I greatly enjoyed MWAN 121 and I always appreciate Charley Elsden's pieces on 54mm figures. Charley's section entitled 'The Toy Soldier Approach to Toy Soldiers' (p69) struck a chord and I wondered if my own foray into the HG Wells style of play might be of interest to readers. Some Background (Feel free to skip this bit) In the late 1960s, my interest in toy soldiers, dormant since my boyhood of the late 1940s/early 1950s, resurfaced as I began to learn about this new fangled hobby of war gaming, which had rules to govern fights between toy figures. I began to build armies, but my early experiments with 'proper' playing with toy soldiers came to a halt when I was sternly advised that 20mm figures were the size to use for war games. This state of affairs lasted a good many years, during which time I amassed many 15/20/25mm armies in several periods, wrote some books on the hobby and became the editor of Practical Wargamermagazine. It was a good time, I made many friends in the hobby, friendships that have stood the test of time, and I liked to think I publicised the hobby among non-war garners by staging numerous demonstration games at non-wargaming conventions such as the annual Napoleonic Fair and the Model Engineer Exhibition in London. My high spot came when I was invited to the 1998 Fall In!, where, echoing Don Featherstone's recent thoughts in MWAN, I met some great war garners on the other side of the Atlantic. Actually, that really was a great trip, as my good friend Steve Roper from Michigan came to Fall In! and afterwards we toured Gettysburg and the 1812-1814 battlefields - Chippewa, Lundy's Lane, Stoney Creek, Fort George etc. Wonderful. While all this was going on, in 1973 Britains Limited introduced their first metal 54mm figures for some years. Other companies, mainly 'cottage industries' making metal toy soldiers came into being - suddenly I was back in the 1950s and possibilities loomed large. For some years my two interests moved happily in parallel, war games were played with hundreds of 15, 20, 25, 30 and 40mm figures, while 54mm metal toy soldiers were collected and displayed. Slowly, but inexorably the toy soldiers took an increasing amount of my time, interest and money and I began to war game with the 54mm figures, greatly increasing my collection to accommodate 'fighting' figures. By 1990 we were living in a fairly large house in London, which enabled me to have my own war game room with a permanent 8'x5' table and from then on, most of my games were colonial affairs using 54mm metal and plastic figures. The other members of my local club were kind enough to let me inflict my views upon them and we subsequently staged on a number of 54mm games at war game conventions and military fairs. We used the Big Wars colonial rules that I co-wrote with Jack Alexander (designer of the Jacklex 20mm and Military Pageant 54mm figures). Our games caused great interest among some war garners, and a rather sniffy `not proper war gaming' attitude from others. This was fun, the 15mm-40mm figures languished on the shelves, but still, I had an 'itch'. Enter HG Set against this background was the fact that while I had read HG Wells while at school, I knew nothing of his Little Wars, published in 1913, until Arms & Armour Press published a facsimile edition in 1970. I was really taken with the concepts, scenery and photographs, but surrounded by 25mm figures and 'proper' war gaming I did nothing and the book went on the shelf. (If you have not seen a copy Little Wars, it is difficult to describe the book's immediate appeal, but the very dated photographs, the very, very toy soldier look of the game and the suggested rules [two sets] are, for me, inspirational. There have been numerous reproductions of the book, I urge you to try and obtain sight of a copy.) In about 1990 a friend lent me his copy of Floor Games by HG Wells, published in 1911, ie two years before Little Wars. This is not purely a war game book, but once again contains some great ideas, such as The Game of the Wonderful Islands, and photographs. I also had the opportunity to study War Games for Boy Scouts, a rare, undated pamphlet that may well have been published before Little Wars. The upshot of all this was that Little Wars was taken off the shelf, dusted off, read and re-read. I was hooked. I knew that I wanted to re-create The Battle of Hook's Farm - the centrepiece of the book - to use the rules, the figures and the terrain. What can only be described as my search for HG Wells' grail' began. All my thousands of 15-40mm figures were gradually sold, along with the corresponding kit such as terrain, leaving the field (table?) clear for their 54mm comrades. In truth this was neither as dramatic or re-actionary as it might seem, as my games had already been exclusively 54mm for some time. The Terrain HG Wells writes that he played his games on either the cork tiled nursery floor or out in the garden. Even though there are photographs of people playing an outdoor war game in Little Wars, early experiments made me call into question HG Wells' claim that figures will stand quite well on a carefully mown lawn. Whilst my wife appreciated my sudden interest in gardening, I could not get the figures to stand and then there's hay fever and always the thought of the neighbours watching... Playing on the floor was also a no-no. Apart from the universal presence of fitted carpets throughout the house (apart from the kitchen - let's not even suggest that one!) and the lack of a nursery (been there, done that), when one gets to a certain age, kneeling on the floor loses its appeal after about half a minute as knees and ankles cramp up. For me, the painted fibreboard surface of my war games table made an ideal playing area. Yes, but HG Wells played on the floor/lawn... Here then was the first of several compromises, but being able to sit indoors, refreshments to hand, on a comfortable stool, to a purpose built table, is far better for concentration than crawling around on all fours. Case proven. HG Wells writes that he used a selection of wooden planks, boards and bricks to make his war games terrain or 'the country' as he termed it, visually more interesting. His hills were thus all `stepped' with no attempt at smooth slopes. These items ranged from planks 36"x36" down to boards 9"x4 1/2" and a box of bricks rounded off the list. The planks and boards were something of a problem; 36" square solid wood items no longer exist at anything like reasonable prices. The best answer I have come up with thus far is to use kitchen chopping boards, purchased fairly cheaply at DIY stores, supermarkets etc. These come in a number of useful sizes such as 13"x9" and 18'x10". The wood is left plain, neither painted nor decorated, so any purchases are straight from store to tabletop. Surprisingly, the wooden bricks were fairly difficult to find, as I wanted plain, unpainted wood bricks, not today's 'safe' garish plastic. Eventually, after a long, low key, but enjoyable search, my long suffering wife spotted a box of 100 plain wooden bricks of various interesting and useful shapes by Brio in a lovely old fashioned toy shop. After many experiments, I was able to lay out the boards in a very passable re-creation of the Hook's Farm terrain on my war game table. Initially I had tried modelling the required buildings from card, covering them in the brick or stone printed paper intended for doll's houses. These were pretty much OK, but still not quite right for the aspiring (perspiring?) HG Wells purist. Once I acquired the Brio building bricks however, I was able to create the buildings in the photographs in Little Wars. For trees, HG Wells used cuttings from trees and bushes in his garden - jasmine, pear and more exotic varieties are mentioned. I experimented along these lines, but the cuttings droop pretty quickly. During a trip to a garden centre (never object to making such trips with the domestic management, it keeps her sweet and you never know what you'll turn up) I came across small cuttings from a privet hedge that had been sprayed dark green and were intended to compliment displays of dry flowers. I bought all I could find. (This transaction engendered a long conversation on flower arranging by the 'helpful' garden centre assistant and was I interested in joining the local society? My wife decently concealed her merriment, I mumbled my excuses and left...) Now, HG Wells drilled holes in his planks and boards to accept the cuttings he used, so I decided to do the same. Holes were bored into some of the chopping boards and, gentle reader, into the actual surface of my war games table... The privet cuttings, trimmed to suitable sizes were then planted into the holes and the result was just what I wanted. Pedantically another compromise I guess, but one that looked really good. Really good. There are no road/rivers in The Battle of Hook's Farm, but when HG played on the nursery floor, roads and rivers were simply chalked in. My solution was to paint them on my table with matt emulsion paint, in sand and mid blue respectively - my table top was already a mid green colour. Once I tired of a particular road/river layout I simply painted it out and replaced it with another. The Figures HG Wells and his two sons used 54mm hollow cast figures for their games. From the photographs in the book, the figures seem to be predominantly those made by Britains Limited. Interestingly, HG Wells never talks about units in his games. His men seem to have just been grouped together in appropriate armies/forces. For example The Battle of Hook's Farm was fought between two armies each consisting of three 4.7" naval guns, 48 infantry of different types and 25 cavalry, also varying in type. I already had sufficient figures, albeit mostly solids as opposed to hollow cast, several times over, but I wanted to have exactly the same troop types as shown in the photographs in Little Wars and so some new figures had to added to the collection in preparation. There is no 'group basing' of the figures, they are all individually standing, gloss painted traditional toy soldiers. Playing the Game Having organised my two forces (three guns, 48 infantry and 25 cavalry a side) and created a passable terrain, the next step was to set about using the same rules by which HG Wells conducted his games. A coin is needed to decide who goes first or who has the initial choice of 'ends' in a 'country' and, as an offshoot, I had great fun wandering around antique stalls for a penny coin that HG Wells could have had in his pocket. I finally settled on one dated 1889 that cost me £2 I think. Two lengths of string were needed for measuring, one of which was two feet long, the other six inches long. A couple of six sided dice are also needed to arrange a slight imbalance between initially equal forces; 12 infantrymen are left out and the two players roll the two dice to see how many they can take back into the ranks. A clock with a second hand times the moves (one minute is allowed for moving 30 men and a minute for each gun) and the intervals between the moves. One problem with HG Wells' rules is that only the guns fire, the infantry and cavalry are melee troops. HG and his sons actually fired their model artillery pieces during their games and so there are no specific firing rules in the text. It was a question of aim, fire and if you hit and the men fell over, they were dead. My Britains 4.7" naval guns can actually fire home made lead projectiles, but I had several problems with this, including safety - to be hit in the face with a metal 'shell' can spoil your concentration, not to mention you good looks - scrabbling around on the floor to retrieve fired 'shells' was tedious and undignified and I didn't much relish lead 'shells' smacking into expensive (have you seen the price of Britains figures?) toys that don't fall over anyway as they are solid cast. (Note: Since the project was at this stage I have been able to buy some true Britains hollow cast figures, certainly enough for one side, but the comment on prices still applies - and how!) Thus another compromise reared its head, I had to resort to rolling dice to simulate artillery fire. A blow, but inevitable. I will not trouble the reader with a full breakdown of the rules in Little Wars, it may well infringe some copyright somewhere, but essentially there are two sets, those in the main body of the book by HG himself and those contained in the appendix by a Colonel Mark Sykes, that follow a more kriegsspie/style of play. I have used both sets for Hook's Farm, but I think that of the two, I tend to lean towards the Sykes set as being more detailed and allowing for such aspects as fording, transport and supply, destruction and construction. So... So a brief outline of my 'quest' to re-create HG Wells' style of gaming, through terrain, figures and rules - in essence perhaps, bringing his book to life. Some readers may well regard the whole enterprise as pointless, HG Wells only used the figures and terrain items that he did because they were all his sons' nursery and his time provided; if he had had today's more sophisticated kit, then he would have used it. Fair comment, but to actually work through such a famous war gaming book was an enthralling exercise and more importantly perhaps, it was fun! Back to MWAN # 124 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2003 Hal Thinglum This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com