Eighties Colonial War Game Armies

Following on from my post a few days ago about some photos I had found of a colonial Anglo-Zulu War game in the mid-1980’s, my friend who provided the armies then still has them! And as it turns out recently he had had them out of their storage containers for the first time in a long while to check their condition and do a bit of a review. He even took photos, so with his generosity, here’s some photos of the full 1/72 plastic colonial wargaming army collection we used for games in the mid-1980’s through to the very early-90’s.

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I Couldn’t Resist Indus

I recently stumbled across Indus Miniatures – and when they announced a 20% off ‘Thanks Giving‘ Sale I couldn’t resist getting a few – even though they are aimed at the Indian 18th Century to Mutiny era rather than the later NWF (North-West Frontier). Still the quality of the greens looks nice in these pics, and some of the figs are designed to be fairly generic – for example the Irregular Cavalry or Pindari are described as “meant to represent the Irregular troops serving in India for the Princes, Mughals, Europeans, Sikhs etc. They can be used from 1700 till 1850’s. They probably can be used for other time frames as they are quite generic“. Continue reading “I Couldn’t Resist Indus”

Here come the Bengal Lancers

As my colonial forces expand to cover the NWF (North West Frontier) now the Sudan and Zulu Wars are well catered for I have endeavoured to make some units ‘multi-use’ (i.e. suitable for more than 1 campaign/theatre if possible). As such I am constructing 2 Squadrons (or TSATF ‘units’) of Bengal Lancers, one Sikh and one Muslim. Here are some photos of the completed figures so far, based, and just waiting for lance pennants and suitable texturing of their bases… Continue reading “Here come the Bengal Lancers”

Combat Tanks Collection 1-7

Here are some photos of the models in the first few issues of the CTC Magazine. As I previously posted on the Auckland Wargaming Club Website the Combat Tanks Collection Magazine from the UK is now available here in NZ (having been available in Australia for sometime, and in a different format as the non-English Panzer Magazine in other countries)…

And you can subscribe on line or pick it up from most book stores. Each issue includes a 1/72nd Scale Die-Cast Model similar to those produced by Dragon Armor; Forces of Valor; and similar.

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Unit Organisations in TSATF

One thing I have done [as of 2008] is slightly tweak the organisations of units to try and more closely replicate the real life historical organisations – while still keeping to the general intent Larry Brom put in the rules and approximately the same number of figures per larger formation (Battalion or Regiment). As we are using the same organisations for our Fire & Sword Campaign I ended up putting together Visio Organisation Charts of them as visual organisation reference for Roundie & Kieran (who weren’t familiar with, my perhaps pedantic, idiosyncrasies over organisation tables) and as a result of an unrelated discussion on the Sword & Flame Yahoo! Group it occurred to me they might be of some little interest to one or two people out there (although I’m sure I’m not the first to do so and many will have their own views different to mine)…

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The Sword and the Flame [TSATF]

Larry Brom wrote TSATF in 1979, and 30 years later it’s still going strong with very little changes! Having played TTG’s Soldiers of the Queen* [SotQ] fairly extensively since it was published in 1987 (in my earlier wargaming years) until a long hiatus from all colonial gaming in the early 1990s, I was only introduced to TSATF in recent years for the first time…

* Not to be confused with the Victorian Military Society’s Journal “Soldiers of the Queen“!

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Using Crossfire for Modern Conflicts

Liberation Miniatures Modern German with Sniper Rifle - figure from Kieran Mahony's collection
Liberation Miniatures Modern German with Sniper Rifle - figure from Kieran Mahony's collection

The Modern period traditionally covers everything from the Korean War in 1950 through to the present day. The sheer number of conflicts is actually pretty staggering and as someone once said there is a war in progress somewhere round the globe every single day (a pretty sad fact really). In the past I have mainly been interested in the Arab-Israeli conflicts and the potential European confrontations generated by the Cold War – these interested resulted in my being a co-author of the Modern Spearhead (© 2000) rule set for modern Brigade to Corps level battles with micro-armour. However in recent years as I have moved away from gaming in smaller scales such as 1/285th micro-armour, and to some extent that Grand-Tactical type of game, I have revisited my interest in other modern conflicts. As a result I’m now slowly starting to game these at the Company & Battalion level in 1/76th (20mm) using Crossfire.

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