Historical guest apperence on a tabletop near me

In nearly 60 years of wargaming I don't think I've ever had a historical personality General and definately not the 'Corsican Ogre' , so I thought it was about time I did !, thanks to 'S' who has been supplying my mounted command . 

And his adversary Blucher 'Marshal Vorwarts' again a Hinchliffe model . I suspect they might be an guest apperance on the tabletop as I think my generalship might be lacking their skills . (click on photo to enlarge) 

 

Wargaming humour No. 12

Hopefully me when we are on holiday in N. Wales and passing Porthmadog Model shop this summer.

 

Toy Soldiers in Art No.35 (and a sad story)

I don't normaly post things straight from Facebook , but as we are having problems with the internet (AGAIN !!!!)  I'm having to use my i pad and mobile phone and I find them difficult to be creative on them . This is from Military Toys from our childhood Facebook page , and has an interesting and rather sad story behind it . 

I think HG Wells sums it up best - 'prancing monarch' , 'adventures' , 'excitable patriots' etc ! , I can make a list of present politicians etc who should be locked away with a plentiful supply of toy soldiers and leave the rest of use alone ! - end of rant !

Click on photos to enlarge 

 

New toys shinning in the sun .

I took the oppertunity of the return of summer to photo some of the recent 'fruits of the brush' , first up my converted Prussian foot artillery.

These are the Prince August French artillery which I have converted into Prussians. Luckily the uniforms are similar and I added rolled greatcoats and shako covers to alter them. Think they look suitably different ! 

Next are the Prussian Dragoons which are converted from some British Household cavalry with head swaps and the coats lenghtened using 'green stuff' 

There seems to be some disagreement of the colour of the uniforms , illustrations vary from navy blue to sky blue , I went for a mid blue . More conversions are in the pipeline .

 

A very odd mould indeed .

 

Whilst sorting out my collection of moulds I came across this old one I'd forgotten I had . I don't remember were it came - probably from ebay and I don't think I've ever tried casting from it , so I thought I would have a go . This is the result a small (20mm?) Lancer the the figure above it is a 25mm Napoleonic Prince August figure for scale .

Here is a better close up of the figure , it looks perhaps French ?? ,I need to clean him up and investigate more . Sadly he is of interest only as he does not match any on my existing collections .

PS 

I did a bit of research and found this from something I posted about several months ago ,

There he is in the bottom right , this is from the Henry C. Schiercke catalogue from the 1930s (?) . I think the moulds must have come in various sizes as I have some of these moulds/figures in 54mm and 70mm (ish) .

Home cast problems and a problem solved !

So the problem with using the 25mm Prince August molds is the lack of Prussian cavalry . I have used a Hussar mould for their Hussars , but I had a problem with making some Dragoons !

I had a root amongst my moulds and found what I think was a British Household cavalry mould . I cast some up, cut their heads off and added Prussian infantry heads with the good old covered shako ( a VERY fiddly job of which more anon) .

I then added the longer coat using 'green stuff' 

Think they will look okay with a black undercoat , will report back when I get more done. 

 

AI meets Toy Soldiers

Messing about with AI , I took this photo several years and asked AI to reproduce it as a Victorian postcard .

Interesting how AI can get carried away with itself - by putting the stamp on the wrong side of the cards, probably to enhance the Victorian feel of them. I'm still in two minds on AI !?.......

....... I remember HAL in 2001 A Space Odessey !