Category: News / Resources / Reviews

Table Top Teaser Anyone?

Table Top Teasers

A typical 'Teasers' introductory map - this is from Teaser No.3 in June 1978.
A typical 'Teasers' introductory map - this is from Teaser No.3 in June 1978.

One of my enduring memories of wargaming as a teenager was getting my copy of Military Modelling and looking to see if there was a new “Table Top Teaser” by C. S. Grant (Charles Stewart Grant, the son of the author of “Battle – Practical Wargaming” and the single most inspiring wargaming book ever “The War Game”; Charles Grant); these ‘Teasers’ were a highlight of each issue (when present), and I used to imagine all sorts of ways to play them with the limited troops and resources I had at the time. It was especially trying waiting for the following issue with Part 2 of each Teaser, where the scenario was played out and an After Action Report (AAR) provided! While they only appeared over the five-year period 1978-1982 (there were 17 in total) they seemed to go on forever and always provided inspiration and a catalyst for ideas for future games. I had always planned to drag my old Military Modelling and Battle magazines out and scan these all into PDF or similar electronic format for my personal use, so I could more easily go through them when looking for inspiration or planning a new game.

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Is That A Real-Life Photo Or A Model?

Is that a photo of a real building or a model?
Is that a photo of a real building or a model?

Got pointed to the Country Gate (the Lynton and Barnstaple Railway in 009 scale) site today – or rather specifically the Making Buildings From Foamboard page featuring some absolutely fantastic model buildings and a great tutorial by Emmanuel Nouaillier; it’s all part of the site’s general tutorial on Realistic Model Buildings. There’s some great stuff here and well worth a look!

(County Gate is a narrow gauge model in 009 of a fictitious extension of the 2 foot narrow gauge Lynton and Barnstable Railway through the East Lyn Valley to Minehead in the UK).

Classic Wargamer’s Journal: Vol. I Issue 3

Classic Wargamers Journal Volume I Issue 3Once again it arrived promptly and quickly, and the Classic Wargamer’s Journal is a refreshing read, bringing back a simplicity and fun element of a bygone era. This issue includes a reprint of a Tony Bath Mini-Ancient Campaign & Battle (the forerunner of his famous Hyboria), from the WGD, Book II, Volume 1 dated March 1958. There are several succinct AARs (After Action Reports) of games utilising scenarios from the 3 previous CWJ issues; several discussions of of old-school style gaming and/or imagi-nation projects (The Great Northern War in 40mm Prinz August’s, Indian Mutiny with 45mm Deutsche Homage’s, 1890’s Germany & Russia in the Baltic with 28mm Hinterland’s); and a particularly unusual and relatively extensive (for the CWJ) AAR of a Napoleonic game. Ray Caddy concludes his very interesting 2-part series on the Catalan War of 1713-1714; and there is an especially excellent F&IW (French & Indian War) piece with Scenario & AAR and inspired by Charles Wesencraft’s “Practical Wargaming” (a contemporary of, and under-appreciated author equal to, Grant, Featherstone, Young, Bath, Wise, and co…).

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Wargaming.info Migration Update 26 April 2011

As previously posted (A Not So Small Migration) I have migrated Wargaming.info to WordPress, and as such have needed to reconfigure or redesign some facets – such as Image Galleries – so there are currently parts of the site missing data. Right now I have finally started to upload the image galleries for those posts that had large numbers of photos, having now got all the necessary components working to display the images properly. As of tonight I have completed everything back as far as late September 2010, older posts which had large galleries will still be missing their images (there’s about 16 of them in total), but I will gradually get 1 or 2 of these a day done I hope over the next 2 weeks or so to have the site back to 100%.

I have also started retagging many of the posts, again working in reverse chronological order, so the tag cloud will gradually become more complete and accurate over the next couple of weeks or so, but in the meantime only about 22% are done (the most recent ones).

Empress Miniatures new Maori Wars Range

Joy, oh Joy! The ether has been alive with chatter of the announcement of this new range for a couple of weeks now – and they really do look like some lovely figures with nice clean casts and great sculpting. I have been wanting to get into Maori Wars in 28mm for sometime – but to be honest there just hasn’t been the figures available to inspire me, only Eureka having anything reasonable – except they are later period (2nd & 3rd Maori Wars) and while their British chaps look quite nice their Maori just don’t get me excited (perhaps they are not animated enough). However now that Empress have released their range everything has changed, as it were, and now there seems little reason not to do some Maori Wars gaming (and hopefully the Empress and Eureka guys will be a close match size wise to allow use of both)? Continue reading “Empress Miniatures new Maori Wars Range”

Do You Know That General, Monsieur?

A posse of 28mm Napoleonic French Generals

Sometime (i.e. 2-3 years) ago I acquired several pre-painted 28mm French Generals on EBay – they were spur of the moment purchases put to one side for when I eventually got around to doing my 28mm French Napoleonic Army. As I am hoping to start work on that in the near future I thought I should work out what I actually have!  As a result I’m trying to identify these figures – both maker and what they are (e.g. are they personalities or just generic ‘Generals’ or even just Infantry/Cavalry Colonels or ADCs?) – so I’ve posted them here in the hope someone passing by may recognise them and be able to clarify for me what actual manufacturer’s figure they are…

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An Aquarium of Thorn Thickets

Dervish Jihadiyya fight from an 'Aquarium Thorn Thicket'!
Dervish Jihadiyya fight from an 'Aquarium Thorn Thicket'!

When BattleCry 2011 in Auckland was looming earlier this year I had promised Gerry from Castaway Arts to help with some Colonial TSATF demo & participation games (and provide the troops & terrain to save Gerry bringing it over from Cairns, Australia), and as part of that I wanted to try and have some new troops and terrain on table to add something fresh to the appearance. The troops were covered by the presence of the first of my Gunboats (which had just been completed for me by Kieran of 6mm Wargaming) and the inaugural outing of my British Infantry in Grey Uniforms (See the report of our third BattleCry 2011 TSATF Game). However terrain was a different story – as always I was leeching off Kieran for his Palm Trees – I do have my own, around 400 of them actually (and about 10 different types and sizes), but getting to basing and finishing them is a different story – but anyway, it otherwise was pretty much all standard stuff (well illustrated on this blog over the past few years). I needed something quick, easy, and cheap, to churn out a piece of quick new terrain…

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A Not So Small Migration

WordPress LogoOver the last few days I have been migrating Wargaming.info from Joomla to WordPress – for a variety of reasons – but needless to say it has required a reasonable amount of effort (and has been the third such major migration I have done in about 4 years in my quest to find the ideal platform). The site is now back up and running in its new environment, however it does unfortunately mean any external links to specific pages on the site will mostly be broken (while in Joomla I could load multiple aliases for pages, the by maintaining external links to old page addresses, I have yet to figure out how easily that can be done in WordPress). Also it may or not break RSS subscriptions – so you may need to reselect RSS notifications if you had these previously. So first of all my apologies to anyone this affects!

I have not as yet completed all work, but I wanted to get the new design up and running as soon as possible, so:

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Selective Laser Sintering Armour

RPG Manufacturing Cromwell IV Model
RPG Manufacturing SLS invoked Cromwell IV Model

Reviewed in Battlegames No.25 and announced on TMP, RPG Manufacturing Limited are venturing into the Wargaming & Modelmaking arena, with the first of a new range of precision ‘1-piece’ castings that includes several variations on the Cromwell IV and Panzer IV ausf G & H. These models are made by fusing together progressive layers of nylon dust into a 3D model using a CO2 laser (a process called SLS – Selective Laser Sintering). This is somewhat similar (in general terms) to what existing 3D ‘Printers’ do and other similar processes (for example there was an episode in the most recent series of the U.S. show “Bones” that used this technique to recreate a human skeleton from 3D scans). In our case these models are designed in a CAD application, and then scaled to the desired scale (e.g. each RPG Cromwell & Panzer IV are available in 1:100, 1:72, 1:60, 1:56, and 1:48 scale – the models being identical except for their size).

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Charles Grant’s ‘Battle’ Meccano Magazine Series

Charles Grant’s “Battle – Practical Wargaming” is one of the classics of the old school who were the original ‘modern-era’ wargaming generation – but what a lot of people don’t realise is that it was actually first published as a serialised account in Meccano Magazine, in 32 parts over 3 years from Mid-1968 until December 1970, with the more well known book version being printed in late 1970 while the magazine series was still being published. The Magazine series offers a chance to get “Battle” with extras, as it featured several parts that aren’t featured in the book, the latter only cover Parts I-XXVI (the Magazine series culminates in Part XXXII, the finale of a 1/32nd scale Wargame in the backyard)! In fact it was these Meccano articles (in my Father’s magazines) that were how I first discovered Charles Grant’s “Battle” in the mid-1970’s, long before I even knew there was book version! This was one of my very first classic wargaming publications that hooked me on the hobby as an early-teen.

Just recently I discovered that Meccano Magazine has put virtually their entire catalogue (dating back to September 1916) on line and it is possible to download individual pages from every issue…

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A Warlord Games Windmill

The Warlord Games Limited Edition Windmill
Warlord Games' Windmill

When I recently ordered a reasonable order of Warlord Games ECW figures (See Return to the English Civil War) to maximise on the postage I couldn’t resist grabbing a unique little ready-made model of theirs – the very limited edition Warlord Games Windmill. It’s a great model because it’s a typical small basic type probably seen all though much of North-Western (& parts of Eastern?) Europe, rather than a more substantial structure. This is great because it makes it probably usable from the Middle Ages right through to the 1960’s or so. What’s more, although it’s nominally for 28mm figures it looks like it’ll likely sneak in with my 20mm World War II and Modern stuff, albeit slightly on the large side!

The model is a Pillar Windmill – (from eHow) “The pillar is the most ancient type of windmill, dating back to the 13th century…

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I get myself a Dremel

Dremel 300 Kit
Dremel 300 Kit

Some recent discussion on the Auckland Wargaming Club group about dips and washes referenced the Tabletop Terrain blog (another New Zealand wargaming website), and while I’d past by occasionally, I hadn’t had a particularly thorough look around – when I did I came across an interesting reference to Dremel Tools being available locally here in Auckland, NZ, for a reasonable price. Previously I was unaware of them being available for reasonable money – I have seen them occassionally in the Hardware chain stores, but up to NZ$300-NZ$400 for a basic tool with no attacehmnts! So if you really wanted one it paid to import them from the US or Australia but still worked out fairly costly. Anyway needless to say I visited the Test ‘N’ Tools Website (they are located here in Auckland), and found them available (as Stu at Tabletop Terrain had said) for much more sensible prices, so I promptly ordered the Dremel 300 pack (essentially a starter pack with the Dremel Tool in a case and a small selection of attachments).

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