Union Infantry

ACW Infantry are here!

The first box arrived in the shop today, £1.25 per figure. 48 figures in a box (£60) not bad value given the reasonable paint job. My only gripe is they have three flag bearers and two of each in the box, giving you 12 in all. I would have expected just the 3 per side. You also get 4 officers for each side. I assume this is because they expect that the figures will be sold individually and these will be the more popular. Frustratingly you only get two on each side of the loading poses. The figures also come individually bagged. The photo shows my new Confederate infantry line, minus the extra 2 officers and 3 flag bearers. Once I get the second box I will have more than enough.

Union Cavalry

ACW 1/32 Britains Plastics

When I was wee the last of the Britains series I collected was the ACW range. I tended to use them to bolster my few 7th Cavalry against the Indians. I didn't have the full sets of the Cavalry but I did have most of the infantry, only one of each pose. If I remember right by the mid eighties they were 60p per foot and about £1.20 for mounted, I may have paid as much as £1.75 for mounted. By I had started secondary school in 1986 Britains had all but stopped doing their pre-painted plastic, at least they were not available in the high street. I remeber the counter packs being kept in the glass counters of the toy shops. It was one of the highlights of my childhood to choose which troops I wanted browsing the poses under the counter. The possibility of buying the whole counter pack was never an option until later life and I've been meaning to get hold of a few for the last few years. You can pick up these counter packs for around £60, mounted packs work out at about £3 per figure, which is pretty good value for what you get. The paint job is more historically accurate for the ACW, the Confederates are more random and not all in grey, some brown coats here and there. They are a different kind of plastic to the old fugures, its much softer due to new regulations for toys but this means you can safely give them to anyone not likely to just eat them. I got this mounted pack from ebay, I had enquired at the local model shop but their suppliers only had infantry packs so I ordered two packs to give a nice mix of cavalry and foot. Once they are here I'll start putting togther some Horse and Musket rules to add to our existing WW2 rules. I'm very tempted to get a box of British and Germans in this range, much better to give these figures to kids at participation games than my lovingly painted Airfix!

Charlie Don't Surf!

Finished this batch of 1/72 Italeri US special forces in Vietnam last night. They were very quick to do and look quite good. Got the Viet Cong and NVA to do next. From my teenage years when I got into the smaller scale these figures were my favourite. The old Esci one's I have are too sentimental for me to paint so I bought some of the new ones from Italier, which are also harder plastic and better detailed anyway. I have also bought a Bell Huey Medivac from ebay - ready made metal model by Hobbycraft. I tried to make the Italeri Huey but my aircraft modelling skills aren't great and it looks a mess, it was supposed to be an easy model to make!? The shop in York also has amphibious tanks for Vietnam - ready made die cast models! So I may pick one of those up too. The hard thing will be making scenery, I've never successfully recreated a jungle so that will be the biggest challenge.

The best thing about these figures is that there isn't a single one in either the US or Vietnamese box that you wouldn't want painted and on the table, no silly or useless poses. Each set has a wounded pair that can be made into a little diorama, perfect for the medivac I have on the way!

I plan on testing our toy soldier rules with these to see what it plays like in this scale. May need to adjust some ranges but otherwise should be fine.

So, finally I have made an effort to get into Napoleonic wargames. I bought three books on amazon last week, the most interesting of which is Neil Thomas' Napoleonic Wargaming. Provides those new to it a good deal of background. I also got Napoleonic Wargaming for Fun and Napoleon by Mathew Fletcher, which is the big colourful Games Workshop style rule set. The only thing that puts me off this is the number of figures you seem to need for the rules and they seem a lot less simple than others I've seen. Other than that its a book worth having.

I've stuck with plastic figures since you can pretty much make an army out of a coupe of boxes of infantry, one of cavalry and some artillery. Here are the first batch of Nap Russians finished, they are Zveda plastics and I am very pleased with them. Very realistic, good various poses and a nice range for Russians at least.

I got some HaT French light infantry, which by mistake had a sprue of 1805 line infantry in the box too, which was great as I needed these! HaT also do the 1805 artillery - bicorne French to match the line. Also have HaT Russian light infantry (in the top hats) though these look mildly daft. May just stick with the Zveda stuff.

Will hopefully get a game on soon.

New Rapid Fire stuff

Spent recent wargames room hours back on 1/72 scale. I have a few Valliant Miniatures still half painted so have been trying to get these done for a late war scenario or two.

Something such as Caen I think. I picked up some of the new Italaeri fast build kits that can either be Preists or Ram Kangeroo's, so here we have a platoon of New Zealanders with their Ram Kangeroo transport.