Finished!

Visits: 468

That glorious moment when the job is done!… a close look at the matt will show you the hard work and love put into those Toy Soldiers… Ready to March and Fight on the Tabletop!… and remember the main thing TOY SOLDIERS never die…

Those are not mine at all but I can understand the pride of the painter!

Seen in Facebook…

Lancers for traditional AGW wargaming…

Visits: 74

First two pics by John Firth and the last by John Clarke. All easy to see in Facebook if you go to A GENTLEMAN’S WAR group… I dutifully bought the rules by Howard Whitehouse… they are fun to read… but not what I do with 54mm Toy Soldiers… You need all sorts you know…

Those are very fine Toy Soldiers and excellently painted, I do not use mine with those rules, and I have to say they are more “historically collected” and only for display because I have them in 6mm too… and there is where I wargame…

French Lancers
Rather fancy lancers…
The officer is out of THE PRISONER OF ZENDA… aka Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

Mix and Match

Visits: 97

A pic of the peak of my own 25/28mm Collection.

Funny, today I have a bit of time to write… well… the pic is to the point… by then I mixed and matched manufacturers… I did find DIXON horses fantastic coupled with FOUNDRY riders (but not exclusively… TO THE REDOUBT and OLD GLORY too!).

It was the apex of my involvement in wargaming on that scale, I had a moderate surplus of bits and pieces from here and there and I could easily change “heads” at will with my PROXON minidrill and vice… had a lot of horses of discarded projects (that I would use in fancy units as the mounted Regiment of the French Foreign Legion)… and life in the hobby was FUN.

I still used painting services for the rank and file, and only did paint myself “specials” or closer to my heart subjects. You see I had NO time enough to paint because my real life as an Architect used my time… and I have a family too!… so the only way was to organize, list, buy, get the parcels, customize, send the biggest part to the painters with full instructions… and paint a little myself.

I enjoyed those years of my hobby to the full because time was so scarce. I am older now… over seventy (bot my grandfather and father were dead at my age)… no longer can I have fantasies about long term projects… I’ve done that, been there, got the T-Shirt as they say… but surely enough those new technologies help me pass the time and share my experiences with other people with similar interests.

The Michigan Brigade of Volunteers is a pet subject (as the ACW is) and Custer was better served in the Civil War than in his “Indian times”… the famous 7th had NOT the same stamina as the wolverines… understandable too of course… I own more than a hundred volumes on the Little Big Horn and after reading them… you can have a moderate sympathy with Custer as a man doing his job… but the so called “Indian Wars” were frustrating from a military point of view.

That Custer is better known for his death in a NO WIN situation that for his campaigning in the ACW is one of those ironies in History.

Wow!… time to write without interruptions for a change!… count the present one as an extra Post. Hope you enjoy too.

Dilley’s work.

Visits: 59

Ok. Let’s pay homage and follow suite… guess those pics of Grenadier Guards by the talented Mr. Dilley will suffice… after all I was born in 1952 and she has always been there as a Queen (“THE” Queen in fact)… so it is part of my life too!

Outstanding models as usual… and never take this for granted…

You can even read the battle honours!… and YES thay are 54mm…
Just to be “complete”

Tony Dilley (again) II

Visits: 75

The Wagon “service” is an interesting model concept. 54mm Conversion.

Busy days. Not so busy as to do not appreciate the work of Mr. Tony Dilley again, if there is a frontier or red line between Toy Soldiers and Military Modeling Tony walks along it nicely and without apparent effort (just love his work!).

I do not “convert” a lot (a bare minimum in my Toy Soldier collection) and never with that quality of craftsmanship. Have run out of place actually… my cabinets look like the tube in Tokio… considering to put an end to collecting in 54mm for good (see next posts in the following days). I am nowadays only tempted to add 3 or 4 figures by the talented Andrew Stevens from REPLICA if ever bridges can be restored…

Enjoy!