WSS - Just Can't Get the Staff

As a change from the mass batches, I've been working on some command figures for the Bavarians. Quite pleased with the results, though my new "shiny" period keeps surprising me with just how shiny it is!

Bavarian Army Command

 This is an Army Commander base, which in my house system is a 60mm x 60 base of three figures. The standard is that of the Elector - that may be him (or one of his chaps) with his hat off, accompanied by a senior officer and a standard bearer. The figures are by Irregular - nice little sculpts.

Most of my Staff figures will probably be conversions of Les Higgins castings - there aren't too many needed, but it's important to get a decent amount of variety - few things are as stupid as synchronised line-dancing generals.

Before anyone mocks the state of the lawn, it was mown on Saturday, so some respect would be appropriate. Which reminds me - I was looking at photos of HG Wells wargaming in the garden - how on earth did he get the soldiers to stand up on his lawn? I have difficulty understanding how he got them to stand up on the attic floor, which is less of a challenge.

Hooptedoodle #358 - Keep Calm and Carry On

Buckets of strong tea all round

I'm somewhat shaken by recent communications with a painting service that I haven't dealt with before. I have anonymised and tidied up our correspondence, and after much thought I've decided to put some of it out here. The last thing any of us needs at the moment is unnecessary aggro, so I may decide to delete this post at short notice if I change my mind, and I may choose not to post comments, but I thought this was a bit special. Perhaps the poor chap is under a lot of pressure, but  this worries me - I admire anyone who takes a stand, but I'm not sure if I wish to have further dealings with someone quite so alternative. Just being angry doesn't seem likely to help very much.

I have done regular business with two other painters over the last 10 years or so, but one of those is not taking on any work at present, understandably, and the other has a big backlog. A friend recommended a painter I hadn't heard of previously, so a couple of months ago I made contact with this chap, and we agreed in principle that I would sent a trial batch.

The weeks passed, and my own arrangements for painting soldiers changed somewhat, with the self-iso business. Eventually I thought I might check to see if we could still go ahead with this batch. After all, it is a sort of contribution to protecting someone's livelihood.

Enquiry from me, 20th March

B--- - I was about to prepare a shipment of soldiers to send for painting, but am not sure whether you are working at present - are you still open, or painting at home?

Hope things are not too bad in your area.

Regards - M---

And back comes a quick response:

Reply of 20th March

My dear M---, l refuse to be frightened by a flu bug that the media and our beloved leaders have turned into a crisis. 

Goodness gracious M---, an average of four hundred thousand people die world-wide each year from flu. No one closed the world down for last years flu. Why is this one so different? 

My studio will remain open until/if l am forced to close and then l shall paint from home. 

Just send your parcel and l will get to it asap. 

Obviously take the usual flu symptom precautions. 

And Keep Calm and Carry On!

Best always, 

B--- 

Rather unusual viewpoint, but fair enough. Defiant to the last, obviously. I spent a couple of weeks working on my own painting, so didn't really have time to prep figures to send. Eventually it was time to think about it again. Since the pandemic had obviously moved on a bit in the interim, I thought I should check:

My email of 2nd April

Hi B--- - not sure if you will have adjusted your view of the virus situation, but I guess you have probably been required to close your shop? I'm still planning to send you a parcel of soldiers, if that's OK, for painting - should I send it to your home address?

We are in isolation here, but that's rather easier in the country. Keep well.

Best regards

M---

And he's still out there, fighting on:

Reply on 4th April

Hello M---. Glad to hear your all well. 

Haven't really altered my views on this flu virus very much. 

Perhaps the media fear spreading is deliberate Government policy to keep people away from each other and thus help kill the bug? 

If so it's a good thing. But on the other hand it's also doing untold damage to people's mentality and ruining economies World wide. 

My business has of course closed, but l am busy painting commissions at home. 

So yes, please send your parcel if you wish to, to [postal address follows].

If you do decide to send it, can you add one of your painted pieces so l can match what you have with those l paint for you? 

Should you wish to pay me via PayPal it will be fine, or a cheque to B--- D--- is equally OK.?

Look forward to hearing from you. 

Keep well, 

Best

B---

Something for Self-Isolated Souls Aged from 12 years old to 150...

...and for those who claim to be working from home, and are interested in daft puzzles.

This all stems from my setting out some miniature soldiers on the attic floor yesterday (a procedure I found strangely stressful), and from a subsequent comment by Aly M, who empathised with my discomfort.

The challenge is - estimate how much HG Wells spent on his collection of toy soldiers!

Braw lads

I'd welcome thoughts and guesses on this - in terms both of UK prices in his day, and the modern equivalent. Let's set this in 1911-13 - that's a period between the publication of Floor Games and Little Wars. If it helps, there were 12 pence to the shilling in those days, 20 shillings to the pound. If you wish, you may calculate how many weeks it would have taken a typical agricultural labourer to earn the price of a toy soldier. Whatever. You have the whole of the World Wide Web as your playroom.

It would be useful to have a feel for Wells' rules and how he played his games, how big the forces involved might be, how many periods he played (or was it all just one vaguely "recent modern" period for him?), the contemporary prices of Wm Britains hollowcast figures, whether Wells might get a fancy discount for bulk (the more fanciful the ideas the better, here), where he got those famous firing cannons, and how much they cost - anything and everything that might be (even remotely) relevant will be welcome. Estimate for breakage-replacement if you wish. This is not an attempt to produce a lifetime sum, it's simply about the armies he had around 1911-13, and how much he spent on them. I assume that he bought his soldiers off the shelf, ready painted. To be honest, I'm not even sure what kind of soldiers he fielded, or what the "sides" were - illustrations I've seen look a bit like the Trooping of the Colours - not many trenches or light troops in woods - a lot of formal dress. All very correct and proper. This also applies to the players, of course.

Classic attic-floor view - note that this is an artist's impression, or is it an enhanced photograph?

Ignore his collection of scenery, I think, although if you wish to have a guess at that then please carry on. You should also ignore the cost of refreshments for his guests, though it would be instructive to consider what would have been appropriate. It might even give me some guidelines for a variation of the guest menu at Chateau Foy, when things resume, after the Armistice.

My entry point for this is that it's not something I know much about, either about the workings of Wells' rules nor the lore of the 54mm hollowcast soldier. A friend of mine, when challenged recently on how much he spends each year on his wargaming, proved that it is less than his wife spends on visits to the hairdresser (take notes if you wish). I'd be interested to have an estimate for how much HG committed to his rather niche hobby activities.

I haven't started on any of this yet, other than thinking vaguely what might be involved, but I did a little Wiki reading on HG, and was surprised to learn that he was certainly a bit off the wall for his day; a Fabian, a pacifist and something of a socialist visionary, he also had a very complicated marital life (if you are into that sort of research) - he'd have been better off sticking with the little soldiers if you ask me...

Wells working in the garden - now this is scary - imagine the feverish head-count at the end, and checking the grass-box next time the lawn is mowed

All suggestions welcome - the wilder and more far-fetched the better. If I get no responses at all I will have proved something (about myself, probably), but I'm happy to keep this topic open if there's any interest. I am certainly not an expert, so I hope to learn a bit here!

Thinking of soldiers on the floor, I remember that once, as a lad in short pants, I accidentally kneeled on some troops during one of my periodic battles (which would have included Zulus, WW2 US Marines, Foreign Legionnaires, Arab tribesmen, all sorts). I broke two Britains kneeling Highlanders - red jackets, white tropical helmets. This must obviously have been a single incident among many similar, but, apart from the early OCD evidence that I had these two identical figures next to each other, behind a flat metal Johilco hedge section, I recall that I was fascinated (though disappointed, naturally) at the time that they broke identically - they both lost the same leg - exactly the same fracture. This may have been the moment in my childhood when I decided that I wanted to grow up to be a madman.

This may be the moment when it all started to slide. It's also possible that the indentation is still in my kneecap, in which case I could maybe cast some replicas.

I'll check it out.

WSS - Bavarian Return - 2nd April

A day late and the usual dollar short, I got the four remaining battalions finished - they have still to get their flags, but I'll leave that to my next flagging session.

Because they are not strictly finished (without flags), and because I feel there's probably a limit to the number of photos I can post of the same units which say, "Look - I've done the red paint now...", I thought a quick group photo of progress to date with the Bavarian army might be an idea.

Some kind of infestation in the attic

Here they are - the new battalions are the ones at the rear without flags. I also have another unit of dragoons on the bottletops, ready for a Henry Ford-style refurb-factory touch-up, and similarly for the Guard Horse - they should be quite quick, I think. Other than that I have plans to get a couple of battalions of grenadiers painted - this will be proper painting from bare metal, and I'll probably send these out to a pro painter. In passing, I might mention that one of the two painters I currently use responded rather flippantly to my query about whether he was taking on work during the plague; he said that there seemed to be a lot of unnecessary panic about some sort of flu epidemic. This was a couple of weeks ago, so maybe he has had time to revise his views. Certainly I imagine he will have been obliged to close his shop - I hope he survived. There's a lot of view-revision going on at present, and no mistake, so no snarky questions, please.

Beyond the outstanding cavalry and dragoons and the proposed add-on grenadiers, the army does look a bit light on horse generally. I have a couple of French regiments they might borrow - I'll think about it. Oh yes - I have done nothing at all about staff figures, so I'll get that organised, too. I was hoping to use some Lancer Miniatures figures for generals, but they do not match well - the guys are built like toads. Sorry about that - they are beautifully cast, but it's my army and they are not getting to play - I'll stick with Irregular and Higgins and conversions thereupon for the time being.

The photo is taken on the attic floor, as discussed, but I couldn't squeeze in and didn't have my pipe handy. The light is good up there, though, with two big Velux roof-windows. I'll take a better "parade" photo when there are more flags. Very odd, actually. I spent the photo session paralysed with anxiety in case the soldiers got damaged on the floor, though there was no-one else in the house, and I had no immediate plans to stand on them. HG Wells must have been very tough.


I've removed the remaining Austrians from the community foot-bath, and faithfully paid my dues for a couple of afternoons, scraping off someone else's damned old flock, so now they are packed into house-issue battalion boxes (freezer packs) and will be ready for work soon.

Now I'm going to tidy everything away and have a few days off painting - 6 battalions retouched in 11 days is a rate of progress I haven't come close to for many years. Now I'll do some reading. While I'm on this high-energy roll I might as well see if I can read some history books without falling asleep.

WSS - French Books and That

Progress with my Henry Ford-style production of a big refurb batch has been pretty good - never since the golden days of my purchase of Peter Welsh's Napoleonic collection has anything as mind-numbing as this taken place here. All being well, I should have 4 more battalions based and flagged by Wednesday (famous last words).

Before I started this latest batch - two battalions each of Bavarian IR Bettendorf and IR Kurprinz, to be retouched and freshened up. The ultimate Henry Ford touch would be to spray them all black, but I'll try not to do that

Assuming I don't destroy my morale completely in the next few days, the plan would be to do two further, similarly-sized batches, this time Imperialists, over the coming weeks. They may be rather more fiddly, since there are more replacement figures needed, and my research into flags is - how do you say? - doing my head in.

Anyway, all good. Since I will certainly become very peculiar if I paint all day, I am deliberately setting aside non-painting times, so some suitable reading is going on too.

I also have some British troops to refurbish, and I've been dipping a toe into the subject of the French army for the WSS. I have the CS Grant paperbacks on the period, and I've been very kindly sent some copies of uniform plates and old magazine articles, but I thought I should get something just a little heavier, to give me some good background and some reliable detail. My French forces will be starting from zero, so it would be useful to build up a small army for 1703 which can sensibly grow (God willing) into a rather larger army without too much disruption and too many U-turns.

I intend to buy Mark Allen's book, which gets some criticism because it is not The Bible, but it looks very useful anyway. Rene Chartrand is also an obvious source, but I start to get into problems with potential overlap between different publishers (primarily Osprey and Helion), and also there are a lot of books with similar sounding titles.

This is a period for which it is possible to spend money very quickly and find that what you have bought isn't quite what you were looking for. I have obtained titles by Robert Hall and Bruno Mugnai on the Austrian army, but I'm aware that trying to doing anything like this for the French is risky and potentially ruinous. Thus I am starting out at a gentle stroll.

I identified the following as books I could get easily and without huge expense - I'm still dithering about this, so would welcome any comments.

This last title is potentially interesting but, looking at the contents summary, am I to gather that this covers the Line Cavalry etc only up to 1697? Hmmm.

Unless there's a good reason to do otherwise, I might start with a few French units that would be OK at Schellenberg (for example), but could grow into a larger presence. My War of the Spanish Succession is very likely to be almost an imagi-nations set-up, with long-winded and largely imaginary campaigns between Bavaria and Austria to start with. [To quote from the Gallacher Book of Axioms, "If actual history is useful on a particular occasion, then use it, otherwise it's just a luxury (like the sick-bag on an aeroplane journey)".]

Anyway, British and French are a little over the horizon, but could come into sight fairly soon. Thinking and reading about them can't do any harm.

After a late rush of maniacs last weekend, the beach here at the farm has now been closed to the public (well, closed to their cars, which is effectively the same thing), so here's a sort of post-apocalyptic photo - by 9am on Saturday, the only footprints are mine.

Look after yourselves - please keep well. I'm also intrigued by the reported huge demand for dried chick-peas - is this recommended stuff for the fallout shelter? Any good recipes will be welcome.

WSS - I Ain't Got Nothing but the Blues

Today I have started on the re-furbing of a big batch of Bavarian infantry - this one is four battalions. Yes, matron, you are right - I must be crazy, but it is only a heavy touch-up job, and I have a few days to get it done.

One slight complication I have here is that Eric painted the Regiment Kurprinz (2 bns of this) with black facings - I wish to have the facings light blue, as per the regs, so I must overpaint the cuffs and coat turnovers. This sounds simple enough - first issue is that whatever I do is going to be a compromise, since the coats of the chaps in the regiment are painted in slightly differing shades of blue - I'm not worried about this, since I can always claim that the uniforms would vary, not to mention fade, and I'm sure those big fancy cuffs weren't made of the same material as the main bit of the coat. OK - good, that's Bluff #1. The next challenge is to choose a decent shade of blue to do the job. It doesn't have to perfect, but should not be ridiculous - if I can't find a suitable shade for the cuffs, one of the alternatives might be to paint the coats as well, which doesn't strike me as an attractive idea.

Illustration borrowed from WSS Bavarians blog, which, in turn, borrowed it from Anton Hoffman's book

Next slight problem is that my colour vision has never been such that I would bet the farm on it, so I decided to involve the Contesse in the decision making.

I find that I have 22 different shades of blue, and that's without getting to the enamels and the model railway colours. A great many could be rejected out of hand, since they were obviously too dark - some others had congealed, of course, which is always a risk. I roughed out a short list, and painted some blotches on clean white photographic paper. Since I rather enjoyed painting the big blue blobs, I have included a scan of the sample sheet.

You would think that Foundry's Bavarian Cornflower Blue would be a good shout, and that is what I've used for my Napoleonic Bavarians, but in the early 1700s it seems that the uniform colour was much paler. I'm delighted to announce that the Contesse and I - independently! - both chose Coat d'Arms #206 Light Blue, which should be close enough - so that's something I don't need to worry about any further. Mission accomplished.

*************

To restate the theme of this post, here's the excellent Robben Ford, when he was much younger than he is today, playing live on Italian TV, a very slow version of his interpretation of Mose Allison's arrangement of Duke Ellington's classic song (are you following this?), I Ain't Got Nothing but the Blues. You may not like his ponytail, but I think it's hard to find fault with the music.

Take that.

WSS - Another Two Battalions Ready

Maffei at the front, Luetzelburg at the rear. All ready to be hidden away in the boxes. I've smartened them up a bit, but these are still identifiable as from the original 1970s army, which is what I intended, so I'm pleased with that! 

I finished off the Bavarian battalions I was working on - this morning I painted the bases, fitted the magnetic sheet, added the flags. The boys are now safely away in their box. Good. Next up could be another two Bavarian units of foot, or I could knuckle down to scraping the flock off the Austrians who are in the foot-bath. What I'll do, I think, is tidy up a bit, have a coffee and do a little reading - I have Mark Allen's old magazine articles about the French army of the WSS - I have no idea when or where they were published, but they are a very good source for a novice like me.

I was going to arrange a group photo of all the Bavarians I have ready for action, but decided against it - I'll get to that another time - the gaps still irritate me! For a while I was sorting out the boxes, crawling around on the attic floor in a way that I would have found extremely natural when I was eleven or thereabout - the knees must be in better shape than I thought!

When I do the Bavarian group picture, maybe the attic floor would be a good setting - shades of HG Wells, too.

For the Bavarians, I have now completed the following:

IR D'Octfort
IR Tattenbach
Leibregt (2 Bns)
IR Spilberg
IR Haxthausen (2 Bns)
IR Maffei
IR Luetzelburg
Monasterol Dragoons
Arco Cuirassiers
Weichel Cuirassiers
4 guns & crews

I have to complete refurbishment of:

IR Kurprinz (2 Bns)
IR Bettendorf (2 Bns)
Garde Karabinere
Santini Dragoons

And I have yet to start:

Leibregt Grenadier Bn
Boismorel Grenadiers
All the General Staff

 Set out like that, somehow it looks like progress is being made!

I think I have made something of a decision this morning - I may change my mind, of course! While sorting through the various units in the WSS boxes, I got confused a couple of times by the fact that the Bavarian and Austrian cavalry look very similar. The units are all fitted with 5mm dice frames, to carry status scores in my new rules. They have white dice fitted at present, but I also have red and blue mini-dice of the same size, so I think I'll issue the Bavarians with blue dice, to avoid any embarrassing mistakes! Stryker can tell you about such mistakes.