Vintage Wargaming: September 2015

Thursday, 17 September 2015

Thanks Half a Million

The blog has recently marked its 500,000th page view. Thanks to all the actual readers and the virtual webbots who have made this possible.

Wednesday, 16 September 2015

I've just noticed that due to what seems to have been a surge of robot activity in the last couple of days the total page views for the site have gone over 500,000.

I would have preferred to do this through actual readers, but there you go.

Saturday, 5 September 2015

Interwar or VBCW?

What they would have been fighting for...

I have been having a think about my current interwar interest and while there is some overlap with the VBCW (Very British Civil War) I have decided it is very definitely interwar. This might partly because 20mm is less well served than 28mm for specifically VBCW figures, but also because I am a little suspicious of some of the more fanciful VBCW flourishes and because it tends to operate at a skirmish or small action scale.. I want to fight brigade size actions. Everything is temporarily on hold as I am having some painting done in the hose but when this is finished I hope to get some troops on the table.I need to try out various rules but at the moment I am wondering whether I should try Donald Featherstone's 1917 WW1 in Africa rules and see what sort of a game they give.

Working on possible opposition is interesting. Nationalist Spain (attempt to seize Gibraltar), The Old Enemy (French interwar kit is so cool), Italy, and the USSR are all possibilities. I have all these available, plus a horde of FT 17s which should work for just about anyone. I have always been inspired by the "tank chase" at the end of "Comrade X" and the recent availability of some of the Fabbri Russian tank diecasts at The Works led to me looking at some of the other models in the range and I am now waiting on some T-18s and T-24s from ebay and the Ukraine which should provide some good looking and unusual kit. Not hugely representative (though I have shed loads of T-26s) but interesting and different. It is all conjectural anyway so I am giving myself some historical leeway.

Another project I hope to progress once I have some temporary gaming space is Georland and refighting some of the actions in George Keef's Journal. I am planning on using slightly adapted Command and Colors Napoleonic to give a suitable swift game. I have a hex fleece mat from Corsec Engineering for this and will start using Minifigs S Range Crimean War and Franco Prussian War troops. Ideally I would like to use Spencer Smith Classic 30mm but I can't fund that at the moment, i would be a long term aim as I would need at least 500 foot and 100 mounted figures and they would all need assembly and painting. (Actually their 42mm Shiny Toy Soldiers would probably be the nearest to George Keef's original armies but there needs to be some compromise on size and cost).

Meanwhile here are some pictures of my inter war armoured might. With a few swaps of vehicles they will work for a period between around 1924 and 1936 and a fair amount will do for 1940 BEF..

Sources, permissions and editorial policy

This site uses a range of sources to provide access to information about wargaming, for the most part from the 50s, 60s, and 70s. These sources are mainly paper based, may be ephemeral (catalogues, price lists, painting instructions etc), and in general are not easily accessible elsewhere.

I am particularly grateful to Don Featherstone and to John Tunstill, who have both given their permission for the reproduction of materials from their ground breaking magazines, respectively Wargamer's Newsletter and Miniature Warfare (and later Miniature Wafare and Model Soldiers).

Where possible I have made efforts to obtain permission for reproduction of any material covered by copyright.

Some of the source material is typescript, may be fragile, and in some cases to scan or photograph it may require the removal of staples and the destruction of the integrity of the original publication.

I have tried to deal with this in a number of ways, scanning or copying and adding as an image, or scanning for optical character recognition to provide text based posts. Where the content is more important than the aesthetic look of the original context, I have also taken the opportunity to make minor edits and layout changes to make the material work better on the screen. In these cases I may have edited for sense, corrected spelling or punctuation (including capitalization and the removeal of the wargamer's apostrophe). In doing this I recognise the advantage of working in an electronic format over the original editor working with typescript).

Of course these changes may lead to new mistakes and I would be grateful for any (polite) alerts to these through the comments system.

It is intended that this site will also include new writing on its subject areas.

This site is not commercial and will not involve any advertising or subscription. However, we do reserve the right to bring products we think may be of interest to readers to your attention, at our own discretion. No payment will be involved.

Vintage Wargaming

Pages