Saturday 10 July 2010

Spanish Windmill by George Erik, Wargamer's Newsletter #202 January 1979




Neatly making the connection between Bill Holmes and George Erik is this windmill, commissioned by Dick Tennant from the latter, featured on the cover and inside Wargamer's Newsletter from January 1979.

And now that's enough George Erik for now... (Ed).

2 comments:

MSFoy said...

Now this truly is excellent - one of the finest examples of this sort of work I've seen. And is that a Hinton Hunt French limber team emerging from the gate? - perfect - vintage wargaming as we all like to remember it.

My own earliest personal recollections of wargame scenery include some very moth-eaten green baize, surprising numbers of Airfix OO English pubs in Castile and dear Peter Gouldesbrough's evil plasticine hills, but I prefer to think of it as having been like the coloured illustrations of Gilder's Waterloo battlefield in the Charles Grant book.

Today's point, gentlemen, is the eternal dilemma of scenery vs ground scale in wargames. Unless you're fighting a skirmish game, there are always hefty compromises in a tabletop game (I exclude the 6mm boys from this). Somehow, I am comfortable with 20-odd miniatures representing a 700-man battalion, yet have always worried, for example, that it is clear from the photos in Grant's book that you could stand a division of the Old Guard in the farmyard at Gilder's La Haie Sainte, which is crazy, however beautiful.

I've always struggled with this. I have adopted systems that work - I use undersized buildings, I embrace Wesencraft's principle that you represent a village by a cluster of houses which are really just an indicator - you can shift them around as necessary. It works. The sadness is that it doesn't look anything like as good as formal pieces such as Mr Erik's windmill - what I would call a diorama item. I don't wish to start an irrelevant thread here, but would be interested in other views.

Another fascinating item - thanks, Clive.

Tony

Rafael Pardo said...

Hi
A very good model of a typical Spanish windmill. There are still some of these in Spain!
Best regards
Rafa