Sieges: Getting Organised (a Bit...)

 For a while I've been intending to take advantage of the strange world of Covid limitations and do some solo work on getting the hang of Vauban's Wars. Siege games are, by definition, very dependant on all sorts of fancy scenery and hardware, and it is always very easy to find assorted reasons why this is not the ideal time to have a go. Well, that's long enough.

I now plan to have a solo bash at a Napoleonic siege game, so I'm scratching around trying to collect all the bits and pieces I need. Some of this is trivial work, to be honest, it's just a question of getting down to it.

Today I have a case in point. The starting set-up for my proposed training game requires the British to have a couple of heavy mortars. Now I have odd bits of artillery around the place, and I have some spare soldiers, so it was a simple matter to put together the required mortar battery from some old Hinton Hunt gunners and a couple of very scruffy Hinchliffe mortars I got as a make-weight in an eBay parcel. Here they are - not beautiful, but absolutely fine - cross them off the to-do list. Ready for duty.

There is a new approach evident here - previously I put a lot of effort into making up smart siege trains for the French and the British in the Peninsula. I now also have pieces for a proposed Spanish train, including some fortress guns, and I'm starting to collect items for WSS sieges. My new approach is that I shall paint the ordnance pieces in nondescript colours wherever possible, and make up crews of various nations who can "borrow" spare kit as needed. This is the first such - the scabrous mortars here are simply BluTacked onto the bases, so they can be loaned out to another army, in a different period if required, or they can even be replaced by more beautiful examples if the dreaded Creeping Elegance ever catches up with my siege projects.

Anyway, enough said. I retouched and based these chaps (ex Eric Knowles gunners, by the way) while listening to the Crystal Palace vs Liverpool game on the radio. Easy peasy. The British now have siege cannons, mortars (both heavy and Coehorn), various howitzers and sappers. I even have some new, specially sized and based units of foot, rescued from spares boxes for duty on sieges. And still the wonder grew.

I'll put some notes here on the starting set-up for my Vauban's Wars solo game in a day or two.

French Siege Train - Heavy Metal

I've painted the guns for the siege train now. They are varnished, based and stored away in a new box (titled "French Siege Train" - how's that for organisation?) to wait for a small matter of 52 gunners plus (maybe) one or two senior officers.

This may be the least colourful photo of the year so far. I maintain a house tradition of 2 model guns per battery - the reasons for this are fading into obscurity, but as I recall they included:

* it is possible to field a half-battery (if you need one)

* 2 model guns have a definite front, and there is less scope for crafty spinning on the spot 

* I prefer the look of the thing (important)

* somebody (Charles Grant Sr?) recommended 2-gun batteries years ago, and I duly obeyed (even more important)

You can see here 3 batteries of Vallière-system 24pdrs (heaviest guns were the last to be converted to the Gribeauval system, since advantages of weight saving and standardised spares were less relevant - French siege train in the Peninsula had some very old guns) - models are Minifigs; 2 batteries of howitzers (different types) one lot are by Finescale Factory and the other are Hinchliffe 20mm; 2 batteries of Gribeauval 10" mortars (recently repatriated from the British and repainted - see "oops" reference in previous post) - these are also Hinch 20mm.

On the general topic of drab appearance, I was asked recently why I had adopted brown bases for siege equipment and personnel. I ignored any faint suggestion that it was not such a great idea, and explained that, since siege guns and sappers and similar people would spend most of their working time in specially-dug earthworks or sitting on (muddy) timber platforms, a nice shade of mud was felt to be appropriate for my Old School bases. At times, I confess, I have had doubts about it, but it would be a major project to change it now, so brown bases it is. Certainly, a siege battery sited on a beautiful croquet lawn, like my field artillery, would look spectacularly daft, so I'll cheerfully stick with this. However, olive green guns on a brown base are a bit dowdy, so I'll have to make sure the artillerymen get plenty of red plumes and so on, to brighten things up.

Background Artillery Project - Spare Wheel Cart

Some more progress in the BAP - no works of art here, certainly, but a pleasing further little shift from the lead mountain into the "infrastructure" box-files.

First item is a little unusual - I'm not sure how such a thing could feature in a game, but it's interesting anyway; no, it's not an early support vehicle for the Tour de France, it is a Napoleonic British Artillery Spare Wheel Cart. Odd contraption comprises a standard gun carriage, adorned with spare wheels and towed behind a standard limber - enough bits and pieces to repair just about anything that might break in an artillery battery on campaign. A British example of the benefits of standardisation in the field. Vehicles here are Hinchliffe 20mm, and the draught team and driver are recognisably Lamming. If you are dubious about the authenticity of such a device, you'll find all the details in Carl Franklin's fine book on the subject.


I also finished off another ammo caisson for the French horse artillery - Lamming caisson with Hinton Hunt motive power this time.

All in the box-files and out of sight now - as I have observed before, sometimes this seems a peculiar end-state for a hobby collection, but no matter.

Background Artillery Project - 5.5" Howitzers

The guns aren't really as blue as the flash makes them appear

I seem to be back to painting my own troops again, so I've been picking away at a few odd things in the queue. Here's a battery of British 5.5" howitzers, ready for the Peninsular siege train. Guns are Hinchliffe 20mm, and the crew are Kennington, who are smart and fit for purpose, and a better match with their NapoleoN colleagues than I expected.

The mud-brown bases for siege units seem a bit drab, but it seemed a good idea once, and it's become a siege-train standard, as has the 4-gunners-per-gun-plus-an-officer-for-the-battery and the reduced-footprint 45mm x 90mm bases. Tradition is everything...

Next up for the Background Artillery Project (BAP) are a British spare wheel cart and yet another British caisson, both with Lamming horses and drivers. Don't hold your breath.

The Scales of Injustice? – figure sizes, yet again

This is going to get me dangerously close to obscure worlds such as railway modelling, of which I know nothing, and where I am likely to get slapped down mightily if I use the wrong terminology, or offend the international standards (whether they are universally obeyed or not).

I’ve always been puzzled by the mapping of modelling scales like 20mm, 25mm, 28mm, 40mm and so on against  the more intuitively scientific (and understandable) concepts like 1/72, 1/64, 1/300 and similar. I have moaned on about this at some length before, so will try not to waste too much time going over the same ground.

Basic problem is that figure manufacturers call visibly unequal figure scales by the same name. If we discount the possibility of different sized millimetres being in use simultaneously (although it might happen), the matter boils down to

(a) which bit of the man do you measure? – there are disciples of soles-to-scalp (i.e. how high is a figure), sole-to-eye (which sounds like a convention, but which generates a lot of passionate support – most of the lectures I get from the bearers of wisdom seem to follow this doctrine) and even bottom-of-base-to-eye (which just seems plain daft).

(b) (and this makes a bit of a nonsense of (a)) how tall is this man anyway?  

In response to a previous post, I was directed to this diagram from Jack Scruby, no less, which would appear to be authoritative unless you happen to disagree with it.

What has brought this to mind of late is that I have been involved in purchasing and studying some of the old Hinchliffe 20mm equipment range – the non-WW2 bits of which vanished without trace many years ago. It says on the packet that these are manufactured to a scale of 4mm to the foot, which is near enough 1/76 scale, which is the OO model railway scale. I’m not sure, but I think this scale is widely used for WW2 models. 4mm to the foot would make a 6-foot man 24mm tall, and a 5-foot man 20mm, so where does the “20mm” nomenclature come in?

As far as Hinchliffe are/were concerned, I also have some of their 25mm artillery range, and in there is an information sheet, which explains that their 25mm range uses a scale of 4.75mm to a foot (which I reckon is 1/64), and goes on to state that the human figures in this range are designed to represent men 5 foot 8 inches tall, which means that (assuming Hinchliffe’s manufacturing standards complied with their own house rules), those strange ectomorphic soldiers that turned the wargaming market upside down in the early 1970s must have been 27mm from sole to scalp. Does this mean 25mm to the eye? – whatever it means, this is the official lowdown on how Hinchliffe interpreted “25mm”, and we know for a fact that this is different from what Miniature Figurines and Les Higgins were doing. The information sheet I have, by the way, appears to date from September 1971 – I’m not sure if it is still the same sheet which goes out with the 25mm equipment today – this range, of course, is still in production.

OK – back to Hinchliffe’s 1/76 “20mm” men – assuming the same logic applied, a 5 foot 8 man would be around 22.5mm tall – which is consistent with Hinton Hunt and current Kennington figures – would he be 20mm to the eye? Could it be that the eye-measurers have been right all along?

I don’t buy many plastics – I’m not at all hostile to them, but I have grown accustomed to not buying them, to being concerned about paint-shedding, and discouraged by the proportion of useable wargame poses in a box, considering these are no longer the pocket-money option they once were. At this point someone may feel urged to miss the point of my post, and put me straight about the merits of plastics – please don’t bother – I’ll take your word for it. Honestly, I will.

The relevance of plastic figures here is that 1/72 is the universal standard – how well it is observed and how the manufacturers compare is not the point. No-one can argue about what 1/72 means in mathematical terms, and thus, over the years, I have got used to regarding my Napoleonic collection as being “approximately 1/72” – some  of my figures are described by the makers as 20mm (Hinton Hunt, Kennington, early Lammings, early Garrison, very early Minifigs), some of them are old 25mm (Higgins, Scruby, some S-Range), from before the world got bigger, and some of them are explicitly 1/72 (NapoleoN, Falcata and Art Miniaturen). My in-house rule is that if the hats match, they are the same size. Ideally, my chaps should be around 22-23mm tall (without headgear), though a taller man might be OK if his hat looks right!

25mm Soldiers, as purveyed by Hinchliffe (L) and Scruby

I have now confirmed that the much sought-after 1/76 Hinchliffe artillery are a tad underscale for plastic figures, while their 1/64 cousins are visibly too big. Confusingly, considering the precision which went into the research and sculpting, Hinton Hunt artillery appear to be even smaller than the Hinch 20s, so maybe there was an internal inconsistency there too.

I’ve always tended to avoid Newline 20mm figures – too small for me, though they are lovely – I have no idea what the official scale is, but I have it on good authority that some of their artillery pieces are a good fit with Hinton Hunt, for example, which is useful, but, again, a bit confusing. RSM and Irregular have an even smaller interpretation of 20mm, but at this point I am getting well outside my area of knowledge.

It looks as though my target Napoleonic recruit is somewhere in a ball park between 1/72 and 1/76, with guns and wagons to match. And the devil take the decimal places.

Napoleonic Heavy Hardware – British 10-inch Howitzers

Once painted, these will be British 10 inch iron howitzers

Yesterday I finally got around to one of those open-ended refurb projects that seem to hang about for years. There’s always higher-priority stuff to be getting on with – you know the sort of thing.

This follows from a sort of minor-league New Year resolution I made, to get back to some Napoleonic siege games. There are a number of things I need to do for this – one is to arrange for some more satisfactory representation of trenches than my current unpainted wooden blocks. The Really Good Excuse for not doing anything about this at present is that I want to be sure the game is working properly before I commit to a mass of specialized terrain equipment. OK – can’t do anything with that one – put a sort of half-tick in the box.

Next thing I wanted was a hex-free table for sieges (and other things) – well I’ve done that one – the reverse side of my main warboards is now plain green, and sufficiently free of geometric cells of any type to satisfy even the most contemptuous of my correspondents. Tick in box – good.

The third, and most fiddly, thing is to make some sense of the pile of artillery equipment I’ve picked up from eBay and charitable donations, and either make it into proper batteries or get rid of it. Yesterday’s target was a small stock of Hinchliffe 20mm scale British 10” howitzers which I have managed to collect. Some were in poor shape as the result of many years of lying around in someone’s spares boxes, some needed attention because they were acquired from a well-known British eBay seller of whom I haven’t seen any trace for a while, who used to be famous for offering some real gun and wagon rarities, but always with the axles untrimmed (which gives something of the appearance of a pre-war Morgan 3-wheeler), always buried hub-deep in a bed of Evil Tetrion, and always finished in some astonishing industrial varnish which could withstand nuclear attack.

I spent an amusing evening levering things out of Tetrion, snipping and sawing axles to the right length, scraping grunge off wheels, and replacing a few wheels from the spares box if they couldn’t be rescued. A bit of superglue and we are making progress. Now they just need to be painted correctly (iron barrels, please), but there’s no immediate rush for that since I have to paint gun crews for them. Good so far, though – that’s pretty much a tick as well.

The M1800 Bromefield 10” iron howitzer is a bit of a shadowy fellow. If Frank Hinchliffe hadn’t included one in his celebrated 20mm horse-&-musket period artillery equipment (you know – the range that famously vanished – not only did they disappear, but some would have us believe they had never existed) then we might all be happily unaware of the things. Some years ago, with a bit of poking around, I learned that these guns were used at the British siege of Flushing, and then went into store and never saw the light of day until the Crimean War.

A shame for the 20mm Peninsular War enthusiast who would like some for his siege train; it’s an interesting model, with the gun mounted on what is obviously a garrison-type carriage with large wheels mounted at the muzzle end for road travel. Apart from the 18pdr gun available from Finescale Factory (now, heaven be praised, available from SHQ as part of the Kennington range) and also as part of the current Hinchliffe 25mm catalogue (explain the presence of an exact 1/72 model in this range, in your own words…), there is not a lot available for people like me who are weird enough to  wish to try tabletop sieges, so a model of a 10” howitzer – albeit rarer than hen’s teeth – would be a real help.

Well, as a result of further poking about, I have some good news on this front. They were used in the Peninsular. So there. Only a bit, but they were there.

My sources are Major-General John T Jones’ Journal of Sieges (Vol.1) and the appropriate volume of the Dickson Manuscript – both of these gentlemen were present when the Allied siege train at the (unsuccessful) first British siege of Badajoz in May 1811 included, I believe, 4 of these howitzers.

They were not very successful. Their lack of success was rather overshadowed by the failure of the vintage heavy brass guns provided from Lisbon, which drooped badly when they were required to provide continuous bombardment, but they failed nonetheless. Jones notes that two of the howitzers were included in the batteries attacking the fort of San Christobal, and two were in Battery no.5 (I think) attacking Badajoz Castle. He explains that they were removed from the transport carriages when mounted in battery, and were to be used at a maximum elevation of 30 degrees. He also observes that the Portuguese officer in charge of the battery confronting the castle failed to observe the maximum elevation instruction, as a result of which the guns broke their carriages. They are recorded as “damaged by own fire”.

Portuguese officer or not, they did not make any further appearance during the Peninsular War as far as I can tell, so presumably were stored away for 40 years until the Crimean War.

As you will see, I seem to have more of these howitzers than did the Allied army in 1811, but that’s near enough for me. If I am going to enact sieges which did not actually happen, it does not constitute much more of an offence against authenticity if the besiegers have equipment which they could have used if only they had chosen to do so.

You’ll see more of these once I have painted them and recruited gunners.

Pictures from Dawson, Dawson & Summerfield's excellent "Napoleonic
Artillery" (Crowood, 2007) of a 19th Century model of the 10-inch howitzer.
The photos are used without permission - please buy the book!

More ECW Odd-Bods

I've been doing a little more painting - specifically last night, while not watching the Tottenham game. Just a few odd figures which have been waiting around and were beginning to irritate me.

Here's some young chaps proposing to take out Lady Derby's chimney pots once and for all...

...and here's a Royalist general of Foot, with his horse and a minder. The general himself is one of the original Warrior ECW range - definitely not the current ones. Some of these earlier figures are small enough to fit with my 20mm armies.

The Ongoing Artillery Background Project (OABP)

First off, Happy New Year to everyone who is kind enough to drop in here. I hope your year is good – in my own case, I am hoping for a rather more satisfying year than 2012, which was a kind of not-quite year – a lot of minor things that didn’t go too well, and then there was the weather, which I have decided to take as a personal affront. However – I’m still here and still fighting, and each day is the start of the rest of your life, as a former work-colleague used to have written on a poster above his desk for a while. Come to think of it, that same fellow is no longer with us – he drowned himself in a freezing Scottish loch not long after he retired, so let’s gloss over that quickly – inappropriate recollection.

This morning, Amazon emailed me to ask me if I would care to rate my recent purchase of a pot of red GW paint – did it meet my expectations? Pretty much, yes. They also suggested that, since I recently purchased CDs of the Esbjorn Svensson Trio and some concerti by Telemann, I obviously like music and thus might be interested in a new album from One Direction. Now that is impressive lateral thinking, but no.

Last night I spent 40 minutes on the static exercise bike, in the interests of getting the blood thinned down a bit after Cholesterolfest. Went OK – backed off a bit towards the end to keep my pulse under 140bpm, but no problems, and it was good for the first of a new series. To avoid spending my time on the bike thinking “Good grief – still 29 minutes to go....”, I watched one of my library of approved exo-bike movies. Last night I watched the first half of The Charge of the Light Brigade – that’s the 1968 one with David Hemmings. I haven’t watched it for ages, and it’s a bit dated now, but still pretty good. The relationship between Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave and the other fellow is what I would describe as uninterestingly soppy – not very engaging, and I couldn’t really care much about the characters themselves. The military bits are nicely done, but what really compromises it for me is that it comes from a period when all British films used the same short list of actors, and I find it distracting to keep noticing that the sergeant major used to be in The Onedin Line on TV, for example.

It may have been a "brilliant moment of madness" - it could even have been

a "mad moment of brilliance" - but such moments are fairly commonplace

on my tabletop, I think 

The whole thing is rescued by Trevor Howard as Lord Cardigan, who presents the most wonderful portrayal of a pure bastard it is possible to imagine. I know it’s all going to end in tears, but I’ll watch the rest of the story on my next pedalling session tonight. After the Crimean unpleasantness, I think I’ll watch Tom Berenger as Longstreet again – yes – haven’t seen that for a while either.

In this rather disjointed not-quite-holiday period as the world gets revved up again, there is an opportunity to revisit all those wargaming background projects which seem to grind on forever. One such is the box of bits which I have earmarked to complete my collection of limbers and logistics vehicles for my Napoleonic armies. Although it comes under the general heading of Mucking About, every so often I open up all the little margarine boxes and switch things around to make sure I have the best combinations of parts for the various units. I still have to paint up limbers, teams and drivers and pulled guns for all the French artillery – which is 3 foot batteries at 2 horses each and 2 horse batteries at 4 horses each. I also have outstanding limber teams for one Italian foot battery, three Spanish regular, a Spanish volunteer one and one for the Duchy of Stralsund-Ruegen.

Then there’s two more British caissons and two French ditto to finish off, a couple of odd wagons and a bunch of pack mules to paint up. It’ll all get done in time – maybe this year – I got a fair amount of this stuff completed last year, so there’s no stress!

The bits are all-sorts – limbers are a mixture of Hinchliffe 20, early Lamming and some Minifigs 20mm, cannons are similar, plus a few Les Higgins. Horses and drivers are Lamming, Scruby, S-Range and Alberken, and I even have a few rather posh Art Miniaturen teams for the French line. The mules and oxen are mostly Jacklex, and the Spanish muleteers are Hinton Hunts. Should be fine.

Going through the boxes reminded me (not  that I had forgotten, of course) that I have a couple of really nice Minifigs kits to make up – a general’s carriage and a French flying ambulance – I really must get on with those – I’ll enjoy that.

General's carriage - all bits present

Ambulance-in-a-bag

And,  of course, having counted, examined, swapped and generally fiddled with all the bits, they all went back into the plastic tubs and back into the big box marked Napoleonics until next time....

Good fun though, and it avoids doing anything really useful. Also, I have a vague feeling that talking about it here makes it more likely I will do something about it soon, but don’t hold your breath.

Happy New Year, in case I didn't mention it.

Just Can't Rush These Things

I'm currently doing some conversion work and painting to get a supply of command figures for my next lot of Spanish line infantry, and in the breaks - since I have the brushes and the tools out - I am taking the opportunity to do a few other bits and pieces. Tidying up, finishing things off - that sort of stuff.

Here is an example. This, you will see, is a British artillery caisson. I have a few such caissons, and there are still a couple more to be finished. Most of them are models by Lamming - the older the better, to get the scale right. This one is slightly different - the limber and the caisson (actually, I think it is officially an Ammunition Car) are both from  the lovely old Hinchliffe 20mm series - long gone; the horses are Hinton Hunt, the driver is a converted Minifigs S-Range RHA gunner. Nothing particularly notable in the mix, I think you will agree - all the castings date from the 1970s. If you were to be a little fussy, you might suggest that the horses are a tad small for the rest of the kit, but that is certainly my fault for removing them from their bases in 1972. Anyway, you wouldn't suggest it out loud.

That is the point - the horses and the limber have been attached to this plywood base since late 1972. When I switched my house standard from 2 gun limbers per battery to just one, I had a few spare limbers like this kicking around the place. Last year I got hold of a matching caisson from the same maker and the same vintage, and added a suitable driver. Some very slight freshening of the paint on the original bits and here you are - a brand new addition to my Allied artillery which has only been 40 years in the completion.

That must be a house record, I think.

British Artillery Caissons, and Some Very Big Guns

Delayed by a late decision to strip the limbers, here are two examples of what Carl Franklin, in his lovely book, describes as the British Two-Wheeled Ammunition Car. A quick glance, of course, will confirm that the car is hooked up behind a standard limber, so it is in fact a four-wheeled vehicle, but articulated, which was regarded as a big advance over the earlier rigid 4-wheeler. These are the carts which accompanied the individual batteries into action, to provide an immediate reserve of ammunition.

The models are Lamming throughout - equipment and horses, and also the drivers, as evidenced by their Easter Island profiles and the trademark Lamming elephant whip. My thanks and compliments to Clive and to Dave Watson, who somehow came up with yet more supplies of extinct artillery kit.

Since I am deep in the artillery projects box at present, I think I may take the opportunity to make up and paint some more siege guns. As these may be of some interest, here are a couple I prepared earlier. I included a more normal 9pdr gun to give an idea of scale, and you will see that these siege guns are very bad boys indeed. These are 18pdrs from Hinchliffe's (current) 25mm scale range, which should make them way too big for the Minifigs gunners. Before you laugh (and I laughed myself before I checked the sizes), be assured that I have measured these castings and they are spot-on for 1/72 of the official weapon dimensions for an iron 18pdr. Further, Clive and I once put these same Hinch 25 castings alongside a Finescale Factory model of an 18pdr, and they were exactly the same size - I am not even prepared to consider that FSF would ever make anything which was not perfect 1/72, so let's just assume this is what they were like.

Big.

Anyway, I have 2 or 3 more of these to prepare, and a 10" howitzer, so I may take a short break from painting vehicles. Note also that my Allied Siege Train and associated engineering chaps have their bases painted a fetching shade of mud brown. It seemed a good idea at the time.

Royal Horse Artillery - Limber Teams

More vehicles ready - in this case, they are well overdue. I sold my old (Airfix) limbers around 7 years ago, and they'd been kind of decommissioned for a while prior to that. Since then I've been hoarding the bits for the replacements in my spares boxes, and systematically playing leapfrog with the painting queue so that they never actually got done.

Well, no longer - here are three RHA limbers, ready to go. Although I like to use 2 model guns for a battery, I use only a single limber when they are travelling, so this group represents all my three horse artillery troops on the road. I used to like the idea of having loose, "deployable" guns, so that I could actually move the ordnance pieces between the limber and the gun crew, but I have decided it is not one of my greatest ideas. I have dropped more cannons than enough, so I've saved up enough extra guns to be able to have some permanently attached to the limbers, and everything is now safely glued in place.

The horses and riders are all S-Range Minifigs, the limbers are Hinchliffe 20mm, and one of the guns is also Hinch 20, while the other two are (I think) Rose Miniatures. It stands to reason that the actual gunners get first choice of the Hinch 20 artillery...

British caissons will be along next, in a day or two - a couple of the limbers allocated to them are in the bleach at the moment.

Hooptedoodle #1 - Patapoufs et Filifers

“No,” said Mack. “Sometimes I want a book to break loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle. The guy’s writing it, give him a chance to do a little hooptedoodle. Spin up some pretty words maybe, or sing a little song with language. That’s nice. But I wish it was set aside so I don’t have to read it. I don’t want hooptedoodle to get mixed up in the story. So if the guy that’s writing it wants hooptedoodle, he ought to put it right first. Then I can skip it if I want to, or maybe go back to it after I know how the story came out.”

John Steinbeck, Sweet Thursday

This is not entirely an irrelevance. I have to say in my own defence that the inclusion of this piece comes straight from consideration of what happened to the proportions of the human form, as seen by wargame figure sculptors.

I have in my possession a very battered old copy of André Maurois’ lovely Patapoufs et Filifers. I believe the book is still available in some form or other, but sadly not with the original artwork by Jean Bruller. My copy was given to my mother for Christmas when she was 11, in 1936.

It is a children’s fantasy about two neighbouring nations, the Patapoufs (who are all fat and docile) and the Filifers (who are skinny and irritable), who are irreconcilable. They just can’t get along or agree on anything, and eventually they go to war. I won’t spoil the story by summarising it here, but their armies are very fine. The Patapoufs have small, rotund warships with sausages hanging conveniently so that the warriors can sustain themselves; the Filifers have long, thin tanks and wear pointy helmets. Excellent.

My favourite bit is the tribute to the heroic death of Commandant Tripouf, who died in the field as a result of getting stuck in a trench after overeating. You get the idea. Here is a view of their soldiers.

A few year ago I was going through my spare figures drawer and found a Hinchliffe model of Marshal Ney. He was so obviously a Filifer that I dug out the old Maurois book for reference.

As you will see, the late 1970s dividing of the wargame world into Hinchliffe and Minifigs fans was not entirely unforeseen.