Putting Away Childish Things...

 I know people who have never sold a single wargaming figure and who swear that they never will.

I also know people, like my opponent Anthony, who has bought and sold collections with such blinding speed that I have managed just one game with him before they are gone again.

I fall somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. 

Until I bought Gladiator Miniatures and had to make changes to how the house was organised, and gave up my games room to become a workshop,  I had never sold or given away a book.  But I didn't have the space any more and 800 SF and Fantasy books went to an SF dealer.  Three crates of non-SF went to charity shops and I then had the space to store my military history and uniform books.

When I bought Gladiator, I downsized my income fairly considerably (I used to work in IT) and joined the local Woking Linrary (which is excellent) and hardly ever buy books any more except wargames, uniforms and occasional history.

Over the years I have sold a fair few wargames collections though, as I realised I wasn't playing games with them or I would never get round to painting them - the "ooh shiney" phase had passed I was no longer passionate about the period.

So, over the years I have sold the following painted armies:

15mm ECW
A mix of old Minifigs Strip figures (bought when I was 16) and Mikes Models 15mm bought from Essex in about 1988.  This was part of my clear out of 15mm and I had duplicated the period in 54mm so they had to go.  They sold in Ebay for a reasonable amount and the buyer was very happy with them and the unpainted units I also included.

15mm Napoleonic
Again, I decided to clear out my 15mm and I had duplicated the period in 54mm.  These were a mix of Essex painted by Mili-Art (I bought two painted starter armies when I restarted wargaming at Salute 1995), some AB and some Old Glory.  Most went to fellow members of Guild Wargames Club.

15mm NKE and Hittites
Two fairly large armies - I never really found ancient rules I liked that much for big games - these went to a fellow club member.

15mm Swiss army for Maximillian! Rules
15mm Gladiator figures - these went to Chris at the Guildford Club.

15mm Classical Indian and Arab Conquest
I bought the Arab Conquest painted but never used them - they went to Hinds figures as part of large partial swap for a painted 20mm ACW collection.  The Classical Indian were sold on Ebay.

10mm Warmaster High Elf Army
I hadn't used these in a long time - bought and painted when Warmaster first came out. I had no local opponents and couldn't face painting another army in 10mm.  These were sold to somene in Australia for a fair price.

54mm Vietnam
1/35th scale - bought a long time ago, played a couple of games but never really found rules I liked.  In the end I decided they were too big for the table and I sold them in lots on ebay.  The Dragon kits and the Huey I bought had all at least doubled in price.

32mm DUST Weird War
Got into playing this with Anthony and when he decided to move it on I bought it. Played about 1 game in 5 years and did think of converting it to Konflikt '47 but in the end decided it duplicated my WW2 gaming experience so sold most of  it on facebook.

15mm Marlburian + DBA armies
Gladiator Miniatures - these all went to Ian Hinds as part of the great 20mm ACW swap.

25mm Darkest Africa
I bought these in 2000/2001 and we played a lot of games using GASLIGHT or Chris Peer's rules.  But eventually I realised I hadn't used them for 5 years and that a lot of the games were very similar. Sold off in job lots on ebay.

25mm VSF
Played a lot of GASLIGHT with these but eventually sold them for space as I was concentrating on my 18mm Martian Empires range.

25mm Pirates
I never had any ships for this and eventually decided it really just duplictaed my Three Musketeers collection as they were both stabby/shooty skirmish games.

 Unpainted collections sold off:

28mm WW1
28mm French Indian Wars
10mm Warmaster
10mm Battle of the Five Armies (GW)
Space Hulk 3rd Edition
54mm ECW (25 boxes of them - Anthony has a complete collection so I decided not to duplicate it in the end).

I can't say that I really regret any of the sales. Perhaps if I still had the Darkest Africa stuff I could play Men Who Would be KIngs with it, but I have the 54mm NWF collection for that period.  I have mostly used the money raised by selling off painted figures to buy other figures or some painted figures to extend collections.

Some £500 from the DUST/54mm Vietnam sales paid for some raised beds, soil and other bits for my new vegetable garden but most has gone back into the hands of wargaming traders or fellow wargamers...

The North West Frontier in 54mm

 

 

 

A NWF game in progress using the Portable Wargame

The North West Frontier has always appealed as a period ever since reading Donald Featherstone's Solo Wargaming book which has a number of atmospheric black and white photographs of NWF games in progress.

The collection started as a joint one between myself and my regular opponent Anthony Morton.  Anthony took the British (which he has a tendency to do!) and I collected the Pathan opposition.

We chose Armies in Plastic 54mm figures as they covered all the figures we needed, were fairly cheap and were in the 54mm scale we had decided the fight the period in.  The original idea was to use The Sword and the Flame rules.

                                                A Sword and the Flame game in progress

Anthony doesn't paint his own figures and I painted the British for him, using an undercoat of PVA, a mix of Coat D'arms paints and Coat D'arms Dark Brown Super shader to shade the figures which were then sealed with Matt Varnish.  The Pathans were painted in a similar way.

Anthony used the British army for the 2013 Little Wars Centenary games held at Sandhurst and added a general in a car as the leader.

We fought a number of games with The Sword and the Flame and then tried out the original Portable Wargame Colonial rules when I first became interested in grid based games and started experimenting with them.

 

Since then we have also used The Men Who Would Be Kings from Osprey with 1/2 size units which works well on a 6' x 4' table and which give a balanced game. 

The terrain was made from broken up polystyrene packacing stuck on irregular shaped MDF bases and then painted various shades of grey.  The rocks were arranged so that there are plenty of standing places for the figures to occupy.  The game mats are from an Irish company (who's name escapes me) who supplied mats made from the material use for sound deadening in cars and caravans.  It is a thick, robust material and I have 2 6' x 4' desert mats from them meaning I can make up an 8' x 6' table when I need to.

I have the Airfix Desert Outpost which serves as a small ruined fort and I also have the AIP Fort Kandahar building which I am part way through painting with textured paint and finishing off.  That should provide some good siege games.

Eventually Anthony decided he wanted to sell on the British (rather than duplicate his Little Legion 1879 army in 54mm) and so I bought them from him to keep the collection together and to make sure I had two opposing forces.

The current forces are:

British

102 British and Indian Infantry
25 British and Indian Cavalry
1 Gun and Crew
1 Gatling Gun and Crew
1 general in car
4 x elephants with loads

Pathans
60 x tribesman infantry
5 x Cavalry
1 x Gun and 3 Crew

Unpainted
5 Pathan Cavalry
2 boxes of Pathan infantry

As you can see, there is a disparity in the sizes of the two forces as I tended to paint more for Anthony than for myself as it was paid work!  I need to paint more cavalry (at least) to even the sides up and to balance the forces.

We very rarely use anywhere near the total number of British in a tabletop game but they are useful as forces for Funny Little Wars.

The Start of a New Blog

 I ran my previous blog - Little Wars Revisited for 12 years, starting in 2010, and documented my exploration of the world of 54mm wargaming and Toy Soldiers.  This lead me to create the Little Wars Revisited Forum for 54mm wargaming and this is mostly where I document 54mm games.

With the sale of my Toy Soldier business and the reduction in business to just Black Hat Miniatures and Coat D'arms paints I decided to drop my rather expensive hosting package that also hosted a number of friends' emails, etc.  The Little Wars Revisited blog went with it.

I was starting to feel slightly restricted by it as I game in a lot of scales other than 54mm and have decided to create a new blog to post some thoughts and a general track of my progress on various projects.

This is as much for me as anyone who is reading (which at this time is currently no one!).

For the first few posts I will detail the various collections and projects I am working on, how far advanced they are, which rules I use (or plan to use) and why and what the plan is for them.  As I have around 25 collections for various periods and scales this could take some time!

The collections currently are (in no particular order):

15mm Pony Wars
18mm Martian Empires
20mm ACW
20mm Sudan
20mm WW2
28mm Romans and Celts
28mm Dark Ages
28mm Wars of the Roses
28mm FPW
25mm Lord of the Rings
40mm AWI
54mm Napoleonics
54mm North West Frontier
54mm Punic Wars (for Command and Colours)
Federation Commander Star Trek ships
1/1800 WW2 Naval
25mm Fantasy Dungeoncrawl
25mm Three Musketeers
25mm Gangsters (and 4' x 4' cork city!)
25mm Gladiators
Ogre Miniatures SF
25mm Superhero (mostly Heroclix with Batman the Miniatures Game as well)
Bloodbowl
Gaslands cars and scenery
54mm SF for Galactic Heroes games

and I am sure I have forgotten something....