Past Present Toys

FOLLOWED up an ad in the latest issue of Toy Soldier Collector by taking a Great Northern train to Winchmore Hill, North London.
I found Past Present Toys easily enough in Green Lanes (but do not go on a Wednesday - it is closed all day).

Toys present and correct

The shop was much as I expected, and is well worth a visit if you are into traditional Dinky/Corgi/etc cars, Hornby OO trains, Scalextric or W Britain toy soldiers.
I did not find anything to tempt me - and I did look pretty hard! - but maybe another time.

Ancient Warfare Vol XII Issue 6

THE latest issue of Ancient Warfare is themed on barbarian crossings of the Rhine, and the consequences of such crossings for the Roman empire.

Cross barbarians

I guess anyone interested in ancient history will know a basic outline of the Germanic invasions - part of what German historians call the Völkerwanderung.
But I had not heard of "Charietto the Headhunter," a celebrated early vigilante who apparently rose to become some sort of general in the Roman army.
Another very interesting article was part two of Gary Bruggeman's look at battle maps of the 216BC Battle of Cannae - part of his well-argued thesis that most maps of ancient battles show armies drawn up much deeper and narrower than was really the case.
All in all, I found this an especially good edition of Ancient Warfare.

Medieval Warfare Volume IX Issue 2

I SUSPECT this will be the last edition of Medieval Warfare I buy for quite some time.
These may be "famous last words," but I found this issue particularly unsatisfying, despite covering a wide range of interesting topics. Perhaps that is the problem - too much, too shallow.
The main article, The Rise And Fall Of The Assassins, was fine, if lacking in detail.

Medieval Warfare … striking cover

However The Battle Of Jargeau managed to cover a battle from the 100 Years War without a single battle map, and a piece on Hussite war wagons was so incomplete it would barely merit a Wikipedia "stub" label.
Some of the writing is rather lazy and needs stricter editing.
For example, a piece on Genghis Khan includes the sentence: "After climbing a scared mountain and communing with Tengri, the god of the limitless blue sky, he learned the heavens wished him to conquer the world."
Now, it may be Genghis Khan claimed this happened, or some of his followers believed it happened, but to state it as a fact in a magazine devoted to history is ridiculous.
The article on the Hussites starts: "After several years of mounting tension, Hus was arrested, and in 1415 he was executed. Hus's followers were outraged and a rebellion took off, lasting from 1419 to 1434 …"
This rather prompts the question: if Hus's followers were so "outraged," how come it took them four years to rebel?
Another piece states that an Italian condottieri was paid "the incredible sum of 60,000 ducats a year."
This may or may not be "incredible," but since we are given no reference point for what 60,000 ducats represents, it is hard to tell.
If Medieval Warfare were a specialist magazine for hardcore historians, readers might be expected to have a good idea what 60,000 ducats were worth, but the magazine is clearly being aimed at general readers - very general readers.
I certainly do not wish the magazine ill, but I have much better ways to spend the £5.99 cost of each copy.

Interesting Book

I LOVE espresso, and these days there is a huge choice of where to get it, although the quality varies immensely.
While in Gloucester over the bank-holiday weekend I remembered my favourite place for an espresso in the city, based on my visit last year, is Coffee#1.
(You might think coffee is very much the same wherever you get it, and there is some truth in that if you add milk to your drink - but not if you like your coffee straight).
As with a lot of independent outlets, Coffee#1 has shelves lined with job-lots of second-hand books.
I usually give these a glance, just in case something piques my interest, and I hit the jackpot yesterday with a large volume on Petra.

Pretty Petra

Having been to the ancient city, and being interested in Nabatean culture, I settled down for a good read in the short time I had available.
The book was first printed in 1972, if I recall correctly, so much of its information has probably been superseded. But I sped through the first 60 pages, finding author Iain Browning's account fascinating.
I now have to make a decision on whether to buy a copy of the book via Amazon (from £3.07), or to save it as reading material when, as is likely, I visit Gloucester next year.

Toy Soldier Collector Issue 88

THE June/July edition of Toy Soldier Collector arrived on Thursday with its usual mix of mouth-watering glossy photos of modern and old-style toy soldiers.

TSC 88 - Vietnam cover

But one of the most interesting bits, to me, was an ad from W Britain listing UK stores that stock its products, including one near me I had not heard of, "Past Present Toys LONDON."
Unfortunately the shop does not have a website, and a Facebook page is particularly uninformative, but there are photos (http://n21online.com/business-directory/item/past-present-toys.html) that suggest the premises would be well worth a visit.
One of the more intriguing articles is about Paper Replika, a company that produces paper soldiers.
These are very much toy soldiers rather than smaller-scale paper model-soldiers for wargaming that can be found, for example, at http://www.juniorgeneral.org/
What especially interested me is that Paper Replika also has a small selection of paper buildings. I am not sure how useful these would be for me, but I should probably keep an eye on the website: http://paper-replika.com/

Slingshot Issue 324

THE May/June issue of the Society of Ancients' magazine arrived on Wednesday.
As per usual, I found every article to have at least something of interest, but particularly entertaining for me were Joe Collins' DBA 3 - Improving The Simulation, Martin Smith's Coals To Newcastle - Playing Welsh DBA Lists In Wales and Paul Stein's Simple Campaign For Danelaw Britain - A Solo Or Programmed Campaign For DBA 3 (Part II).

A DBA-heavy edition of Slingshot

I See The Light

THE day after my visit to a large Poundland in Stratford, East London, I called in at its sister store in Peckham, South London.
Again my visit was rewarded, this time in the shape of a garden ornament that will make a good addition to the scenery for my Project Kaiser refight of the Franco-Prussian War.

Poundland street light

The light with a 60mm Victorian toy soldier for scale-comparison

Boats & Matches

WHILE  I was visiting The Works at Stratford, East London, I took the chance to pop into the next-door Poundland - quite possibly the biggest Poundland I have ever seen.
Going there proved well worth it as I picked up a Beach Boat Set and a pack of 400 "matches" - actually small sticks the size of matches but without combustible tips.

Boats and matches

I have no idea what I will use either purchase for, but I am fairly certain they will come in useful one day, and meanwhile I am only £2 out of pocket.

The boats - minimal assembly required - with a 60mm Victorian toy soldier for scale-comparison

Working It Out

ONE of the big challenges with 54mm wargaming is scenery, and specifically buildings.
There are magnificent-looking products on the market, but they tend to have a much larger footprint than is suitable for tabletop gaming.
This is especially the case for Project Kaiser, where I will be using a gridded table (actually two tables pushed together) with units likely consisting of four infantrymen, two cavalrymen or a gun and four gunners.
Bob Cordery, of Portable Wargame fame, came up with one possible solution earlier this month when he pointed out (http://wargamingmiscellany.blogspot.com/2019/05/wooden-castle-building-blocks.html) that discount chain The Works is selling Castle Blocks, a 75-piece wooden set intended for children aged 4+ to build a fort.
I went yesterday to a branch of The Works at the Stratford Centre - not to be confused with nearby Westfield - in East London.
Castle Blocks costs £25, and, like Bob, I was sorely tempted to buy a set as parts of the fort can easily be used separately to create built-up areas with something of a Germanic/East France look.
But perusing the store I found something even more suitable, and a lot cheaper.

Four 'wooden houses'

The label on the back of each house is titled "Decorate Your Own Wooden House." In small print comes the warning: "This product is not a toy. Please keep away from children."
In other words, the houses are aimed at adults. Now can you really imagine any adult wanting such a thing? Well, obviously there are some, and I am one of them!
The houses will require a fair bit of work before they are fit for the wargames table, but I am very pleased with my find.

Historical Reminders

WALKED from Bad Wiessee to Gmund yesterday afternoon, taking advantage of bright sunshine before the sky clouded over later in the afternoon.
Gmund has a chapel from 1634 with a mural on the outside depicting two angels along with the words: EHRE DEN OPFERN MAHNUNG DEN LEBENDEN, which roughly translates as: Honour the victims - Exhortation to the living.

The 1634 chapel - renovated from 1988-91

The window has an Iron Cross with the year 1914 on it, and below the cross an iconic stahlhelm helmet, which started replacing the pickelhaube in the German army in 1916.
Near to the chapel is a fountain, dated 1894, with a soldier equipped in a style I associate with the 16th century at the latest, and probably from quite some time before that.

The soldierly fountain

Close-up of the soldier

Beauty And The East

IF you like history and travel, then you could do a lot worse than get hold of a copy of a book I picked up for 99p from a branch of Oxfam (cannot recall which branch, but it might have been in Tunbridge Wells).
Colin Thubron spent four months walking through Lebanon in 1967 around the time of the Six-Day War.
The book's title, The Hills Of Adonis, refers to a Greek god of beauty who supposedly inhabited Lebanon's hills until he was killed by a wild boar.

The Hill's of Adonis - 2008 reprint by Vintage

Ironically, much of what Thubron writes about Adonis, especially of people believing the god annually died and was reborn, is dismissed by modern scholars.
But there is plenty of real Near East history here, starting from before the arrival of the Phoenicians, continuing through later conquerors including Byzantines, Arabs and Crusaders, and concluding with Lebanon's (very) limited involvement in the Six-Day War.
Naturally there is also much travelogue material, with Thubron finding the locals, whether Christian, Druze or Muslim. to be almost universally friendly before the Israeli-Arab conflict, but turning to hostility - at least from Muslims - during and after the war.
I had a similar experience of a seeming change in attitudes when I visited Jordan just before 9/11 and Tunisia just after it (although admittedly they are too somewhat different countries).
Thubron is a multi-prize-winning author, and apart from some purple patches of philosophy, I found The Hills of Adonis a rattling good read.

Abwinkl War Memorial

CONTINUING my visit to Bad Wiessee, which is beside the Tegernsee in Bavaria, I took advantage of a spell of good weather - it has been raining and cold much of the time - to head into the mountains.
My plan was just to walk along the town's panoramaweg, but then I decided to head up to Bauer in der Au at 904m.
However, it soon became clear from signposts that the restaurant or mountain hut supposed to be there was no longer open.
Since I had set off at about 1pm, without having lunch, I switched plans again and headed further up to Aueralm at 1270m.
I knew Aueralm consisted of a "mountain cabin" as I passed it last year when ascending the Fockenstein (1564m).
Fortunately the cabin was open (it turned out it closes on Mondays) and I enjoyed a lentil soup and large slice of blueberry cheesecake.
I had reached Aueralm via a different route from the one I took last year, so decided to descend by last year's route.
But I only had walking shoes without ankle support and no walking pole, and soon decided there was too much snow on the ground to make that route advisable.
Instead I came back down to the lake, and so to Bad Wiessee, via Abwinkl, which, depending on your temperament, could be called a large village or a small town.
This proved a good choice as Abwinkl has an interesting modern war memorial, liberally decorated with Iron Crosses.

Abwinkl - modern war memorial

There are many more names listed for WW2 than for WW1, including some who died in the early months of 1946.
It is not clear if these last deaths were military personnel who died of their wounds, or perhaps as Soviet prisoners. From the way precise dates are given, I would guess the former.

Recommended Read

FINALLY got around to reading Jonathan Clements' A Brief History Of Khubilai Khan - Lord Of Xanadu, Emperor Of China, which I bought in March in Hampstead for £3.99, marked down from £8.99.
My current trip to Bavaria gave me the necessary spare time, helped today by it literally raining non-stop, and the book has proved a riveting read.

Khubilai … part of publisher Robinson's A Brief History series

I cannot claim to have more than a passing general knowledge of the Mongols, but Clements' treatment of his subject comes across as balanced and dispassionate, not being afraid to point out where sources are contradictory and/or problematic.
There is little in the book for wargamers per se - no battle maps, for example - but I found the whole description of Mongol warfare and life to be engrossing.
I will certainly look out for more books by Clements, and for more on the Mongols.

Now That's What I Call Model-Making

AM staying in a landhaus beside the Tegernsee in Bavaria, where mine host is clearly something of a dab hand at model-making.

Two superb models

These are marked as being for 12cm figures, and are brilliant pieces of craftsmanship, but their quality is reflected in their prices - 220 euros for the model on the right; 250 euros for the one on the left.

Spring Clean

AM slowly spring-cleaning my flat, which has reminded me of a problem most wargamers come across sooner or later - a lack of space.
Specifically in my case is a lack of space for displaying my library of wargaming and model-soldier books.
I have for quite a few years had them lined up across the top of one of my bookcases, but the numbers have grown to a point where the books were threatening to slip off either end.
My solution has been to remove books that could be said to be not directly, or at least not purely, wargame-related, eg my two volumes of Osprey Essential Histories. I have also removed 'books' that are more-or-less just rules with very little other writing, for example Black Powder and WRG rulesets.
I have not yet decided where I will store these, but for the moment my wargaming library is looking a lot less precarious.

My wargaming books, minus rulesets, etc

If You Can Keep Your Head ...

I DECIDED to convert six of my artillerymen into Prussians by replacing their kepi-clad heads with pickelhaubed ones.

Infantryman and gunner before converting

The process of cutting off heads was fairly easy, and nothing will go to waste as the kepi-clad heads can be put on the infantrymen, converting them into French infantry.

After converting … now a Prussian gunner and a French infantryman

Supergluing the 12 replacement heads on the full batch of figures was a simple process ...

The full batch converted

… but gamers with more experience than I have of working with soft plastic will by now have spotted a flaw.
It turns out superglue is not-so-super with certain materials, chief of which is the soft plastic that Armies In Plastic uses for its figures.
I left the glue to bond overnight, but 24 hours later the heads came off before I could even wash and prime the figures.

As things stand … six headless gunners and six headless infantrymen

A quick surf of the internet brought a product called Tricky Stick to my attention: ttps://deluxematerials.co.uk/products/tricky-stick
It seems you use it to cover the two surfaces you wish to join. Once the surfaces have dried, you can use superglue as per normal.
I have ordered a 50ml bottle from Upstairs Downstairs of Sandown, Isle of Wight, for £9.50 plus £3 posting.

New Magazine Purchase

I BOUGHT Ancient History magazine for the first time last week as the issue's theme, Living The Urban Dream - Cities In The Ancient World, interested me.

Ancient History … 60 pages

The issue is numbered 21 and cost £5.99, for which you get 60 pages with very few adverts.
That is very much a good-news-bad-news situation. It is good that the magazine is so 'full', but bad that it is not attracting much advertising.
Still, since Ancient History apparently comes out every two months, it has been going for more than three years, and I certainly wish it well.
I am not sure the articles taught me anything I was not already more-or-less generally aware of, but with the exception of an out-of-place piece on the cartoon character Asterix, every piece kept me reading to the end.

Bonus Time

SURPRISES awaited me when I opened my latest order from Transport Models, with first up being the two boxes of Union artillery.

A Union artillery box and contents

Each box is supposed to contain "1 cannon with a 5 man crew." Grammatical concerns aside, each box actually comes with an extra barrel and elevator (probably not the right word, but I am referring to the part of the gun used to elevate and depress the barrel).

A gun assembled, with spare parts at the front

I have no idea what, if anything, I will do with the spare parts, but I will have no such difficulty in using the bonus that came with the Union marines.
The box is supposed to have "20 plastic action figures" in "10 poses." In fact, as can be seen in the photo below, it had 24 figures in 11 poses.

Federal bonus

No surprises with the Prussians - each box had its correct number of 18 figures in nine poses.

One of two boxes of correctly turned-out Prussians

 

New Order

MY second order for Project Kaiser from Transport Models of Preston has arrived, and I am suitably excited.

It consists of two boxes of Armies In Plastic Prussian infantry, two of American Civil War Union artillery and one of ACW Union marines.
Why the ACW figures for my Franco-Prussian War refight? Well, the uniforms of Northern gunners and infantry in the ACW were very similar to those of their counterparts in the French army.
This is almost certainly not a coincidence - after all, before 1870 it was the French army that was the height of fashion, thanks especially to its defeat of Austria in the Second Italian War of Independence in 1859 and its being on the winning side in the earlier Crimean War.
It was not just French military doctrines that attracted emulation, but the army's uniforms too, just as after the Franco-Prussian War it was Prussian doctrines and spiked helmets that became all the rage.

Gridding The Tables

HERE is how my double-table looks with a 12x10 5in grid.

I added the markers, which are beads from Poundland, in a rather rough-and-ready manner - more precision will be needed when setting up the playing area in earnest.
More scenery is also needed, as well as more figures painted, but the next photo gives an idea of how Project Kaiser will appear nearer completion.

Tight Fit

MY new wargaming table has arrived, giving me a total playing surface of approximately 6ft x 5ft.
As can be seen in the photo below, the two tables make for a somewhat cosy setting in my flat, but the tables are foldable so they will not pose a problem when stored away.

The tables in my sitting standing room

One table proved plenty big enough for my 10mm armies, but my 54mm toy soldiers need more space to give of their best.

Our 10mm refight of the Battle of Chotusitz was easily accommodated on a single table

The Battle of Eckwelt, fought using my random terrain generator and a 'new' command & control system, also fitted well on a single table

The good news, from a financial perspective, is that my decision to buy an oversized gaming cloth when I had a single table has paid off handsomely as it easily covers both tables.

Green for Go

Project Kaiser - German Round-Up

HERE are my German forces to date for my plan to refight the Franco-Prussian War in 54mm scale on the battles' 150th anniversaries.

Germans - 10 cavalry, 24 foot and a gun

Left to right in the back row are Bavarian chevaulegers, Prussian uhlans, Bavarian lancers and another unit of Bavarian chevaulegers.
In the middle (l-r) are two units of Prussian line infantry, a unit of Prussian guard foot and another unit of Prussian line infantry.
Flanking the gun are metal 60mm figures depicting Prussian jäger - these units, especially the band figures, may well not see action on the tabletop.

Project Kaiser - French Round-Up

HAVING done as much as I can for the present with my first order from Transport Models of Preston, and while waiting for my second order, now is a good time to take stock.
I am fairly sure my 54mm units for refighting the Franco-Prussian War on the battles' 150th anniversaries will consist of: infantry - four figures; cavalry - two figures, artillery - gun and four gunners.
My French forces to date are pictured below.

France - 20 infantry, six cavalry and a gun

In the back row are hussars flanked by units of dragoons. The infantry (left to right) are Foreign Legion, two line units, zouaves and Garibaldi Redshirts. The gun awaits crew.
It has to be said that the HäT dragoons are barely compatible scale-wise with their Armies In Plastic colleagues - but that is not a disaster with toy soldiers, I guess.