Wargames – Page 7 – My Toy Soldiers & Me

Maiwand /Kandahar… Second Anglo-Afghan War.

Back from Holidays… LOL

I do not know why they call them holidays at all… but well I am a bit conservative so let’s go away with it!

Hope diplomatic relations with Andrew can be restored…

“Saving the Guns at Maiwand”… Have the 54mm Toy Soldiers thanks to Andrew Stevens from REPLICA.

Here you have them (again). Some of them are for Kandahar of course!

Corps of Guides Infantry… all boxes by REPLICA!

A BIG BANG!…

Where can French Chasseurs charge British Infantry? ,,, answer: In A Gentleman’s War…

Much more my kind of Artillery… BTW see the face of the General seen his Hussars flee!

It all started with a BIG BANG… but today I have decided to take a rest… as The Kinks sung I’ts Too Hot!…

Shall I post in the future Yep never fear… as a matter of fact I will add a Post today of my pet subject… the ACW… finally decided to update the Post before this one with an ACW pic… it is good to go with a BIG BANG!

John Bertolini’s Own

A Gentleman’s War delightful set… I think he does them himself!

Those “Civilized” A la Well’s Wargames are tempting aesthetically (at least for me)… but I confess I prefer 54mm to 42mm… but you need all sorts you know…

6 mm Napoleonic joy

My current passion (but ACW if you please)

When I captured this pic on facebook it said 6mm… I am not exactly sure about that… they could be 10mm or even 15mm for that matter… but the caption said 6mm and I will go for that.

After all they are so inexpensive that you can have stands in line, in column and in square for some generic units and pop goes the whistle!

Communications

Paul Watson’s Own… quite delightful if you ask me.

Sometimes, but not always, I ponder about the futility of it all… I mean what’s the real (or imaginary) purpose of this web page?… to keep you entertained? (I mean people I do not know but surely have the same interests as me)… so, you have your daily ration of Toy Soldiers from me?… surely not… Is it me?… meaning do I have such a boring old life nowadays that I feel the need to communicate with the rest of the world to “justify” my last days giving away my experiences?… LOL (It has been a hot night damn it!). Summer is prone to those divagations… so I better end in a positive note… gonna try to finish reading the OSPREY: THE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG 1863 (1) (they have promised two more volumes)… and for once they have nailed the text , the info, and AT LAST! the illustrations (and I mean the new art in colour) the old photographs we know by heart!… A book I can recommend without reservation.

Cheers.

Mix and Match

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.