By request - for Allan Mountford: On Casualties, by Duncan Macfarlane

These scans are of an article which appeared in Miniature Warfare & Model Soldiers magazine in November 1972.

Lamming original series Napoleonic Prussian Landwehr PI 7, 8

As there is a little interest about Lamming Prussian Napoleonics at the moment, I thought I would post this photo of these recently acquired Prussian Landwehr figures, one PI 7 Landwehr Officer and ten PI 8 Landwehr Private. They go into the medium term refurb queue. These are from the origional 20mm range, before the "heroic" makeover of the range.

Miniature Figurines S Range FN 42s French Sapeur

Over the last couple of months two or three of the grognard vintage Napoleonics painting bloggers have been posting about unidentified French Napoleonic Sapper figures.

Very recently I acquired four of these veterans - true to form on had sloped off somewhere and gone temporarily AWOL.

Anyway, for identification or elimination purposes, I thought I would post this photo. I've also posted it on my Lone S Ranger blog for the specialist, but thought it was also worth posting here on Vintage Wargaming for those of more general interests.

UPDATE: I am glad to report their comrade has returned to the colours.

Small mystery about Lamming Napoleonics....

If the idea of a small mystery involving Lamming Napoleonics ranges, Charles Grant's book Napoleonic Wargaming, Peter Gilder and the Wargames Holiday Centre piques your curiosity, you might like to take a look at my latest two posts on the Old Metal Detector blog here and here.

Le Kriegspiel - Part 2 - Tactical Units

After two reminders eight years apart (thank you Unknown and Kornberg) here is the missing Part 2:

Tactical Units

Infantry
Cavalry
Artillery

which comprise pages 7-16 of the Pat Condray translation.

See Translation by Pat Condray of French original ed. Pierre Foure

I hope this is better late than never.

Rambling Roses

Back in September 2018 I posted on Vintage Wargaming about the acquisition of some Rose figures from Peter Goldsbrough's collection of 20mm Napoleonics. In addition to these I had quite a large number of unpainted figures from a previous purchase, which I intended to combine in a project I thought I would document on line. The Goldsbrough figures included a lot of conversions, some of them very interesting, and which required a degree of repair and refurbishment.

As an end of year thing I have just today published a series of posts on the Old Metal Detector blog to report on its completion a few months ago, That series can be found by following this link..

That original Vintage Wargaming post can be found here.

For various reasons all the fun and excitement were soon drained out of the project and I put it aside for eight or nine months, and even thought seriously of throwing all the figures away. However, then after finishing various other things I decided to have a go at seeing it to completion. This meant a further two or three months sticking at it and grinding out about 20 battalions and 10 or 12 guns and crews. While it wasn't very exciting while it was going on it was a good feeling of achievement to get it completed. It also meant I still haven't had to face up to painting hundreds of Hinton Hunt French and British line infantry figures.

I have always liked the stylised nature of the Rose infantry, all of which are in two poses, marching and advancing.They are almost semi flat or demi-ronde, and I had always thought they would look very good en masse. I also changed my normal basing standard (20mm x 20mm for foot) to two ranks of two figures each on a 30 mm frontage with a 40 mm depth to fit the style of the figures and was very pleased with the result.

This photo would have illustrated this point better if I had stuck the figures a bit straighter on the base.

Having acquired a large number of Rose officers of various types, but all in the same pose, waving their sword in a right arm that looked just a little too long, I got quite fond of using them with Les Higgins units, to give a slightly more animated command option than the LH bloke standing on a football and pointing.

The Rose Napoleonics range was small and doesn't seem to have expanded hence the need for conversions for anyone with ambitions beyond this original list. This might be to add more detail, to get the troop type you wanted, They were first issued in 1963-4,  therefore a little before the Hinton Hunt 20mm range, which took the alternative route of being as large and comprehensive as possible.

I had also come across the DBN Napoleonic Rules which operate at a grand tactical level and are really designed for 15 mm figures. In the couple of games I played  I found them really well thought out and clearly thoroughly play tested. Although this isn't the level I would choose to do moist of my Napoleonic wargaming I am now wondering whether the Rose armies might provide an option for DBN.

The Rose figures are a bit of a sideline and curiosity really - I'm not sure for example how they might work with my other 20mm figures, like Hinton Hunts and Alberken - so thinking of a particular role for them is a good thing and very welcome after the time and work put into them.

So in the end I think a useful project to create some unusual armies and I'm glad I stuck with it.

Miniature Figurines Ramblings

Foot Guard Grenadier in Shako Advancing

BN 54 (Intermediates) in centre, BN 54 s (S Range) on flanks

I thought I'd mention two activity threads I have kicked off over on the Lone S Ranger, as they may be of interest to some people here who may not follow that blog.

Firstly I have started trying to document the various types of S Range horses, provide photographs and chart their development as best I can; and

secondly, try to get to the bottom of the Miniature Figurines "Intermediates" Range, which seemingly was restricted to Napoleonic foot figures, was very short lived around 1973/4,  and is largely undocumented (see comparison shoyt at top of this post).

Roses grow on you

Recently I have had some success in clearing off long part finished units from my painting queue. One of these was a battalion of Rose marching Napoleonic Austrian Infantry painted as Hungarians. After I had based and plastidipped I realised I had forgotten to do the gold lace on the trousers, but decided I didn't want to  take them off the bases and redo them.

Part of the reason for clearing the painting table was to make room for a refurbishment project which had been on the back burner for a while. About a year or eighteen months ago I bought from the States a collection of around 800 original Hinton Hunt castings, which had all been bought in London from Marcus Hinton on one day in 1965. Among them are quite a large number of painted or part painted figures and I wanted to work through the refurbishment and basing of the painted figures.

Then a couple of weeks ago I went in with Goya on a purchase of old time wargamer's Peter Goldsborough's old 20mm Napoleonics figures, which he had gifted many years ago to the Edinburgh club after he went into 5mm regimental blocks and Plasticine hills.

My share was the sizeable contingent of Rose figures, which predated Alberken/Minifigs 20mm and Hinton Hunt, seem to be less common and also less collected. They were also a considerably less comprehensive range. One of the beauties of this collection is therefore the amount of conversion work which has been undertaken, including head swapping, creating buglers and trumpeters, and converting the mounted Wellington figure into mounted colonels of all countries. This is a reminder of the days when you had to make the best of what was available, rather than access huge ranges or back kickstarters for exactly what you want.

. Some of the figures didn't travel well, in particular heads and top halves of hats on conversions and bases on horses. Rose horses came without bases. The collection included many converted casualties - the horses seemed to have been Hinton Hunts with the bases removed and then used to which to attach the Rose horses, The cavalry have also had wire reins added along with very delicate pin swords.

I've spent a day doing repairs - pinning and gluing heads and hats, matching horses to bases, and when there were no bases using some steel ones. I have also started on the Rose refurbishment project and it is going well - I have completed five units in as many evenings and am pleased with the results.

My usual basing convention for 20mm infantry is 20 x 20mm per figure, but because of the almost semi-flat look of the marching Rose foot figures I felt closer order was more appropriate, and I have gone for four infantry on a 30mm x 40mm base. This is a small change but I think suits them well. They are fairly stylised figures with two standard poses - advancing and marching. The officers are waving swords and have arms which look slightly too long. (I have used Rose officers successfully with units of Les Higgins figures when I wanted figures other than the standard LH officer standing on his football and pointing.

I made a joint purchase a few years ago with someone else of a large number of unpainted Rose foot figures plus around 30 mounted Wellingtons, so with the unpainted figures in the new collection it should be easy enough to make up whole units. This older collection was particularly well provided with officers, drummers and standard bearer figures.

The progress of the Rose refurbishment project may well get diverted either by boredom and butterfly tendencies but I am hoping that given the rapid progress to date I may be able to maintain interest. I am thinking of running the refurbishment of the Hinton Hunt figures from the States in tandem, to add a bit of variety and make progress on both.

I will record progress on the Rose project to some extent on my Old Metal Detector blog, and if the Hinton Hunt one gets going as well that will be reported on the Hinton Hunter..

Bavarian infantry

The first Rose unit to be refurbished was this Bavarian battalion. It needed a little more work than most, as their coats were dark blue. The base figures seem to be French Guard Grenadiers with Austrian helmeted heads.

French line battalion - and separate shot of command element:

Old Guard Grenadiers:

British Household Cavalry:

At first I thought these might be heads from the French Carabinier but I think they are original british figures

Nassau Light Infantry

I will make a further post here and on the Old Metal Detector on the various conversions - highlanders from line infantry are mind boggling. It isn't always easy to identify the base figure, as bases may have been filed  and the codes on the underside not legible. In addition many of the codes which can be read start N, which is not reflected in any of the listings.

As examples, Highlanders and then a Rifleman bugler:

Hinton Hunt Original Painting Instructions Transcribed

Over on my Hinton Hunter blog I have posted on my project to transcribe all the original Hinton Hunt painting instructions I could find for their 20mm Napoleonic range.

Following the link to the blog post will provide more information and how to get hold of the transcripts if you want them.

More SEGOM - on horses this time...

Whenever I think I have completely stopped looking at ebay, some kind soul will email me and say - have you seen this ooh shiny thing? Are you going to buy it? - so I have Paul in Oz to thank for pointing out these SEGOM cavalry a few weeks ago. They weren't identified as SEGOM, and I think the cavalry are even rarer over here than the infantry.

The lot I bought had 18 horses, plus one without a base and one half horse - this will be explained below - and around 30 riders. I have spent the last few days repainting them and here they are:

French Dragoons

French Cuirassiers

Prussian Lancers

The horses are of two part construction, rather like Rose 20mm or Lamming Medieval ones. I hope this is clear from the pictures. The unpainted horse shows how the neck fits (or doesn't).

Full horse showing neck join

Half horse

Apart from the roll on the horse's shoulders (holsters etc) you have to paint on your own horse furniture.

I am very pleased with this acquisition from a collecting point of view.

More SEGOM

My thanks to Mike for these pictures of his SEGOM figures - Prussian Infantry and Russian Grenadiers. Mike thinks he bought them at Northern Militaire in the 1970s and remembers Austrian Infnatry in helmets too.

My Old Dutch

Another ebay purchase and a surprise twice over - first in the form of a second chance offer to buy them, and second  to discover some of the figures weren't metal. I'm not sure how I feel about this as it wasn't referred to anywhere in the description. At first (and in an earlier version of this post) my initial thought when I saw the photograph for the first time was that they were Springwood Plastics, with the exception of the mounted officer and pioneer, who are S Range.

However Fire at Will, who has several thousand Springwood Plastics figures humself, has pointed out that they are actually something even rarer to see in this quantity, and are in fact by the French company SEGOM. So the twist in the tail/tale is that they are now a surprise three times over and they look an even better purchase than before. In one sense it is the quality of the figure rather than their maker that matters, but it is always nice to have something new in the collection.

An earlier post here on Vintage Wargaming has the Rene North "Paint YOur Own" cards with uniform information for this unit.

(I've just realised I've used the same heading for this as a recent post on the Hinton Hunt Vintage Wargames Figures blog - sorry Ian - so I have changed it0

That Terry Wise article

Thanks to Matt and indirectly to old John, here is a scan of the Airfix magazine article by Terence Wise from Airfix Magazine July 1978.

I'm afraid the quality of the scan isn't so good though I have put it through Paint Shop to sharpen up the text (the photos are particularly poor though)