Red letter day for Jacklex fans - new range, 35 years on

You may (or may not) recall a previous post here about some Pancho Villa figures Jack Alexander had made for his private wargaming use.

I am delighted to announce that these are now being made commercially available through Peter Johnstone at Spencer Smith Miniatures.

Peter writes:

Following earlier postings on this blog regarding Jack Alexander's new range of 'Pancho Villa'(1917) war figures or the American Punitive expedition into Mexico, I am pleased to say that the infantry and cavalry figures are now ready for sale and I am pleased to attached a list of available figures. The artillery pieces: erhardt gun, French 75mm gun, motor cyclist and a US colt machine gun plus limbers will be due very shortly. Jack points out that the Japanese WW1 infantry double nicely as the Mexican regular army figures and the Boer war range of mounted figures are useful extra figures for the American cavalry. Pictures should be up on our website very soon, but you already have some very nice pictures on your blog. Hope you can make mention of this new range. A bit unique, I think. How many soldier makers leave it 35 years before bringing out new figures? I will let you know when I have the rest of the range.

Please ask your members to contact me directly for further information or to place orders via phone/post or website in the usual way.

Peter's Spencer Smith Miniatures web site can be found here




PUNITIVE EXPEDITION IN MEXICO

AMERICANS



INFANTRY

PEA1 ADVANCING
PEA2 FIRING
PEA3 STANDARD BEARER
PEA4 BUGLER, PLUS SEPARATE RIFLE
PEA5 OFFICER FIRING PISTOL
PEA5(a) OFFICER STANDING WITH BINOCULARS

CAVALRY

PEA6 OFFICER WITH PISTOL
PEA7 TROOPER WITH PISTOL
PEA8 TROOPER WITH BUGLE
PEA9 TROOPER, STANDARD BEARER
PEA10 HORSE AT TROT WITH SWORD AND CARBINE TO ATTACH

(All figures cost 45p each except PEA10 which costs 50p)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------MEXICANS


INFANTRY

PEM1 ADVANCING
PEM2 STANDING FIRING
PEM3 KNEELING FIRING
PEM4 FLAG BEARER
PEM5 OFFICER

CAVALRY/ARTILLERY

PEM6 CAVALRY FIRING FROM SADDLE
PEM7 CAVALRY WITH RIFLE
PEM8 FLAG BEARER
PEM9 RURALE (MEXICAN POLICE) WITH SABRE
PEM10 CAVALRY OFFICER WITH PISTOL
PEM11 HORSE (CHARGING)
PEM12 HORSE (TROTTING)

(All figures cost 45p each)





As I have just been painting some Jacklex Russo-Japanese War Japanese infantry I can endorse Peter and Jack's comments on the suitability of these figures to expand the options available.

John C Candler

I'm glad to say John C Candler has made a comment on one of the posts about his rules here - as this post was some time ago I thought I'd draw attention to it for anyone who is interested. It would be intriguing to see a revised version of these rules.

Robert Louis Stevenson's Ideal House

Quoted by Don Featherstone in War Games Digest (British issue) September 1960

The past is another country...

More from the British issue of War Games Digest, September 1960.



How stylish is that?

One year on

After 231 posts, 40,700 visits, and with 86 followers to date, Vintage Wargaming reaches the advanced age of one year old today. I still have a pile of (hopefully) interesting stuff unposted, so aim to continue, although possibly at a slightly more sedate pace.

Thanks to everyone who has read, followed, commented, or otherwise interacted with it. And special thanks here to Harry and Tony for their recent invaluable help - some of you may have an inkling of what with ...

Sand Table Top Teaser

In the recent post on Don Featherstone's terrain article on sand tables, I mentioned that I had found a copy of the book he mentions, Building and Modelling Sand Tables, by Sgt.-Major T W Sloman, on Abebooks. Reader, I bought it. One thing led to another and I bought Valentine's More Sand Table Exercises, too. And I'm waiting for Valentine's Sand Table Exercises to arrive by post. And the only copy of Mountain Warfare on the Sand Model I could find is in Australia and postage is prohibitive.

You get the idea...

My copy of More Sand Table Exercises is a Seventh Edition, published in 1941. The exercises are interesting tactical problems so I thought I would post one here. I chose Exercise No. 5, The Platoon and Section in Defence, mainly because in Sloman's book there is a colour picture of a sand table set up for it. (Though comparing it to the map I'm not 100% sure how it fits - unless the river isn't represented or I'm looking at it the wrong way round)...
















A bit more from Sloman's book - a picture of and list of contents for the Gale & Polden Sand Model Set - may follow in due course.

I hope the Exercise makes an interesting read, and that the scans are adequate - very difficult to get the book flat enough without destroying the spine.

The secret war gaming history of literary giants

Reference has already been made in previous posts here on Vintage Wargaming to the contribution of well known literary figures to early wargaming. These include Robert Louis Stevenson, A.J. Symons, H.G Wells and even Guy Debord.

Less well known is the involvement of a small group of academics and authors in Oxford in 1939, based on the Inklings group and their meetings at the Eagle and Child, and a young subaltern from the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment. Even less well known is the contribution their wargaming may have made to some of the most famous and well loved books of the second half of the 20th Century.

The academics and authors were J.R.R Tolkien, the Rawlinson Professor of Anglo Saxon, and C.S. (Jack) Lewis, Fellow and Tutor of Magdalen College. Both men had served on the Western front in the First World War, Tolkien with the Lancashire Fusiliers, and Lewis with the Somerset Light Infantry. Tolkien was invalided out in 1916, while Lewis went to France in 1917. Their experience of war left a lasting impression on both men, and Tolkien’s obsession with trenches is reflected in his later work in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The subaltern was a young officer called Peter Young, who seems to have visited Oxford at irregular intervals to buy military footwear (including commando boots) from the well known Oxford outfitters Walters of the Turl. It may have been on one of these occasions that Peter Young attended a meeting of the Inklings – whether by invitation or accidental presence in the pub on a Tuesday morning is unknown – and met and befriended Lewis and Tolkien

For different reasons all three men sought an escape from their personal experiences of war. It seems that they evolved a complicated fantasy medieval world, where they fought at irregular intervals a mixture of a role playing and wargame campaign, punctuated and inspired by alcoholic intake at the Eagle and Child. Each man ruled an independent kingdom with castles, peasants and armies. Their name for this game was “Donjons and Flagons”, and it was fought using the patriotically incorrect (for the time) Elastolin composition Ritterfiguren (knights) bought by Lewis and Tolkien from Boswells in Broad Street. The embarrassing source of these figures from Germany may have been one of the reasons for the very sketchy detail that has existed to date about this game.

It is interesting to speculate whether this interest in mythical worlds contributed to Lewis’s development of the Narnia books between 1949 and 1954, Tolkien’s writing of the Lord of the Rings trilogy which was published in 1954 and 1955, and even to the Seven Years’ war campaigns described in Charge!

Intriguingly a recent discovery among J.R.R. Tolkien’s papers in Merton College Library (he became Merton Professor of English Language and Literature in 1945) suggests there may have been an additional element in this game – re-enactment. College Librarian M. R. Benn has discovered a previously unrecorded envelope containing two documentary fragments – a faded photograph, inscribed in Tolkien’s handwriting, “Peter Young playing the game, in the garden of 20 Northmoor Road, September 1939”, and the other a bill for hire of three medieval costumes from Walters of the Turl, also dated September 1939.

With permission of the College, the photograph is reproduced below

Don Featherstone and the Sands of Time: Terrain, from War Games Digest British Issue September 1960

Back in the day, sand tables were the height of wargaming technology. Here Don Featherstone brings to bear some insights from his other life as a physiotherapist. The sand table through the floor is an interesting variant on the lead soldiers through the ceiling story.

I've checked, and a copy of Sgt Major Sloman's book is currently available on Abebooks at £7.50...

Tony Bath on campaign: Campaigning on Maps (1), from War Games Digest (British Issue) September 1960

I guess almost everyone who has ever thought about war game campaigns will have read, come across or heard of Tony Bath's Hyboria campaign. This article, from the War Games Digest (British Issue) of September 1960 signals an early appearance in print. His book, Setting up a Wargames Campaign, was published by Wargames Research Group in 1973.

Men in Battle, by Mary Bath, from War Games Digest (British Issue) September 1960

A 50th anniversary - War Games Digest British Issue September 1960 - My War Games Table and Figures, by Lionel Tarr

A real curiosity is this copy of the British Edition of War Games Digest, edited by Don Featherstone and Tony Bath, from September 1960. A short lived interlude saw a British Edition of the War Games Digest published in March and September, interspersing the US edition produced by Jack Scruby in June and December. This experiment was short lived and ended in tears two years later with a disagreement over editorial policy. This was followed by Jack Scruby launching Table Top Talk, and Don Featherstione starting Wargamers Newsletter,later that year (1962)- so it really was a moment of creative differences..

The Courier's Timeline of the Historical Miniatures Wargaming Hobby has links to Don's article and the editor's exchange on the subject.

I think this must be the second of the British Editions and I will probably post more of the content in the coming months.

As a start, here is Lionel Tarr's article on his war games table and figures for his famous Stalingrad campaign.

I apologise if the scans are difficult to read. As this is 50 year old roneod typescript this is not too surprising. I have run them through the high pass sharpen on paint shop, but it seemed to me it would be of interest to see the article in its original form. The alternative would be to scan for optical character recognition to transcribe the article into text. This would be quite time consuming so for the moment I am following plan A.

A Typical Day at Scruby Miniatures, from Table Top Talk September 1965

A burst of activity over at the Old Metal Detector posting pictures of Scruby figures has made me think it might be intersting to post this article from Jack Scruby's Table Top Talk from September 1965.

The Old Metal Detector posts can be found here.

Scruby Miniatures pictures from John C Candler's Miniature Warfare du temps de Napoleon

A little burst of energy has seen me posting the photographs I have of Scruby Miniatures figures over on the Old Metal Detector blog here.

The black and white pictures are of the 30mm Napoleonics range; the colour photos are from a 1981 Ultimate Miniatures catalogue.

It is very difficult to find any images of Scruby figures on the internet, so hopefully posting these will be of some use.

Bellona Battlefields Interim Catalogue 1968/9

I've now dug out an earlier Bellona catalogue and am posting it now, in addition to the 1983 one found in an earlier post here

More from Airfix

A staple of early wargames magazines, including Wargamers Newsletter and Airfix magazine, were articles on coverting Airfix soldiers into other completely different types, usually with a sharp knife, some plasticene and a quart of banana oil.

Here from the Airfix Magazine Annual of 1973 is D V Oakley's take on the potential of the Airfix Confederate Infantry set.

Italian Army in the Desert, by George Gush, from Airfix Annual 1973

Thanks to DC for these scans from Airfix Annual 1973. I had never seen this article by George Gush before, I have always had a soft spot for the Italians, and John Sandars never seemed to cover them.

By Request #2: Operations around Boston Part I

The first article of two by D Zmarzty, from Miniature Warfare & Model Soldiers October 1973.

By Request #3: Operations around Boston Part II

The second article by D Zmarzty, from Miniature Warfare & Model Soldiers November 1973.

By Request #1:Uniforms of the American Revolution by Doug Cross, parts 1,3 and 4, Miniature Warfare & Model Soldiers 1972

In response to DC's request, here are three of the four parts of this series (some of the later magazines seem to be either missing or kept safely elsewhere...).

I'm not sure how useful these articles are now, but they are interesting as an example of the sort of uniform references that were available to wargamers in the 1970s.