DAK being better quality than the Italians and colonial troops.

Behold! The cartographic skill of Zod returns!

The Port. A later photo, as there was a huge shrub hedge to the left in 1983.

The jungle, and pretty much close to how it would be in 1983. Note tasty tomato production behind.

A good view of the coast road and my dad’s concreting skills. The German camp is to the right, not the left as my map shows.

My dad, post cancer op, using the hover mower he called ‘that bloody thing’. At least it kept him off the heavy petrol mower for a while… He is standing on the exact location of the radar station, the mower is roughly where the bridge was. Note the paving stones which I designated the only passable area of the lawn.

Some Time Away from Everything

 A few days ago I was sitting down to some tea and cake in Saltram House near Plymouth, traditionally where the family holiday begins (or at least Minime’s Annual Ice Cream Scam begins…), when the Mem’s mobile rings. It’s a text from my doctor with the results of my annual dicky ticker test, which I had taken the day before. To cut a long story short, I was gleefully informed that I was clinically dead and must eat more bananas. That put a shot across the bow and spoiled the atmos somewhat, as the Mem made it clear my usual holiday habits of eating pasties and cream teas until my stent begged for mercy would end when I finished my slice of cake.

Anyway, regardless of that, I was delighted to find that Lidl in St Austell had a good supply of fresh fruit and by keeping to my new diet I was allowed a few treats. I also had a break from the internet as I couldn’t link the iPad to the Mem’s phone so resorted to finishing Ian Knight’s excellent Zulu Rising, Corelli Barnett’s equally excellent biography of Marlborough (our greatest general and I will fight you for it) and two James Holland tomes: Big Week and Brothers in Arms, both from Emma’s wonderful New Chapter bookshop in Mevagissey. I also found a Ladybird book on Oliver Cromwell, so my Cornish ECW thing is still going strong.

Back to reality tomorrow, enduring the day job (I was planning to be retired by now) and dealing with my increasingly batty mother, who has taken to swearing like a navvy and giving nursing staff Harvey Smiths. So here are some relaxing holiday snaps to show life isn’t all bad. Yes, they are more arty sunsets.

Let me take you back to… July 1983

 Almost 43 years to the day, in fact!

Somehow, we managed to go on holiday again. I’m assuming as college finished early, like Minime’s has, that we were able to tuck an extra one in before the Skool holiday ripoff period started. Whatever and however, we ended up in a rather nice bungalow in Ilfracombe, Devon (Willow Close, to be precise!). My sister was far too old for family holidays and had managed to duck out. Frankly, so was I, but a week with my parents was preferable to a week of sisterly tyranny, so I went with mum & dad. To head off any potential surliness my parents told me I could do what I wanted (within reason) so long as they knew where I was. Which was fair enough, but limiting when I didn’t have my bike! Nevertheless, I spent a pleasant week dossing, sponging, listening to music and figuring out the most impressive game ever.

Recon was the catalyst. It was meant to be D&D in Vietnam (or Africa, as you could be a merc), which I tried on the college club with no success. But it did have legs as a conventional skirmish game, so I married it up with Once Upon a Time in the West (only the casualty calculator - I’m not mad, they were equally unplayable) and tried out a few moves with some card counters. What I had was something approaching a cinematic experience: I could create characters and use the D&D elements to make them achieve feats of derring-do. And I was in the mood for a commando raid…

My dad brought this back from work earlier in the year, after it had been read by most of the engineers in W E Sykes (yes - my father was a toolmaker!). It was about a commando raid on the coast of North Africa just before El Alamein. It is a fabulous book, but I had to reduce it a bit from a battalion-size action to half a platoon. My scenario was based in the Aegean (guess what film I was also inspired by) where the hun was building an advanced radar station which could seriously disrupt supplies to the Yugoslavian Partizans (bet you didn’t guess it was the sequel!). A small force of allied commandos would land by submarine, meet the local resistance, and destroy the station before it became active.

My room became a flurry of activity, as I diced for characters, made maps of the garden - yes, it could only be done with 1/32 figures in the back garden! - and worked out a plan that would never hold water militarily but would create memorable incidents. And the fact I remember so much so clearly over forty years later, when now I can’t remember where I put my glasses 5 minutes ago, shows I succeeded.

 Next time: more pictures, maps and, if my knees allow me up in the loft, figures.

And not forgetting…

Let me take you back to… June 1976

Saturday 19th, to be precise. My dad was about to undergo a double hernia op, which was a major thing then resulting in a week in hospital and about a month of recovery. Nowadays, you are in and out in a day but I digress…

The important thing is me, and more so as I would have my 10th birthday while dad was under the knife, so he took me to Addlestone for maximum scamming - whoops! - to choose some presents. I came away with a Matchbox He111 and a box each of the new 1/76 infantry (two German, though - dad did not want to be outnumbered). The one surprise present, though, was the Airfix LCM and Sherman. The LCM has long gone, but the Sherman survives in all its mid-80s Guards Armoured upgrade glory!

The hatch was modelled open as the Matchbox British had a tank commander and he needed a mount. So this is 50 years old and a bit fragile, but I still have my original Sherman which is probably 4 years older!

My dad built the Airfix stuff, but I had a crack at the He111. I did very well apart from not painting the pilots, which was my dad’s first comment when I showed him my magnificent effort. It was high praise indeed if you received a ‘Hmm. s’alright’.

Anyway, I’ll be jumping forward in time to 1983 again for my next post, with yet another holiday and my increasingly fertile teenage wargaming mind (helped by Keren Woodward from Bananarama).

Austrian Cavalry and the Wealden House

 I always seem to end up painting Austrians, an attraction the Mem (who didn’t enjoy her short stay in Innsbruck) cannot fathom. Does that make me another misunderstood Austrian painter?

Anyway, one cuirassier and one dragoon regiment done. Austria seemed to have a greater proportion of cuirassier to dragoons in the WSS, so another one is on the cards but I need a break from assembling Warlord plastics for a bit and these were the last of my prepped figures, so I crawled into the loft and dug out my box of unmade Innovate ‘Masterplan’ kits. I find terrain modelling very relaxing (which helps while I’m taking some enforced rest from work) and I’ve been eying up the Wealden House for a while. The original is in the Weald and Downland open air museum and features a garde robe (a khazi, Darren) which is faithfully reproduced in the model. However, Innovate has not included a miniature of Jeremy Lobb, who was rather cruelly shut in it on a St Annes school trip in 1976 (nothing to do with me). The only other strong memory I have from that visit was Jonathan Cox and his sausage sandwiches, which he would not shut up about. But I digress…

I was unaware that Innovate did a few ‘specials’ to go with their generic range, assuming this one was designed specifically for the museum. I’ve not seen another on sale since I got this, so I have probably upset the kit collector gang again, but models were made to be made. I’m still kicking myself I missed out on Thomas Hardy’s Cottage when it was on evilBay a few years back. Never mind. I’ve another Tudor house and some of the other kits will suit the WSS well enough for my purposes.

The Wealden House is one of the more challenging kits and needed more attention than my usual modelling MO tends to allow, but the end result was worth it. I always repaint these kits (cheap craft acrylics are best) as they have some rough edges that need smoothing, but they are good enough ‘in the raw’ and make sturdy buildings for wargaming. You can still get them, mostly on eBay, but they are becoming increasingly rare. I know I’ve said that before, but sadly it is true.

And that completes the French

 I will get round to photographing the whole lot eventually, but the regiment Battenbourg completes the French Collection (see what I did there). My first unit of Spaniards, Reales Guardias Españolas , are done bar the flag. Most of my units are currently sans flag, but this will be corrected when I save up enough cash to order from Maverick Models. The building behind is another Masterplan model, now rather rare.

Matt, Gloss or Somewhere Inbetween?

 Wasn’t Matt Gloss the drummer in Bros? Anyway…

A few years back I had an exchange with Andy Copestake (Old Glory UK) which was sparked by his wonderful ‘Shinyloo’ project. It was about how some figures suited the shiny better than others and we both agreed this was the case. I actually think this can be simplified by ‘new figures and post-1900’ for Matt and ‘Old Skool’ for Gloss. Having said that, scale plays a part too!

The simplest way to approach this is to trial on a couple of figures and decide what works best for you, as your opinion on your toys overrides everybody else’s. For my WSS stuff it was a no-brainer and Matt was the way to go. I now use AK as it gives the flattest Mattest I know. It’s designed for airbrushes, but paints on well and you don’t need much.

And that completes my Cloggies!

So, here is my quick guide on when to shine and when to flatten. And the inbetweenies.

Gloss: All pre-1900 Minifigs, Hinchliffe, Hinton Hunt (and similar), Airfix Type 1, Connoisseur, Warrior.

Matt: Everything post-1900, ships, aeroplanes, all ranges dating from the 1980s onwards not by Peter Gilder, all plastics.

Satin: All pre-1900 figures under 15mm. Trust me, it works.

Twelve and one flag it is, then!

 Finally settled on twelve figures for foot, but keeping five for horse as it looks better than four. I’ve got to get some flags and more 40x40 bases as I now have a major rebasing operation on my hands! I figured I could go against my standard basing configuration as I only need to represent column and line (and I won’t be playing with them anyway!). The other benefit of twelve figures is that I can get a unit from every sprue, so there is no wastage and it’s easy to work out what I need if I go mental again. I haven’t accounted for the Spanish, yet.

Otherwise, this is setting my juices flowing…

Prepping For Easter

 No, not stashing tins of soup and loo rolls, but doing all the boring stuff, like priming and bases, before I can start slapping on the colour.

Black! Black! The colour of the night! Mummy locked me in a cupboard and fed me pins!

All this started with a box of WSS Alliance infantry I bought on a whim. I made them up, primed them black then they sat in the loft for a year before I thought “I’m more likely to flog these if they are painted”.  So, I did and thoroughly enjoyed it. Now, a year later… I have scores of the bloody things! This will probably be the last phase (it’s my third Marlborough’s Wars starter set) if I can just stop faffing about and umming and arring over 12 or 16 figure infantry units and one or two flags per unit.

Alarmingly, I have more infantry sprues waiting for assembly but I’ve run out of painting sticks!

What Have The Funcken Romans Done For Us?

 From Arms & Uniforms Volume 1: Ancient Egypt to the 18th Century by L & F Funcken (a book I had out on near-permanent loan from Virgina Water Library in the early to mid 70s):

The funny braccae are a bit of a giveaway. 

And all the best people have these…

Let me take you back to… May 1983

 Traditionally (well, since the early 70s), my family always holidayed in the Tregony Holiday Park in Cornwall during the late May Whitsun week. This is because my dad’s factory used to close for that week (along with the August bank holiday) before they allowed the workers to have a choice, but we carried on anyway because errr…. Tradition? Anyhoo, I was nearing the point of desperately not wanting to holiday with my parents but still wasn’t trusted to stay home alone for a week in case I set fire to the house or just ate chocolate. To be fair, that probably would have happened but it did mean I ended up a tad teenagerish and spent most of the week bored. It didn’t help that May 1983 was wet and dull and Spandau Ballet were rampant in the charts.

But all was not lost because I had brought my own entertainment! I’d found a fishing tackle box for a quid in a discount store (for the life of me I can’t remember where) and had stocked it with my Pony Wars card figures, scenery and other useful wargaming stuff. I was also armed with the Newbury Colonial Rules and the April edition of Military Modelling with Stuart Asquith’s article on Cowpens. Well, what do you think I was going to do? Revise for my retakes? Go to St Mawes again?

So I commandeered the coffee table, sorted my carefully curated card bits and bobs into the two armies and went at it. Very slowly… It soon dawned on me that Newbury rules didn’t exactly give me the Loose Files and American Scramble I’d read about (didn’t stop me buying Cambrai to Sinai, though did it? 🤡) and worse, there was no way I would consider it for colonial actions. I played to the bitter end, the Tax Dodgers were given a pounding and then my mum suggested going to St Mawes.

This was something of a low point in the year, but it did teach me something: avoid complex rules. And St Mawes.

But, I still have the tackle box which now contains all my modelling kit. It’s covered in Milliput fingerprints where I created hundreds of 10mm and 25mm figures and gets a sort out every two or three years, when I chuck out something that I find I need the following week.

Where all the magic happens.

So what next? Can I get Recon to work? Will the weather improve? Will I ever practice my French vocab? Can I remember the chemical equation for photosynthesis without surreptitiously scratching it on a pencil?  Will Clare Grogan ever answer any of those letters I send her on a daily basis?

 Find out in the next instalment…

PS The Tregony Holiday Park was actually very nice and would go there again if it hadn’t been sold and turned into a housing estate. Oddly, if you go to the location now you can still make out the park layout.

PPS Always hated St Mawes. Once you’ve seen the castle, that’s it. Nothing else to do if you are a child and worse if you are a teenager because your parents are with you! Last time I visited was on Honeymoon and it’s just a rich twat’s paradise now. We sat across from one of the swanky hotels, slurping cornets and wondering how money seems to go to the most stupid on earth. However, we had a laugh watching some idiot woman, dressed like an ‘I Dream of  Jeannie’ cosplay, manoeuvre a shaded pram containing two ratty dogs up the hotel steps.

Let me take you back to…. January 1983…. And then to April 1983

 Ok, I’ve bounced backwards and forwards using my heat pump Time Machine (hence the unreliability), but this is a brief interlude before I begin work on the ‘big thing’ of ‘83. There might be another one, but this will do for now.

I must say I’m still a sucker for the shiny cover and paper.

To be more accurate, 7 January (because it was the same day The Fourth Arm started on BBC1). Dad was on 6-2 shift and I finished early from college so off we went to Wickes/Aldershot. With my eye on these shiny rules, I popped into Concorde Models and rifled through the large white drawers at the back of the shop. They stocked a useful supply of wargaming stuff, mostly Skytrex and Minifigs from memory, and on this occasion I left with some Skytrex modern tanks and the Osprey Zulu War book (which I still have). You can see how much I had on the go this year.

I soon managed to paint the tanks up and had a couple of test games but cash flow (more cash spread…), and my success with Pony Wars, had me resorting to card strips to fight my mini-campaign. This was the replacement for my second Pony Wars outing and took place in our conservatory (on the same rickety dining table) to the strains of Let’s Dance during the Easter holidays.

The scenario was a small British Battlegroup holding off Red Forces (of the Purple Moon, if you ever read Frontline UK in Bullet) in an unnamed British protectorate. The British were based roughly on what was used in the Falklands (scary to think it was less than a year earlier) and the Reds/Purple Moon were what my Jane’s Armoured Fighting Vehicles book said the Argentines had, so M47s (gorgeous!), Shorlands, LVTP7s etc.

It sort of went OK, and I managed to get a couple of games out of it but I honestly have no idea how anybody ever managed to finish a game with anything more than a reinforced company! Fair enough, I was new to the rules (and a bit thick) but goodie gumdrops it took ages! If only at the time I had a copy of the simplified modern rules that appeared a few months later in Miniature Wargames, things would have been so different.

Anyway, it all went the way of the plucky British and the decidedly oriental-looking foreign hordes were sent packing. No dodgy human rights lawyers around, obviously.*

With that particular boat floated, I parked the rules and my small collection of tanks and set my mind to Newbury rules and cutting card shields for my pipe cleaner Zulus. But that article in the April 1983 Military Modelling on Cowpens looked rather interesting…

*Especially those who have Ukrainian male models setting fire to their old stuff.

Let Me Take You Back To…. February 1983

 ….when I was off sick from college.

1983 was, along with 1977, what I considered a ‘formative year’. I grew up a bit, learned much and did a great deal.

Much of this was down to the radio I got for Christmas which freed me from the tyranny of parental control over what I could listen to without one of them moaning that they couldn’t hear the words. This opened a whole new world of individuality. My wargaming life also exploded, boosted by my dad’s regular trips to Wickes in Farnborough and a quick run in to nearby Aldershot for Esdevium Games and Concorde Models. I would end the year joining the Staines club but at this point I was on my own.

Lastly, there was college. I was on retakes, a result of a nightmare educational experience at my awful skool, but I could relax in college and found it rather easy, so I coasted a bit. This is why I ended up pondering Pony Wars, rather than revising for the mocks I was hoping to avoid if I could spin out an extra week. College may have been better than skool, but I was still happier at home!

In truth I had a nasty virus, so it was a week of coughing my insides out followed by an enforced week of rest. And this, dear reader, was when it all happened…

My original copy!

I had Pony Wars for about 6 months. For those unfamiliar with the rules, it was designed as a show participation game and the amount of gear to play it was well above what I could manage. But the suggestion in the back of the book to use card strips for the Indians… Why just the Indians? I had enough coloured card to represent all the various groups by colour code - buff for Indians, blue for cavalry, etc. But I really needed a table and, as luck would have it, our rickety old folding dining table was exactly half the size of the recommended playing area at 15mm.

All I had to do was halve everything! So, In a flurry of activity, coughing and Laura Brannigan, card strips were cut to half the 15mm base sizes (double thickness, pasted together), terrain was cut from an old cardboard box and all measurements were in cm rather than inches. My dad found a sheet of hardboard of the exact size (probably from Wickes) to cover the table (it was still my parent’s property!) and after three days of chopping, gluing and trial/error I was ready for action!

I chose the Homestead game as it seemed the easiest and I had an absolute blast! I had better eyesight and nimble fingers then, so it wasn’t that fiddly (to all intents and purposes it was 6mm) so it all went smoothly, but it was designed to play indefinitely and the end of the second day I was flagging. Not even Bonnie Tyler belting out Total Eclipse of the Heart (video was filmed up the road in Holloway Sanatorium) could motivate me, and when the drums started beating, signalling massive Indian reinforcement and Lord knows how many more hours, I called a halt.

Running something that size, even in rude health, is hard work but it was a fantastic experience with lots of memorable incidents. My favourite was the homestead that found themselves in the path of a large warband with only one round of ammo. They dutifully used the last bullet on the single female and prepared for the worst, only for the Indian reaction roll to be…. Leave the table! A cavalry patrol arrived two moves later, to find four men and a woman riddled with bullets… 

I also played a bit of this with card strips cut to scale. Not my original, but a pristine copy off evilBay.

I planned another game for Easter, but when it came to play I chickened out. The first game was so good, I couldn’t bring myself to despoil the memory with a poorer game. Plus I had moved on to the Zulu War.  I never dumped the rules and I did play again with the Southbourne group’s massive setup. Again it was a lot of fun, although this time I had nothing more than a single troop of cavalry! I think there is still mileage with the game if you reduce it by 2/3 to make things manageable. But I wouldn’t have missed the experience for the world.

Another trip to Aldershot resulted in a set of Newbury Colonial rules and an order to Peter Laing for some Zulu war figures, although the first game I played was a refight of Cowpens (using card strips…) on our chalet’s coffee table whilst on holiday in Tregony. Little did I know what that would start…. However, the summer was approaching and as the weather improved my thoughts turned to the garden and what I could do with all the 1/32 figures I still possessed. But that’s another story.

Not my original but still as complicated.

PS I passed all my exams.

I wonder what this can do…?

There is a name for this kind of horror…

Submechanophobia!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submechanophobia

As a kid visiting museums (with varying degrees of interest), I began to notice that I had an increasingly uncomfortable reaction to model sailing ships. Sailing ships only, mind. HMS Hood = no problem.

This grew over the years to the point where I now get a physical reaction. The Airfix classic ship size I can cope with, but as the models get larger I suffer anything from shortness of breath to feeling sick. It’s not only models: things underwater and boat hulls in general (especially water lapping against them) can set me off.

This has led to some rather embarrassing situations as I have worked in a number of navy buildings that often contain a model or two. In one location I was somewhat taken aback to find they had plonked a huge model of Victory next to the Gents. Caught short one day, I had to close my eyes and be led by hand to blessed relief by a bootneck, who I think is still laughing now. Of course, this was after I got married which may well have been different had the Mem not been similarly amused: our third date was a visit to the Mary Rose…

I’ve not met anybody with a similar problem, apart from the occasional agreement that stuff underwater can be a bit creepy, so it’s nice to know it’s not that unusual and there is a name for it.

And you never know - I might even be able to claim a PIP on day and get some of my tax money back. Every cloud, an’ all that.