Master Castings

I had chance to make a master mould last week and these are some very quickly assembled test castings from the mould.

These are the four new figures:



These are the artillery compared with a Britain's Gun



I am off to the London Toy Soldier Show for the first time tomorrow, so will hopefully get some ideas for new additions to the armies and possible castings to convert for generals, etc.

Ballistics Tests

When I originally played Little Wars we used Airfix plastic 1/32nd scale figures, unbased (and mostly unpainted) and fired matchsticks at them and larger bullets from an Ambush! gun, as I've already mentioned.

Even using matchsticks, a hit would knock the figure over and possibly take a couple of others with it in collateral damage.

I had a play last night testing out firing matchsticks at the sample LWR figures I have painted up and even at fairly close range, they simply bounce off as the solid metal figures are so much heavier.

I also tried firing small pieces of metal sprue, to see if I cast up some bullets they would work - but they seem equally light and don't knock the figures over...

Funny Little Wars uses the concept for artillery fire that you measure from where the matchstick lands (or the figure it hits) and that gives you the burst radius - different weights of artillery having different radii - and then you throw a D6 for each figure within the radius.

The discussion of Kriegspiel at the end of Little Wars discusses this idea as well, using different weights of screws or bolts which are placed in the end of a gun barrel and then fired out using a matchstick to strike them. I haven't tried this yet to see if it would work - it is only really suitable for the larger guns with a long barrel as the shorter field guns have a barrel which is not as long as a matchstick anyway.

Although I intend to play most using Funny Little Wars I would like to use classic Little Wars as well...

Artillery Park

When I first played Little Wars as a teenager, we had just four guns.

These were the small civil war cannon that fired tiny pellets and were quite ineffective and the bigger Britain's cannon that fired matchsticks.

We used the Cannon with matchsticks as long range, accurate weapons and then used the guns that came with the game AMBUSH! which fired plastic shells for the little guns. You placed the base of the pistol on top of the gun and then fired. They weren't wildly accurate, but when you hit you knocked over several figures.

The guns I used to have are long gone, so I started collecting them from ebay and have amassed a fair collection of field and heavy guns.

These fall into two types:

Field Guns



I have 7 of these in various states of scruffiness. They do all fire and still have strong springs and firing mechanisms.

Heavy Guns




I have 3 of these that are fully working, though the howitzer style gun needs some cleaning for it to fire smoothly.

I also have two broken guns that I am hoping to make a complete gun from:



The one on the left has a broken firing mechanism and missing spring, while the one on the right is just missing part of the trail which means the firing mechanism doesn't engage properly. I'm hoping that surgery will let me combine them into a working model.

So, 10 guns with a potential 11th which is easily enough for a large game and something I could only dream of 35 years ago!