Scruby Miniatures - Ten Years Old

I thought this was interesting as an early (1966) potted history of the first ten years of Scruby Miniatures, by Jack Scruby himself, published in Table Top Talk in November that year. Interesting to see the name Bob Bard bracketed with Morschauser and Featherstone - some of the wargaming illustrations from his book Making and Collecting Military Miniatures are available elsewhere on this blog - here.

Durham Cathedral

Readers of The Guardian newspaper have very sensibly voted Durham Cathedral as the Best Building in Britain. While a little off topic here it is certainly vintage and has some military connections. To watch a man in a brown moleskin suit tell you about it for about eight minutes, watch the video above.

Heads up

Old John, who also appears as TK in Harry Pearson's Achtung Schweinhund! and is responsible for putting back on the market a number of classic figure ranges under the banner of 20mm Nostalgic Revival, has joined the blogosphere here

The blog has only just started up, but you may like to bookmark it and keep an eye on it as it develops.

I'm hoping for lots of pictures of John's extensive collections and hopefully more news of old figures (if that makes sense)

Painting faces the Dick Higgs way

Dick Higgs, Miniature Figurine's principal designer, provided this guide as part 3 of his series Painting for Beginners in Minimag Magazine, appearing in 1971.

The beginning of a slippery slope, as far as I am concerned... I won't even mention deacls for eyes and kilts on 28mm figures....

Phil Barker's tips on horses, from Miniature Figurines Magazine Vol1 Number 2

From the second issue of Minimag, some notes on horse colours, based on a letter from Phil Barker. This is the sort of information that was hard to come by then - you can from time to time see interesting 70s humbrol enamel paint jobs on horses by trawling through pictures on e-bay.

René North's Uniform Charts - 2

A lsiting of the René North unifom charts from an old Hinton Hunt catalogue.

Next post will have some more of the uniform information available at the time through Hinton Hunt.

René North's Uniform Charts

Further to the post on René North's Paint Your Own Uniform Cards, here are a couple of his uniform charts - for Austrian Infantry Regiments 1800-1808 and French Dragoons

René North's "Paint Your Own" Uniform Cards

If like me you were always intrigued by René North's Paint Your Own uniform cards but never saw any, this might help - again, from Jack Scruby's 1962 catalogue.

Helpful Hints from Jack Scruby, 1962

Top Tips from Jack Scruby, from 1962, with a rather nice signed photo.

These are taken from a 1962 catalogue. Apologies for the quality of the scans - if they are printed on thin paper there is always a dilemma about whether to sharpen the image or not, as this can increase the "show through" from the other side. I hope they are legible.

John G Garratt and Charles Sweet

Not strictly wargaming, but interesting nonetheless, an article from the Surrey & Hants News Tuesday August 12th 1980. John G Garratt was the author of Collecting Model Soldiers, Model Soldiers for the Connoisseur, and The World Encyclopaedia of Model Soldiers.


From Model Soldiers for the Connoisseur, below is a further picture of Charles Sweet's American War of Independence gridded set up, shown previously here.
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L'Attaque

Thanks to Billy for sending me this picture of some of the 112 similar figures he has, asking for identification. They are cardboard with metal stands.

A vague memory and a minute on Google (other search engines are available) confirmed they are the rather stylish playing pieces from the military board game L'Attaque, which also formed the basis for the later Stratego. See Boardgame Geek for L'Attaque, and Wikipedia for Stratego.

I never had the game L'Attaque but I did have Dover Patrol, a sort of naval equivalent. I also remember there being a combined arms game called Tri-Tactics, and apparently there was another called Aviation (which I never came across).

BIlly is open to offers for his 112 game pieces. If any one is interested, e-mail me using the Contact Vintage Wargaming link in the right hand column, and I will forward this on.

Minimags Trouvees

My recent mention of Miniature Figurines House Magazine from the early 1970s has produced a good response - I recived scans of Issue Number 5 this morning (thanks Rob). I also have a copy of Issue Number 2 on its way from another source.

My intention is to post some material here and some on the Lone S Ranger blog.

The contents of Issue Number 5 include:

Part 5 of a series on painting for beginners by Dick Higgs
Reference Books at a Price, by Eric Rayment (posted below)
Simple Historex Conversions
A series of uniform notes, illustrated with
line drawings by Peter Heath
- Part 2 of Russian Cuirassiers, 1812-1814
- Train D'Artillerie de la Garde, 1800-1815
- Light Cavalry of the Grand Duchy of Berg, 1807-1814
- Confederate States of America, Cavalry, Horse Artillery and Infantry

Reference Books at a Price, by Eric Rayment, from Miniature Figurines Magazine Volume 1 Number 5

Following on from recent posts on Almarks and Blandfords, here is a contemporary view of these two series and other uniform reference sources available in the early 1970s, published in the MIniature Figurines House Magazine.

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Looking for Minimags...

Thanks to Paul I now have a copy of the 1972/3 Minifigs catalogue - I previously had scans courtesy of Alan M, but it is nice to have the catalogue.

The title page refers to a Miniature Figurines Ltd House Magazine called Minimag. On the last page of the catalogue it says numbers 2,3 and 4 were currently available at 15p each - "for further number please wait until you see them advertised in either Military Modelling or Wargamers Newsletter."

This had completely passed me by before now. Does anyone remember this? And, by any chance, does anyone have one they could either send me or scan for inclusion here or on the Lone S Ranger blog?

Airfix Magazine Guides

Airfix Magazine published a series of very useful and attractive guides from about 1974 to 1976. These were in A5 format with 64 pages in black and white, well illustrated with photographs and line drawings.

There were 28 in total: a full list can be found here on the Vintage Airfix site.

While the main focus (understandably) was on modelling, there were five wargaming subjects:

Ancient Wargaming by Phil Barker (the purple cover hasn't come out too well in the scan)

The English Civil War by George Gush and Martin Windrow

Napoleonic Wargaming by Bruce Quarrie

American Civil War by Terence Wise

World War 2 Wargaming by Bruce Quarrie

(I have no picture for this title)

Others with a particular interest for wargamers are:
8th Army in the Desert by John Sandars

Afrika Korps by Bruce Quarrie

and (possibly) The French Foreign Legion by Martin Windrow


They were great when they came out: affordable, packed with information, robust, not taking up much shelf space, and much pored over. My favourites were the English Civil War and American Civil War titles.

Just back from the Sage...

...Gateshead and seeing the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain




playing this amongst others

René North,

For a long time the only uniform book I owned was Rene North's Military Uniforms 1686-1918, published by Hamlyn all-colour paperbacks. The scan is of the cover of my original copy, and it is only now looking at it for the post that I have realised the plates aren't by North himself, but by John Berry.

Rene North was also the author of the Almarks on Soldiers of the Peninsular War and on Waterloo. He published a series of colour-in-yourself uniform cards.

The biographical note from Military Uniforms reads:

Rene North is a keen student of costume and military affairs, and has lectured, written articles, and translated books about the uniforms of war. He runs a small private business producing military postcards, and travels extensively to do research from first-hand sources in museums, libraries, art galleries and private collections. He is often in demand as a consultant to theatrical and advertising agencies on matters of military dress. During the Second World War he served in the Royal Artillery and the Intelligence Corps.

Incidentally, if anyone can let me know how to put an e acute in text in blogger, I will revisit this post...

More Almarks

Thanks to Mike for scans of two more David Nash books - the Model Buildings one is from the loft

Another Blandford

Found another one...

Almark Publications

Almark was a company that was hard to get your head round - prolific publisher, of books and the short-lived (I think) magazine Almark Modelworld; producer of the plastic and metal Charles Stadden designed World War 2 wargames figures (see my The Old Metal Detector blog here); and other interests including 54mm figures.

This post is mainly about the books - published in both hardback and paperback versions. With the passage of time the wisdom of investing in the hardbacks has become clear - the paperbacks were produced in the format laughingly called "perfect bound", with individual pages glued into the spine - not a good recipe for frequent use as a painting reference.

Authors included Emir Bukhari, Rene North, Alan Kemp, Michael Head and David Nash. The format included line drawings, colour plates and photographs. They could vary - the Prussian Army volume has delightful line drawings of gnome like figures who look like either children dressed up or early prototypes for Wargames Foundry figures.

I haven't been able to locate anything like a complete list of Almark titles, so have illustrated this post with some of those I have in my library (below). The three advertisments above are all taken from issues of Almark Modelworld.


The Books