Plastic Warrior Show announced, Clerical matters and Royal Horse Artillery action!

A little later in the year than traditionally held, but the best toy soldier event in the known universe is back again at its usual venue. I have already cleared my diary and will be there to buy more figures that I didn't know I needed and to have a catch up with many friends, old and new. If you can make it, come along for a couple of hours and go home lighter of wallet and heart with a few bags of toy soldiers! Any readers of this blog who I don't know, please introduce yourself if you see me (I think I may wear a little name badge to assist in that regard). Remember, cash is king at these sort of shows, so bring a full wallet! Hopefully see you there!

That would be an ecumenical matter! A tale of Chaplains and a churchyard

Here we see two newly appointed members of my floor games world clergy. These are both recasts of the Britains 'thin vicar' or country chaplain and the Johilco version. Originals are not very common or cheap and I was happy to buy recasts to add these lovely figures to my growing civilian population.

As regular readers will know, I have two churches in my collection but I have long wanted to make a suitable 'toyish' churchyard to go alongside them. I had a rough idea of what I wanted but it was the acquisition of some suitably sized gravestones from Temu that has finally enabled me to scratch this ecclesiastical itch!

To be useful and appropriate for my tabletop adventures, the size of the terrain piece was always a key question. In the end, as is often the way, the pieces fell into place as I was sorting out my lead garden and farm related horde. I kept being drawn to the pre war Britains flint walls acquired in a big e-bay lot 18 months ago. Now these were in very poor condition when I acquired them. They are actually hollow cast with the base of each piece open. This means that they can be squashed very easily and some of these had been! In addition the thin metal had suffered over the intervening years and there were a number of small holes and 'tears'. These are in my experience, uncommon pieces and I have not seen any since at a price that I would countenance. As a result, I was determined to salvage these at some point, but was waiting for the right project. As I played around with them I began to think about them as walls for a churchyard.

I tried them out and decided they might be just the thing. There were just enough for the size of churchyard I wanted and they are a lovely height over which defending soldiers might fire! 

I won't bore you with the rest of the construction work but I repaired and repainted the damaged walls, found a suitable base, flocked it and started the placement of the individual pieces. I managed to incorporate and reuse a number of damaged hollowcast plants and flowers as well as creating some gates from a piece of 'iron railings'.

I am really quite pleased with the end result and have ticked off another construction project. What next you ask? Well a municipal park is calling my name.........as well as a landscaped garden suitable for my Tudor mansion model........time and inspiration will tell. Oh and some front gardens for my little row of 1920's houses!

Royal Horse Artillery

For as long as I can recall, the allure of a Britains Gun carriage with six horses and a gun, has been difficult to resist. The rational wargamer in me held my aspirations back, by reminding me that such an elegant model was impractical for table top wargames. I still believe that to be the case, but at a toy fair some 12 months ago, I finally caved in to my inner child. 

On a table, complete with four outriders, was this nice condition, undamaged, early post war example. It was unboxed and the mounted officer was missing. I enquired about the price and whilst still a hefty amount, (under £71 and over £69), I decided that I had to take it home with me to become a centre piece in my display cabinets. I knew it was impractical ,but sometimes what the heart desires, the heart must have and so it came home to Apperley Towers. A postscript to the acquisition was an e-bay purchase of the missing officer for £10 just over a week later, This felt like a preordained event, thus confirming to me that I had been right to buy the piece ,as it was meant to be!

Ever since it has had pride of place in my feau British army cabinet, but it did create a desire in me to find a similar 'version' that I could squeeze onto a tabletop. Finding a damaged example at a price and in a condition where it could be rebuilt was harder than I expected. I was even looking at the reissued version sold to collectors by Britains back in the late 1990's. Even these however approached or exceeded the price I had paid for my original. That is until I saw a set advertised as 'mint condition, but missing one horse'. The seller was still trying to sell it for I think £60! I politely pointed out to him that no serious collector would buy an incomplete set at such a price ,as obtaining a spare correct horse would be next to impossible. We eventually agreed on a price substantially lower (£35?) and I was soon in possession of my 2nd gun team, albeit with a horse missing. Well that wasn't very clever of you Graham I hear you shout, but you see 'I had a cunning plan all along' as Baldrick might say.

It was always my intention to only have four horses pulling the gun and limber to substantially decrease the footprint of the model for the tabletop. After all, I had grown up with Britains and Timpo limbers with four horse teams and still feel that this is the norm.

I decided to base the model to make it even more practical and really like the nice solid feel to it. The gun it came with is a nice (non firing) model, but I can attach a proper firing version if the need arises.

All I needed now was a crew for the gun to fire it once unlimbered. Again a chance e-bay mixed lot, provided me with three dismounted Hussars standing to attention. I put these to one side as potential gun crew recruits and turned my attention to an officer perhaps for the fourth gun crew member. A buy at the last Plastic Warrior show provided me with a number of kneeling officers with binoculars (one of my very favourite Britains poses) and I have replaced his head with a stray Hussar head. Voila! as the frogs might say, I had a gun crew who just need a fairly quick paint job. 

So there we have it, a 'grail' purchase, inspiring a second project which has enhanced my artillery offering. I just need a few more now for my feau, Prussians, French and Socialist volunteers!

Tara a bit!