The March Of Progress!

Yesterday I managed an officer, sergeant and two troopers to finish off the unit I started the day before, plus a staff officer. Yesterdays figures were tidied up, and turned out to not be as bad as I'd feared (who says you need to be able to see a figure to paint it?) and the whole lot are Quickshaded and ready for the bases to be textured. I also more or less finished the conversion on the Atlantis trucks that will be the prime movers for the British artillery, and made a good start building up the body of the tractors that will be their German counterparts.

I've been thinking further on the subject of the 1938: Very British Civil War setting. There's something compelling about the idea of civil war. There's the "brother against brother" element of tragedy, plus the irregular and sometimes colourful forces that always seem to crop up in civil conflicts. VBCW seems to be the most prominent example at the moment.

But it's not the only hypothetical English Civil War 2/3 (depending on how you count it) that's floating around out there. Back in the 1990s James Clay wrote a series of articles about a hypothetical UK civil war as an alternative setting for ultra-modern wargaming (I actually ran a couple of successful RPG adventures in the setting using Twilight 2000). More recently Steve Blease has resurrected the idea with his England Prevails blog, which has some great mocked up late 1980s news reports.

Winter of '79 looks at the potential for civil unrest in a slightly earlier period, following the Winter Of Discontent and the fall of the Callaghan government and the election of Margaret Thatcher. It's a plausible premise which lends itself to using early Cold War and Falklands-era figures, and the late 1970s/early 1980s setting lets you draw on TV shows like The Sweeney, The Professionals or the more recent Life On Mars for inspiration for more urban, low level police action.

Heading the other way, the sadly short lived Un-Tied Kingdom blog brought the idea bang up to date, positing a civil war resulting from the 2010 hung election. Not much there by way of actual gaming since the creator decided to switch scale mid-project from 20mm to 28mm and hasn't posted in the 6 months since. But there's plenty of interesting background and analysis to make it worth a read.

So how could we work up a hypothetical English Civil War in a Victorian/Steampunk era? It turns out to be quite an easy fit. Following the death of Prince Albert in 1861, Queen Victoria withdrew from public life to mourn. Her absence encouraged a rise in republican sentiment, including one wag who posted a sign on the gates of Buckingham Palace stating "these commanding premises to be let or sold in consequence of the late occupant's declining business". Victoria did continue to carry out her constitutional duties during her self-imposed isolation, but if she hadn't, this would potentially have led to a constitutional crisis. As it was, the scandal over her close relationship to John Brown, and the formation of the French "Third Republic" led to an atmosphere where in 1871 there was a republican rally in Trafalgar Square calling for Victoria to be replaced.

If we take the VBCW approach and look at potentially colourful elements we can throw into the melting pot, an 1870s Civil War has much to offer. The Cardwell Reforms (1868-1874) was a number of measures put in place to modernise the British Army which was still mired in the practices put place from Wellington's day. This gives us a good rationale for disgruntled officers choosing to join the "rebels". It also withdrew British troops from self-governing colonies, which would see a lot of colonial troops returning to the homeland. In reality the black Home Service helmet wasn't adopted until 1877, but if we bend the timeline a little and pull that date forward, we can hypothetically rationalise a wargame with Crimean era shakos, colonial sun-helmets and black Home Service helmets all on the same table.

The year 1871 also saw the legalisation of Trade Unions, and this era was a time of labour unrest, so we can bring in Union backed forces. More radical groups could easily see the formation of irregular "workers militias" agitating for even greater reforms.

The House of Saxe-Coberg-Gotha on the continent would not let their most prominent monarch be deposed without lending a hand and combined with states allied through the marriages of Victoria's daughters, could lead to the presence of foreign interventionist forces from all over Europe, including Germany, Belgium, Portugal and Bulgaria to name but a few. On the Republican side, it's certain the French "Troisieme Republique" would send aid and forces to their British counterparts. And don't forget our old hypothetical Fenian friends, equipped in freshly surplus ACW gear, who would be fighting for independence from the crown.

That's just a very short, broad overview of the possibilities, but it's certain that this "Winter of 187x" has just as much scope for colourful wargaming as its later counterparts.

Get thee behind me, temptation. And other ponderings.

Still here, still painting/modelling/hot glue gun-ing. When I posted to the G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. Yahoo Group about the Teamsterz trains I accidentally put a link to the overall blog rather than the specific posting, so I thought I'd take a break for a couple of days to keep the trains post on top.

Work on the VSF project has been proceeding overall. I've just put a coat of Army Painter Quickshade on a unit of Masked Minions and a couple of random Germans. I've also tried out the Army Painter Colour Primer on another unit of Germans, giving them an Ultramarine Blue undercoat. This has worked better than I'd thought, so I think I'll use it for the rest of the German regulars.

I also had a bit of fun painting up a special figure for one of the players, which seemed to come together very quickly. Which got me thinking. Conventional wisdom says that if you want to paint a unit of figures, you do them production line style... paint the boots on all the figures, then paint all the pants, then paint all the jackets etc. I'm beginning to wonder if that might not be the best way. For one thing, I'm finding a mix of fatigue and boredom quickly sets in trying to do too many figures at once. A 10 figure G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. unit is about my limit before I really don't feel like painting another hat that particular colour, or my eyes start to strain a bit. As an experiment I'm doing my next unit of Germans one at a time, completing each figure before moving on to the next. I have the officer and sergeant done already, 8 more troopers to go.

On the vehicles front, I've done a little bit more work converting Atlantis toys, and picked out a couple of Wild Wild West-based vehicles that I had previously used in 15mm. Since I won't be doing VSF in 15mm any more, and there's nothing really specific to tie them to any one scale, a very quick conversion (adding a larger gun barrel using plastic pipe) makes them suitable for use as 28mm steam armoured cars.

What's that? Not doing VSF in 15mm any more? Yes I'm afraid it's true. I'd always been an advocate of 15mm on the G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. list, but now I have started to transition to 28mm, I can't justify keeping two parallel collections of figures and vehicles for fighting essentially the same type of battle. It's part of the process of rationalising the game collection and working out what I'm likely to play and when. 15mm is becoming my "solitaire & coffee table" scale for games at home, for which I'm totally sold on the Heroscape/Portable Wargame combination which calls for the figures to be based in elements. Unfortunately the 40mm hexes are way to small to accommodate most 15mm vehicles, so those of my 15mm vehicles that can't be rescaled to 28mm or otherwise re-purposed are sadly going to have to be disposed of.

Speaking of H/PW, one afternoon this week I tried out various basic standards to see what fits well. I've settled on 30mm x 15mm bases for infantry, slightly smaller than the Heroscape hex which gives you a little wiggle room when placing units. It's also possible to fit two units together into a single hex, which lead me to the near heresy of having one real-world infantry unit represented by two bases, which can either be in the same hex for column/march or spread out across two hexes when in line. It adds a little bit of tactics back into troop deployment, and allows you to represent half-strength units, or split units off for detached duty. I'm thinking that two bases of the same unit that are either in the same hex or adjacent in line can both be activated for a single activation point. This is something I intend to try out next time I have time for a game.

I did also try out 40mm x 20mm bases, which also fit the hexes, though a little more snugly. That might be a better size for gaming with 1/72 scale plastic figures. Earlier this week I was inspired by Solo Wargaming in the UK to have a look at the collection of plastic figures sold by Transport Models of Preston. I was absolutely staggered at the variety. I have a soft (plastic) spot in my heart for these sort of figures, having fought many a mighty campaign as a child with Airfix figures and having been introduced to the wargaming hobby proper by two books which used them extensively (Battle! Practical Wargaming by Charles Grant, and Introduction To Battle Gaming by Terence Wise) I've used unpainted 1/72 plastics a couple of times to play around with new periods or rules, but never really thought of them as a contender for serious wargaming these days.

But looking at the selection available from Transport Models, I'm rapidly revising my opinions. All the old arguments against soft plastics are falling by the wayside.

"They don't hold paint well" - No longer true, as there are now primers designed to cling to soft plastic, or you can prime with PVA.

"There are always too many 'silly' poses not suitable for wargaming." - This is less and less true, with more figure manufacturers producing sets that are aimed at wargamers with sensible poses. You may still get the old "figure being shot" or "drinking from canteen" pose, but they tend to be re-releases of older ranges.

"There's only a limited selection of figures available." - It certainly looks like these days the major periods are covered at least as well in 1/72 plastic as in 28mm white metal.

For a hypothetical horse & musket period game in the Heroscape/Portable Wargame manner, one box of infantry, one of cavalry and one of horse would represent a quite respectable army, for less than the cost of a single G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. unit. I'm finding it increasingly hard to resist the temptation to shoot up the M6 and pick up a few boxes of plastic to try it out. But so far I'm managing to stay focussed on the VSF stuff.

Another big online temptation is the Very British Civil War setting. Stylistically speaking there's a lot of overlap with G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. style VSF, an emphasis on individual characterful figures, cobbled together fighting machines and an imaginative and whimsical sense of humour. In some ways that makes it an easier temptation to resist - Why invest so much one troops and vehicles to play a type of game that I can more or less play already, albeit set 50 years earlier and with more "speculative" technology.

But y'know... all the cool kids are playing 1938 these days...