When visitors come to my home and see my 16'X8' wargame table fully terrained and occupied by several thousand 28/30mm Napoleonic combatants, they invariable ask me three questions (usually more): 1) Where do you get the patience to paint all those figures with so much detail? 2) Do you do research about the uniforms and battles? And 3) How did you get started with this hobby? (Sound familiar?) I reply that it is not so much a matter of patience but rather wonderfully relaxing and absorbing, even therapeutic at times. A labor of love and devotion. Yes, I do a considerable amount of research which I find most interesting in itself. How I got started is a longer story and I usually offer an abridged version. Here follows a somewhat longer one. Hopefully, older gamers will find something familiar here and younger people may glean some historic value.
In about 1947 or thereabouts, when I was nine years old my parents gave me one or two sets of Britains 54mm hollow-cast, metal toy soldiers. Painted brightly, their appeal was immediate and strong. Before long, I was saving my modest allowance to buy the thin, long and narrow red boxes which contained either eight infantry or five cavalry figures tied into the box with cord. These boxes of soldiers cost two dollars each. After a few years, I had a small collection. Friends with the same interest bought armies of their own so that we could "fight" with our toy soldiers. Miniature cannon firing matchsticks did the dirty work.
Eventually, a competing interest in model railroads (Lionel 027 gauge) displaced temporarily my activity with soldiers. High school and college years passed with the soldiers slumbering in their boxes. Untied not but unused. After several years as a tank platoon and company commander in Germany (M48A1's), marriage and three children, a career and work for a Ph.D. somewhere re-emerged my interest in military miniatures. A shop window in New York City caught my attention with its display of what turned out to be painted 30mm figures, seventeen infantry tied into a flat box. These figures, made in South Africa and referred to as SAE's were inexpensive and offered variety in periods such as Napoleonics, American Civil War and WWII. I started collecting them.
One day as I was entering a New York City shop to buy some SAE's, a well dressed and very pleasant man asked me if I was familiar with figures made in California by Jack Scruby. This gentleman's name was Charles Sweet. He gave me his card and suggested that I contact Mr. Scruby. I am grateful for Mr. Sweet's kindness and saddened to have read of his recent passing. So now it was on to Scruby 30mm figures which were inexpensive to acquire. My collection was about to take off as I faced for the first time having to paint the figures myself. This opened up a whole new world of pleasure.
On a trip to London in the mid 1970's, I made two of the most delightful discoveries: Stadden 30mm unpainted figures sold in a little shop in Shepherd's Market and "Willie" figures, also 30mm and also unpainted. These were handsome figures. The Staddens stately and a bit static in their poses, the "Willie" figures made and sold by Edward Suren in his charming old shop on Lower Sloane Street. Mr. Suren would emerge from the narrow spiral stairway which led from his workshop on a lower floor. His figures were elegant with animated expressions on the faces. Both Staddens and "Willies" were considerably more expensive than Scrubys but were several notches up in casting and sculpting art. Alas, the shops are gone now. Tradition, now around the corner on Curzon Street, no longer sells 30mm figures and the last I heard of Mr. Suren, he had retired to the Balearic Islands, his figures as well as Staddens now available at significant cost from a firm in Stockholm, Sweden, and I believe, also available from a firm in Great Britain. Perhaps in a future article, I will review current Staddens and "Willies" since I recently bought some from Stockholm.
Always trying to add to my Napoleonic armies, I started to seek out other manufacturers of 30mm figures. What I found were so-called 25mm soldiers which were actually oversized and were in fact 28-30mm. These included the Hinchliffe
Foremost line, Connoisseur Miniatures, Elite, Redoubt Enterprises and Front Rank. All of the above mentioned lines are advertised in MWAN #115. Two additional well-known lines are certainly useable but are somewhat smaller. They are Old Glory 25's and of course, 28mm Foundry figures. All of these makers produce very fine and extensive lines of Napoleonic figures. My own favorites over recent years have been Elite and Front Rank. I have found their sculpting, deep engraving and fullness of figure to lend themselves to careful and detailed painting. Also, they come with little if any flash. These two lines compare most favorably with the classic Stadden and "Willie" figures which now have become prohibitively expensive and do not offer nearly the variety or the depth of current producers. With thousands of Napoleonic figures painted representing ten different nations, principalities and dukedoms, and probably several hundred more waiting for the brush, I took a sabbatical from Napoleonics a couple of years ago and ventured into two new periods.
Perhaps you have shared my longtime interest in the doings of the British Army at the Northwest Frontier of India. The not so gradual shift from colorful uniforms to khaki, mountain guns, early machine guns, units with names like the Bengal Lancers and or course, the wild Afghan Hill warriors with their jezails and guerrilla tactics appealed to me enormously. For large 25mm figures, I reached out for Britannia, Redoubt and Connoisseur with small numbers of Stadden and "Willies". The somewhat smaller Foundry and Old Glory soldiers also fit in. The nature of this kind of fighting is dramatically different from Napoleonic warfare with its large formations of cavalry and battles involving hundreds of thousands.
Most recently the WWII bug bit and I am in yet another fascinating period. For the moment, it is Northwest Europe during the last year of the war. New lines of figures are required and very different painting techniques await. German grey, camouflage, khaki and olive drab in all their shades present new challenges for research and painting. And of course, the vehicles, armored and otherwise. Once again, my chosen scale is 28mm. After all at the age of sixty-three, I have to be able to see the little fellows, not only to paint, but to be able to appreciate their look on the wargame table, which is for me, a major pleasure. By the way, I discovered a very useful line of tanks and other WWII vehicles made by a company in France called Solido. They also produce a more detailed and better painted line under the name of Verem. They are a bit large for 28mm figures since they are made in 1:48 and 1:50 scale, but they look good, come fully assembled and painted, and lend themselves to repainting and detailing which is lots of fun as well. Any reader who has a line on where to get these die-cast tanks in the USA might share this information with the rest of us. Also, check out this website: www.guarter-kit.com for these items from a company in France.
This rambling discourse is simply a brief personal hobby history of a man who sill loves his toy soldiers and looks forward to many more years of pleasure. I hope that anyone who reads this will have as many years of enjoyment from this stimulating and at the same time relaxing pastime as I have.
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© Copyright 2002 Hal Thinglum
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