Monthly Archives: September 2009

Classic 20mm Part II

Posted on by

20mm Miniatures of the Seven Years War

The so called “Tri-Corn” or “Cocked Hat” period of military history extended over more than two centuries form the lat 1600s to the Napoleonic wars. Uniforms of all armies of the world were almost identical during this phase of military dress, and even as they evolved from the cumbersome cuffs and coats to lighter apparel of Napoleon’s time, the Tri-corn hat remained of the same pattern…

The above is taken from Jack Scruby’s Catalouge of Military Miniatures (1963). The full, two page, section covering 20mm miniatures of the Seven Years War can be found here:

20mm SYW

Click on the image above to download/view the catalog pages (format is PDF)

The 18th Century (SYW & AWI) has long been one of my favorite periods of military history, as such I have more than a few war game figures for this period. Two small 20mm AWI armies are a part of my collection. These armies were built using the Greenwood and Ball 20mm figures produced by Jack Scruby.

I’m not sure when I purchased my first 20mm miniatures of the Tricorne Era, but I do know that they have been among my favorite figures for many years.

I had originally planned to share several pictures of the original masters and patterns from my collection, but the photos did not come out as well as I would have liked, so for now I’ll just share the following two photos.

20mm Pattern figures 20mm Pattern figures

You will notice red lines drawn on the masters in the pictures above. These lines were used as a guide for part lines when cutting the original gravity molds (more about this in a future post).

The original gravity molds for these figures are long gone – they were used to cast figures until they would no longer produce usable figures. My collection of original masters and patterns is not quite complete. It is close but there are a few pieces missing (there is still hope that the missing pieces can be located, as many of the pattern figures have been stored in a not so organized manner for many years and I continue to uncover lost treasures).

Since we all know that “a picture is worth a thousand words“, the next few thousands words will be represented by these photos of figures in my collection.

Continentals:

20mm Americans 20mm Americans

20mm Americans 20mm Americans

Hessians:

20mm Hessians

Redcoats:

20mm Readcoats 20mm Readcoats

Some of my Scruby catalogs are a bit out of order; the 1963 catalog is my cleanest copy and has been taken apart for scanning, so I missed scanning and adding a page to Part I of this series. The page I forgot is the first page of Section Two – 20mm Military Miniatures.

20mm Military Miniatures Click the image to the left to view catalog page

That about wraps things up for Part II. I don’t yet have a time frame for the posting of Part III – there is still a bit of work remaining and I don’t want to promise a published date that I know I can’t keep. I can however share with you the topic of our next installment – Soldiers of the 20th Century – we will feature miniatures by Greenwood and Ball, Holger Ericsson and Joe Morschauser. Part IV will follow. In the fourth installment we will deeper into master figures and molds. We will also show a comparison between 20m and 25mm figures.

Coming up next time I’ll cover Medieval War Game rules; we will look at rules by Charles Sweet circa 1957 and the original Chainmail (Gygax and Perren)…

MAFRICA – in stock next week!

Posted on by

Mafrica

Mafrica, a mythical map – in ‘birds eye’ perspective – of the continent ‘Mafrica’ – a place where native tribes lurk to stop your colonial expansion. Perfect for war gaming in the African Colonial period of 1880.

We are pleased to announce that a 3rd print run (quantities are limited) of Mafrica maps will be in hand by the end of the week.

The 18” x 24” maps are printed on coated (not glossy) poster stock and are priced at $16.50 each (plus postage) and are shipped rolled in a sturdy mailing tube. Shipping to addresses in the United States is $2.50 – International shipping is $7.00 (for international customers, we can ship the map folded rather than rolled, shipping for folded maps is $3.50).

American Civil War – Rules circa 1959

Posted on by

I started on this post way back in March. This was about the same time as I started painting Civil War armies (in 54mm) for Liam. Somehow, I totally misplaced my scans and notes until late last week when I was working on some other rules project…

While Liam and I are having fun designing our own rules for Medieval & Fantasy I thought that playing with some true old school rules would be fun for American Civil War games. During one of my re-readings of the old Scruby publications I happened upon the March 1959 issue of War Game Digest. This issue focused on Musket Era war games and contains an article titled ‘The Civil War in Miniature‘ by Larry Brom. Larry’s organization fit perfectly with what I was looking for in an old school war game. I don’t expect Liam’s 54mm armies to be as large as Larry’s 30mm forces, but we should still have some fun with these rules. As soon as things slow down around here we hope to use my 40mm armies and give these rules a try while I’m working on painting the 54mm figures (If I’m lucky Liam’s first ACW units will be ready in time for Christmas).

Look for the next installment of our Classic 20mm series by the end of the week. In the meantime why not settle in and enjoy Larry Brom’s rules from 1959…

THE CIVIL WAR IN MINIATURE

By

Larry V. Brom

I shall endeavor to present in outline form my system and theories on the American Civil War in miniature with the hope that some small bit of information will be of use to one of you in your future war game projects. In this small way I might possibly be able to repay those dozens of worthy contributors to War Game Digest who have so inspired and enlightened me in the able art of table top combat.

Equipment

A) I have a 4ft by 8ft hard top table with movable paper mache’ hills and mountains, sponge trees and card board houses.

B) I have the usual range and movement sticks, dice and firing charts.

C) I use 1 inch by 2 inch blank cards for hidden troop move­ment on the field.

D) I use a 635 man 30mm SAE and Scruby army to fight with.

Organization

A) Ten men (1 officer included) equal a regiment

B) Three regiments and one Brigadier equal a Brigade (31 men)

C) Two Brigades and one Major General equal a Division (63 men)

D) Two Divisions and one Lt. General-equal a Corps (127 men)

E) Each Army has two infantry corps, a brigade of cavalry (32 men), four cannons with twenty artillerymen and a five man HQ group.

F) Each regiment has a flag designed with a number, state, and colors corresponding to the colors of the blanket rolls of that Regiment for easy identification on the field.

G) I have the usual picturesque units that appear on miniature Civil 1:’lar battleground s, such as: Louisiana Tigers, Hawkins Zouaves, Duryeas Zouaves, Berdans Sharpshooters, First Virginia Cavalry, Rockbridge Artillery and such.

Pre-Game Preparation

A) To prevent each opponent from knowing exactly what hers up against, I use a Point System to determine the composition of each force that takes the field in each battle. It works like this: Each infantryman is worth 1 point; each Sharpshooter is worth 2 points; each Cavalryman is worth 3 points; and each gun and crew is worth 10 points.

You then decide that you will have, say, a 150 point battle. Each player then builds up a 150 point army using any combination of forces according to their point value (see example armies below).

Army “A” Army “B”
80 infantrymen 80 points 50 Infantrymen 50 Points
10 cavalry 30 points 30 Cavalrymen 90 points
10 sharpshooters 20 points 1 gun and crew 10 points
2 guns and crews 20 points
TOTAL 150 points TOTAL 150 points

B) I always mask off the field with a curtain before setting up the forces to compensate for “pre- battle maneuver”.

C) I use a “card” system in my battles to introduce concealment and hidden troop movement on the field. It works like this: Each opponent has available blank cards on which he enters what that card represents on the field. Each card may have from one to thirty men on it, at the player’s discretion. Each side, by pre-game arrange­ment, limits the number of cards. These cards are then placed faced down in their starting positions on the field. The cards are moved as if they were troops, and of course neither player has any idea of what is actually moving towards him until the opponent’s cards are exposed. (Here is where skirmishers and shaprshooters come in). Cards can only be exposed as follows:

1) At a player’s discretion

2) When hit by rifle fire

3) When hit by artillery fire

Sequence of Play

A) I use the Alternate Move, Simultaneous volley system (the Combination Type War Game)

B) On each turn the player must follow this sequence – move, fire volleys, fire artillery, and then fight out melees.

C) I do not use the Continuous Combat Theory, but do give Bonus Moves to winners of hand to hand combat.

D) Hand to hand combat is fought on an individual basis man to man using dice to determine the winners. Player with-most men remaining in melee area wins

­Special Rules

A) Sharpshooters: get extra range and more hitting power, but no extra move distance.

B) Light Infantry: in each game player designates a light infantry brigade, which gets longer moves.

C) Movement depending on Formation; I believe in keeping as much semblance of military formation as possible on the field, and these rules encourage it:

1) Infantry in line, cross country – move 6 inches

2) Infantry column, cross country – move 9 inches

3) Infantry column, on road – move 12 inches

4) Infantry stragglers – move 3 inches

I think this briefly touches on the high points of my Civil War games in miniature. I will close with a little ditty written by Pvt. Ezra J. Pettywick, late of the 5th Texas Infantry Regiment, CSA:

The Battle is not to them thats got,

The rules so neat and nice,

The battle is to the feller who

Rolls the hottest dice!

Designing Rules with Liam…

Posted on by

As I sit-down to write this post, I have no clear direction in mind. I’ve been thinking about the process Liam and I are using to write a set of rules for his games and thought, that maybe others might find the topic of interest…

First, some background. We wanted to create a simple set of rules that Liam could use to play some games with his friends, but we also wanted something that we could expand easily. Our initial target is a Fantasy / Medieval war game. Nothing fancy, just a basic or introductory game. Version 1 of the rules was aimed at 54mm plastic knights. Version 1 was outdated before the first page dropped from the printer!

I should start with sharing some of our basic design parameters. First all info required to play (charts, tables and the like) needs to fit on two sides of an 8 1/2″ x 11″ sheet of paper.  We decided to leave out things like: Formations, Fatigue and Morale. They will be added into the more detailed game, but we felt that for introductory purposes these would just bog things down. We also decided to leave out any complicated command structures (I’m letting turn sequence handle that for now). Keeping things simple allows us to focus on rules for: Turn Sequence, Movement, Melee and Ranged Combat.

Melee combat is simple enough – each player rolls a d6, the high roller score a hit. In version 1, a Hit was the same as a Kill. After some play-testing, we decided to allow the Player to roll for a Save. Liam had wanted to add Hit Points, but I talked him out of that, as I wanted little or no bookkeeping in the game.

Ranged combat is also resolved by the roll of a d6. Make your point and score a Hit – again, we allow player to roll for a Save.

Note: Types or armour or weapons are not accounted for in this game. We will add rules for weapons and armour types, but are keeping it super simple for now.

Artillery is similar to normal (personal weapon) range combat, but I wanted to use some of the ideas from the original Chainmail. For cannon fire we use a range/bounce stick to determine where the projectile hits (roll a d6 for each figure hit). For catapults we use an impact template. roll a d6 for each figure in the impact zone. As always any Hit figures roll for Save.

Movement is, well Movement. We keep it simple. All Foot troops have same movement. All Cavalry has same movement. All Artillery has same (limited) movement. Terrain restrictions are minimal (for now).

Turn Sequence is also fairly simple. Roll for initiative (high roll chooses first or second on the turn). First player for the turn performs any Ranged Combat, Movement and Melee (in that order) for his troops. Player two repeats same.

The above doesn’t cover all of our rules, but it does cover most of the basics. We’ve looked at a number of different rules mechanisms, but keep coming back to our basic rules as being the simplest, fastest and cleanest. There is plenty more to add (and we can do so without making the game too clunky), so our current 1.3 version won’t be the last by any means.

For those curious about our armies; we are using a mix of figures. Many are Mage Knight figures. Some are Hero Clix (but treated as regular warrior rather than super heroes). There are also some number of miscellaneous figures (no idea where they came from). Rounding things out are 30mm Scruby and 25mm Bloodaxe figures. We still have a set of 54mm knights, mostly plastic. We don’t mix these with the smaller figures – we just play a different game (same rules) with those.

Liam and I will be sure to post some pictures from our next battle. We may even post a copy of our rules – but not before some more playtesting!

Product Shuffle

Posted on by

First, I know, last time I said next up would be part two of the Classic 20mm series. Well, part two isn’t quite ready yet; a few more pictures and a scan or two and I should be done. Look for part two on Friday, or safer yet right after the Labor Day holiday.

We’ve recently shuffled some of our product. Since the Bloodaxe Miniatures brand is primarily billed as being budget priced 15mm miniatures we thought it best to move a couple of our 15mm offerings over to the Bloodaxe Miniatures brand.

The first of the ranges to move was our small range of 15mm livestock. Nothing fancy here, just a cow, a dog, a goat and a pig. The dog and pig are the same as those included in our 15mm Hawaiian army packs. The cow and goat are some of my first attempts at sculpting (late 70’s early 80’s).

The second range to make the move is the 15mm American Civil War. These have more or less remained hidden or perhaps more correctly lost on the HistoriFigs site. These figures are the creation of Chris Munro. They are some of his early work (I don’t have an exact time frame, but I’d estimate early to mid 80’s). I’m working on an artillery piece or two for the range, at which point the range will include most of the basic figures one would need for some ACW war gaming.

I still need to add pictures (livestock & ACW) to the Bloodaxe Miniatures website; look for pictures early to middle of next week.

That about wraps things up for the product shuffle. There have been several more updates to the HistoriFigs website, so be sure to pop over to see what is new and improved (well, at least new).