The Jacobite Wargame by D McRobbie: Miniature Warfare & Model Soldiers August 1972

René North's Military Uniform Charts #1 French Dragoons 1804-15

Further to previous posts on René North, I am posting part of the series of his Military Uniform Charts. These were additional to his Paint Your Own uniform cards and presented useful information in a one page format.

René North's Military Uniform Charts #2 British Light Dragoons and Hussars 1812-15

René North's Military Uniform Charts #3 French Hussars 1804-12

René North's Military Uniform Charts #4 British Foot Guards and Line Regiments

René North's Military Uniform Charts #5 Austrian Line Regiments 1800-8

René North's Military Uniform Charts #6 British Line Regiments part 2

René North's Military Uniform Charts #7 French Chasseurs a Cheval

Refighting the Jacobite Rising of 1745-1746 part 3

The observant among you will have noticed the absence of a post containing part 2 of this series. I only have an incomplete run of Miniature Warfare and I do not have that issue (Volume 5 Number 1) from 1972. If anyone has a copy of this magazine and could send me a good quality scan of the article, I would be glad to post it. I also don't have the issues following the one the article posted here appeared in (Volume 5 Number 2 May 1972) so I am not 100% sure whether there were only the three articles in this series.

Refighting the Jacobite Rising of 1745-1746 part 1

This is the famous article from Miniature Warfare in January 1972, where Stuart Reid says Lamming Figures have now stopped producing Seven Years'War figures (see post below).

False Alarm on e-bay

Minifigs S Range Jacobite Rebellion figures

Continuing the promised Jacobite Rebellion semi-theme, there was a brief flurry of excitement here at VW Towers last week when a lot appeared on e-bay claiming to be Lamming figures. The excitement was caused by their being Seven Years War figures - these are the mythical figures referred to by Stuart Reid in his Miniature Warfare articles - "I recommend Lamming for French troops and Elcho's lifeguard (Lamming British Horse Guard)" December 1970 and "Lamming have now stopped producing Seven Years' War figures" January 1972. I and several others (including Vintage 20mil) have been unable to locate any figures, pictures or listings of this range.

The eBay figures turned out to be Front Rank 25/28s so the mystery remains. If anyone has any further information, pictures, or even examples of these figures, I would be very glad to hear from you.

The accompanying pictures are of the Minifigs S Range for this conflict. These are very nice figures which came out in time for the second of Stuart Reid's articles refereed to above.

Landmark: 200 followers

I wasn't expecting to trot this picture out again so soon but a link to the Wargaming in the Twin Cities post on the Grognardia blog has resulted in a couple of hundred hits and ten new followers, so Vintage Wargaming has gone past the 200 followers mark.

Welcome to all the new followers, and thanks to everyone else for your continued support.

Callan goes to war...again

My thanks to Conrad Kinch of Joy and Forgetfulness for a copy of Military Modelling Magazine from May 1974, with this brief article and pictures, which I had not seen before.I am pleased to be able to include the picture from elsewhere in the magazine of Edward Woodward (or is it Callan?) reading Military Modelling on set.

The Notice Board column in the same magazine also provided the small picture of Peter Gilder's Waterloo at Hull for Anglia TV - something seems to have gone geographically wrong there.

Finding your way around Vintage Wargaming

With currently 391 posts, 191 followers and around 156,000 page views (at time of writing), Vintage Wargaming has become something substantially bigger that I ever expected when I started it.

More posts = more information and I know VW has more of a reference function than many blogs, where the latest post is usually the most important.

The advantage of a blog about old things is that nothing is that urgent. The flip side of this is that it is more important to have a number of ways to navigate round the content of the blog to find if the information you want is here, and if so how to find it.

Vintage Wargaming has various ways of tracking down information. These have evolved over its lifetime, through experience, comments and suggestions by readers, and as new gadgets have been introduced by blogger.

Some of these may not be apparent when looking at the blog on screen so I thought it might be worth running through them briefly. I may also add this post as a permanent page along with the contact and search pages on the menu at the top of this page.

Labels - the basic way of searching the blog, through categories which have been applied to posts as they are written. Most posts have more than one label, though as far as I know you can only search on blogger using one label at a time. You will find the list of labels by scrolling down the right hand column, past followers, recent comments, popular posts, and Contacting Vintage Wargaming.

Search Vintage Wargaming - the google search box at the top of the right hand column is probably the best option for a quick search - you don't have to scroll around to find it, it is quick, and searches both this blog and any links posted on it

Popular Posts - found by scrolling down the right hand column, shows the top six or so most viewed posts of all time

Latest Comments - comments on this blog are moderated, and provide a way for you to influence future content and add information to posts. I was always bothered that if people commented on old posts, I would know that comments had been made because of the notification I receive to approve comments, but other readers might miss these. Fortunately blogger has introduced the recent comments feature, which means you can see the most recent comments and click through to the relevant posts

Blog archive - added at the suggestion of a regular reader - if you know something has been mentioned in a post and you can remember roughly when or where it appeared in relation to others, this is another search facility you can use. Unfortunately, because of the length of the home page, it is not obvious it is there, as you need to scroll all the way down the right column to find it. Quite a common feature on other blogs, I did not feel it was the search method which would be most helpful to most readers, which is why it is not made it higher up the column among other features.

There is also a brief "sticky" page on the menu under the blog banner, Searching Vintage Wargaming, which outlines labels, the search feature, and the blog archive.

I hope it has been useful to run through the various features of the blog, some of which may have escaped your attention.

Normal service will resume with the next post.

Pre Miniatures Page Tension

The Minifigs S Range Seven Years War Austrian Grandisca Slovenian Frontier Infantryman recommended by Stuart Reid for service as dismounted Jacobite Hussars.


If the past really is a different country and they did things differently there, the basic nature of wargamers and the Dennis Wise-like ability of a high proportion to start an argument in an empty room seems to date back to early days.

Such an exchange underpins the two articles posted here from Miniature Warfare magazine (April and December 1970). While expressed in slightly more stately terms than many a current day Internet based discussion, there is an elegant hint of scorn on display in the first and last paragraphs of Stuart Reid's article.

I found Stuart Reid's notes on available figures interesting, in particular the reference to Lamming Seven Years war figures. I have never seen these, or any pictures of them; in a later article in 1972 he mentions that Lamming have ceased to make them. i do have a reasonable number of the S Range Jacobite Rebellion figures, which are among my favourite ranges.

This post is intended to be the first in a short series of Jacobite Rebellion (45) posts. This will include Start Reid's later Miniature Warfare articles on refighting the Jacobite Rising of 1745-1746. I have parts 1 and 3 of this series but am missing part 2, which was published in April 1972. If anyone has this article and can provide me with a scan to share here, I would be very grateful. (I have permission from John Tunstill, the publisher of Miniature Warfare, to reproduce material here).

Plastic Artillery Conversions by John Edgecumbe

This article from Miniature Warfare magazine February 1970 just about scrapes in to the Airfix ACW theme as these German WW1 guns and equipment are converted from the Airfix ACW set.

At a time when pretty much anything you want is available from a range of manufacturers and in a range of scales, and where you can often view and buy them on line, this article reminds us of a different time, when modelling, converting, bodging and other ways of making do were necessary even for some mainstream items.

This will be the last ACW Airfix related post for a while. I do intend to add further articles to the series on Juhn Tunstill's Miniature Warfare ACW Campaign in Ireland (see earler posts here)

An Airfix ACW army for beginners

From Miniature Warfare magazine 1972, this article by A. Mason goes into how many boxes of Airfix ACW troops you need to buy (at 17p per box)to get a matched pair of starter ACW armies, although distressingly he allows the idea of buying some metal command figures.

The pictures are unrelated to the article but support the general theme.

Landmark: 150,000 hits

Just a brief post to note Vintage Wargaming went past 150,000 page views some time in the early hours of this morning. The current follower count is 189.

Thanks to everyone who views or follows the blog.

American Civil War with Airfix - Part 2 The Battle of Rogersville

Airfix ACW wargaming reached as far as Denmark. This May 1973 article from Miniature Warfare magazine reports on a battle fought in Copenhagen over Christmas 1970. The story of putting the game on is interesting and the battle report, while brief, is well illustrated with photographs of figures and terrain.

Posted earlier but relevant to this thread are Terry Wise's Airfix Magazine articles on making ACW buildings

bungalow and farm house here

court house, general store, and Southern farm house here

American Civil War with Airfix - part 1

As the start of a short series on American Civil wargaming with Airfix, here is an article by Malcolm Knott entitled An Airfix Army, from the Subaltern's Corner feature In Miniature Warfare Magazine from February 1969.

As the article itself states, the importance of the Airfix ACW range (Union Infantry, Confederate Infantry, Artillery, US 7th Cavalry, plus Cowboys and Wagon Train) was to provide the basis for a complete wargame army of all arms plus logistics at a reasonable cost.

I'm sure lots of people must have started off with these figures, inspired by articles like these, the ACW ones in Terry Wise's series in Airfix Magazine on Buildings for Wargames and his Airfix Guide no 24 American Civil Wargaming (though this last was published five years after this article).

The figures though basic still are reasonably available and can be turned out very well - have a look at Matt's Command Group converted from two of the Cowboy figures here. Matt has a project to build Airfix ACW armies which will be interesting to follow.

I'm intending to mine the Airfix ACW seam from Miniature Warfare further with a few more posts, including a battle report and some more photographs.