I haven't been doing much in the line of hobby stuff as of late since having a 20mm FPW wargame the beginning of April which was quite enjoyable. It was nice having a setup on the table and having a game! I'm trying to put an article together on the game for this issue.
What I have done is to spend some time writing down periods of interest and re-evaluating whether or not I really wish to do each of them this is something which happens every year or two. I "pare" down my periods and then have to do the same thing in another year or two!
What is most difficult to justify is having multiple figure scales within the same period, such as the SYW (6mm, 15mm, 20mm, and 25mm in my case), which is one of my favorite periods. Different figure scales can be viewed as an effort to accomplish different objectives within a period. For example, one may use 25mm for skirmish or small-level "brigade" type games; 15mm for much larger games; and 6mm for true "army" games. What I end up doing is building enough forces for all figure scales to essentially equal "army" level gaming, which doesn't make a lot of sense, I guess.
Sometimes my selection of scale is "dictated" by other periods. For example, I would like to do 15mm WWII Eastern Front (in addition to 25mm). Since I would already would have the buildings and terrain in 15mm, it occurred to me that I should do 15mm Russian Civil War. This makes sense in a way, doesn't it (say YES!)? I have 25mm (actually 28mm) Spanish Civil War (FAA) figures painted up as German Allies for the Eastern Front and it makes sense that they can easily be used for the Spanish Civil War - so Owe's another period for me. Since I have 25mm Spanish buildings (OLD GLORY), I could easily build up some skirmish 25mm (Redoubt) Peninsular War forces. This is how one ends up with 14 or 15 different periods/scales!
I have been doing some painting as of late. I've finished two 16-figure battalions of FPW French Marines (B&B Miniatures 20mm), two 16-figure battalions of FPW French Guarde Mobile in shako, and a French Miltrailleuse battery. I had been using the black undercoat method except it wasn't working for me with the French blue uniforms so I resprayed them white and went back to my old way of putting on the coat color in a watered-down fashion over a white undercoating. They turned out well enough to join the rest of my 20mm FPW collection and I am looking at the rest of my unpainted castings to determine what to try next. I have enough 28mm SYW Prussian musketeers to make up a 37-figure battalion; there are 24 SYW 25mm Spanish Cavalry (London War Room) with yellow coats; four 12-figure regiments of FPW cavalry; three batteries of FPW French Guard horse guns and lots of infantry to choose from.
I am reminded that MWANer Bill Widrick recently told me he bases his figure purchases on his ability to paint them before buying more. I used to do this many, many years ago (1975!). Nearly every Friday night after work, Barbara and I would drive to North Chicago to Jeff's Hobby Shop (Sutler's?) where I would pick up a few packs of 15mm ACW figures and then we'd go out to eat. It was great fun and we always looked forward to it. I would then paint them up and go back when I ran out. Amazing! The figures were from the excellent Heritage line and it was so exciting to get them home and examine them. They had many different poses - a quality line. I was always tempted by their Napoleonics line!
As usual, I can lament my lack of control in this, hobby one moment and turn around and rant and rave about a new period of mine in the very next! Well, it's not actually a period (yet!) have you noted the 54mm figure explosion in Charley Elsden's MWAN column? Amazing what they are coming out with. If you have any - I repeat "any" - interest in 54mm plastics, check out his column and also take a look at Mike Blake's'THE SKIRMISH LINE" by emailing him at botch.blake@virgin.net.
Check out the new figures from SABER AND SASH in the review column; they have a 40mm line of figures which are very tempting to me; especially if they do it in the SYW period! Individually mounted figures in battalions! What would you think about that, uh!
From this point on in my editorial, I am attempting to finish it up following eye surgery six days ago on my right 2 eye. I've had to keep my head stationary while laying on my stomach since that time which gets a little old. I finally rented a special chair yesterday which allows me to sit up and lay my face down flat on a pillow type device with a hole in the center so I can see through it a bit; enough so see the center keyboard keys and try to finish up this editorial. I hope this will be the last eye surgery required!
Even though I am trying to cut back on my periods of interest, I can still find the time, as I have as of late while laying on my stomach, to think about commissioning Eureka Miniatures of Australia to make me some 1866 20mm Austrian infantry to go along with my extensive 20mm B&B Miniatures Franco-Prussian War collection. Nobody is going to make such figures in 20mm, Nic Robson could let me know how much it would cost and how many castings Id have to order in 20mm to make it worth while to him (pay his expenses) and I could have a nice opponent for my Prussians and French (1859). 1 estimate Id have to order 300 castings; I don't know how I could obtain an officer, drummer, and standard bearer, but if I could, then I'd at least have line infantry. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the current FPW cavalry could be used for Austrian cavalry of 1859/66; B&B makes around 20 or so different cavalry types. Umm... might be possible!
I wonder what the Austrian artillery uniforms resembled? Duncan Rogers published two articles on the 1866 Austrian and Prussian uniforms sometime ago in MWAN; I'll bet he could give me some good information on uniform sources. It would appear as though the Prussians wore essentially the same uniform in 1866 as they did in the FPW period. I know nothing about Italian uniforms during this period but I do have a file of magazine articles on the subject which I'm going to have to pull out when I'm able to do some reading again. Sounds exciting to me!
Attended the Little Wars Convention and had a good time, as I did last year! Check out Chris Hahn's article on it in this issue.
You will notice that David Bush's NAPOLEONIC FURY rules are in this issue; an earlier version was in MWAN #107 (1 believe) and David reports this is the latest (and final?) version. Hope you find them of interest.
I'm going to turn over this editorial to Bev Krueger of THE LAST SQUARE who, I feel, has some very logical thoughts on an issue which has been brought up a number of times within the hobby - good work, Bev!
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© Copyright 2001 Hal Thinglum
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