New Toys And New Ideas!

Welcome to another tale from the toy room here at Apperley Towers! This is intentionally short, as I am preparing a solo game which will form the basis of a much longer battle report in  the next week or so. In the meantime, I thought I would share some ideas on the future of this blog and also show some new acquisitions to the toy room.

I started this blog having been inspired by a number of other peoples efforts. The best of these have a very definite identity and style and I knew from the start that I wanted to attempt to create a unique identity for my own blog. Whether or not I succeed will be for others to judge but I am working on ideas to help to achieve this goal.

If I ask myself what I enjoy the most about other peoples blogs, I find that generally its seeing their toys, whether engaged in combat or just on parade, and the imagination used to enjoy the different facets of the toy soldier hobby. Battle reports are enjoyable, but I find myself focussing more on the figures and the scenic items than the tactics. I love the spectacle! Maybe that's just me, but I suspect a lot of the people visiting this blog are not dissimilar?   

I also enjoy blog posts that cover more than one item and want to give my own blog a magazine feel, with more than one article and recurring features.

To this end, I have been thinking about the subject matter that I would enjoy writing about and have come up with a number of 'feature departments' to go forward with.

'I counted them all out....'

Battle reports, which I know from my blogs statistical data is easily the most popular subject. I intend these to be as frequent as time and energy allow.

'Waifs and strays' 

New acquisitions which have found a home here at Apperley Towers.

On just that topic, here are the waifs and strays I gathered from the Malvern Toy Fair last Sunday. A modest haul and all non military. A total of £25 paid and I suspect some are ex shop stock, with no sign of play or wear and tear. Nothing extraordinary but I am more than happy with them.

Toy fairs are hit and miss with old hollowcasts and whilst there were plenty of military items I did want, the prices deterred me. The Britains military lorries are something I would like to buy but good condition examples are around £100 each. 

'A lick of paint'

I strip and repaint probably 90% of the figures and vehicles that I acquire. (This can be a little controversial and is a subject I will discuss at a later date) I know we all like to see the end product of peoples efforts and I will show mine. I also intend to cover conversion work in this feature.

As an example here are some French Foreign Legion which are receiving the attention of the sharp end of my paint brushes. The finished article will be revealed....when I finish them!

'Prop shop'

My enjoyment of terrain pieces and scenic items is no great secret. I intend to share items from my collection and talk about how I made them, or where they came from. I know I am not alone in this area of interest. (anyone who has not already done so, should go and read Michaels blog 'wargaming with 54mm toy soldiers', where he creates wonderful scenery for his toy soldiers to exploit) 

'As the vicar said to the actress'

Non Military figures to populate my wargaming world are another passion. This is where you will find them.

'Infernal machines'

This is where I intend to show and talk about anything mechanical or travel related. So look here for Spaceships, Steam Tanks, Locomotives, Horse Buggies and everything in between!

'Anything but a one!'

Desperately bad dice rolling, rule books, rules experiments and anything rules related.

and finally.......

'Three Cheers'

Primarily books about toy soldiers, particularly those that inspire us and make us want to buy or paint more toy soldiers! Other inspirational books, films or tv programmes can also find a home here. 

So there we have it. I hope you will enjoy what I have planned. If you can think of anything else I should cover please let me know. 

I will leave you with the traditional Black Country words of parting and a few photos of the Wild West collection now all packed safely away after their recent adventures.

Tara a bit!

Gunfight In Dodge City!

As promised, here is the second post on my Wild West gaming using the Dracula's America ruleset. While I had the whole town set up on the table, I took the opportunity to play a couple of games with different friends. The second game with John was played out with a view to using the action to briefly illustrate how the rules work and why I find them enjoyable. 

The rules are based around three different sets of dice, rolled when a character is required to take a test such as when shooting or fighting hand to hand. These 'Grit' dice reflect the effectiveness of each character, i.e. a novice uses D6 dice, a veteran uses D8 dice and the hero uses D10 dice. As all of the game tests are looking for dice rolls of 5 or higher to be successful, it is obviously easier for a hero to succeed than a novice.

Unlike most rule sets, dice modifiers such as for range, or cover in shooting, are not applied to the result that needs to be achieved. Instead they reduce or increase the number of dice rolled to achieve the 5's in the test. All tests start with 3 dice, but long range firing for instance will reduce it to 2 dice, whereas backshooting or elevated shooting will increase the number of dice by 1 each. 5 or above is still required for a successful damage roll, obviously easier to achieve the more dice a character rolls. 

By using the 3 different dice levels in this way you have a simple reflection of skill and experience, that is then modified for circumstances during an action such as shooting, but in a simple way that is easy to remember in the heat of a game. 5 and above is the magic number and circumstances and skill levels dictate to determine how easy that is to achieve. 

To determine the order of play, each player draws a hand of cards at the start of each round of play. A posse of 6 characters will for example, draw 4 cards. During the round, each player chooses one card and turns it face up. Whoever plays the better card gets to activate 2 characters with 1 action or 1 character with 2 actions. Being able to move and shoot, or shoot two different weapons , is obviously advantageous. There are however, never enough cards in the hand for one for each character, so if you want all of your characters to perform an action each turn, you need to restrict some to one action only.

The card play thus brings a number of dynamics into play. Choosing a card to try to win the chance to activate your character before your opponents is sometimes vital, as is deciding which characters to activate, in which order and how many actions to give to each. 

Johns Posse of lawmen

When a character is shot or attacked in hand to hand combat and the requisite 5's are thrown, the target gets a saving throw depending on how many 5's the attacker has rolled. A failed save means damage taken leaving the character shaken, down on the ground or dead! Characters shaken or downed can recover in the end phase of each turn, although its not easy to achieve in my experience. 

My Gang of outlaws

John and I played a straightforward scenario, with 2 posses of 6 characters facing off in the town. John had the lawmen defending the good people of Dodge whilst I had a gang of outlaws intent on putting the law out of action. We each had 3 novices, 2 veterans and 1 hero. The novices were armed with rifles and a pistol and everyone else had 2 pistols. I advanced up either side of the main street taking cover where I could and giving one of my riflemen an elevated position on a rooftop. Johns lawmen patiently waited for me to close, all in positions of cover. 

First blood went to me when 1 of my novices downed 1 of Johns veterans, but he soon evened up the score by downing one of my gang. Sporadic shooting broke out until everyone was shooting as the distances between them lessened. By turn 6 ,John had 3 men down to my 2, but much to my disappointment managed to down my gang leader in a close range exchange!

My gang leader eats lead!

So at the end of turn 6, we both had 50% of our posses' on the ground, not dead but incapacitated. This meant we both had to take a 'bottle test' and roll for the required '5'! As John still had his shaken hero still in play he could roll on a D8. I only had 3 novices in play so had to roll on a D6. John rolled successfully and I failed my roll, meaning my posse had to retreat licking their wounds. Victory to John.

Curses!

It was a fun game which we both enjoyed and we intend to play again in the not too distant future. We both felt the rules played well and couldn't really fault them. 

Since the game I have been thinking how relatively easy it would be to transpose these rules to some different eras of warfare. Sharpe's men against French Voltigeurs perhaps? A skirmish between a cavalry patrol and a local unit in the English Civil War? Something to think about anyway!

Conclusion - a great rule set! If skirmish games appeal to you and you want an elegant, not overly complex set of rules, give them a try. You may even find yourself fighting Vampires in the Wild West!

Tara a bit!

Just Another Day In Dodge City.............

One of my earliest memories, is of Friday morning shopping trips with my mother to the local village shops. These were in Roseville, a small village in Coseley, here in the heart of the Black Country. I was 4 years old and not yet at school. I was toy soldier mad even then, and had a large collection of soldiers which I played with most days. 

Toy Soldiers were sold everywhere in those halcyon days, from the Timpo counter packs in the post office, to Lone Star, Crescent and others in the newsagents and of course B.J. Flavell's bicycle and toyshop (of which more another day!). But best of all, was 'the pram shop' ,which sold everything for babies and very young children, including for some unknown reason, Britain's Swoppets! 

Roseville in the early 1960's with Flavell's toyshop to the right of the picture

Swoppets were expensive (2 or 3 other makers figures for the same price) and my parents struggled to make ends meet, but on several joyous occasions my mother did buy me a Swoppet. I always chose a Cowboy with the removeable pistols and thought they were just the best toy soldiers that could be bought. I pride myself on being a discerning toy soldier enthusiast even at that early age! 

60 years later, I have a modest collection of these figures, plus the glorious Stagecoach and a couple of other wagons. I also have a wild west town that I have collected over the years, utilising all of the fantastic Britain's Swoppet buildings, plus some made by Timpo and others. 

n addition I have a wooden street of Wild West buildings made by a company called 'ELF'. As a child I had this exact same item and was extremely pleased when I stumbled across this one in an antiques centre in the late 1990's. For ten pounds I was able to bring it back home to Apperley Towers for my Swoppet Cowboys to fight over again! 

My Swoppets are bolstered with a few refurbished hollowcasts and a lot of the excellent Replicant figures from the talented Peter Cole. I love the movement that Peter puts into his models and his figures are a mix of civilians and gunslingers which fit in so well. To round off the collection I do of course have the excellent Timpo 'Prairie Rocket' train. Just so the new Marshall, or the outlaw gang, can arrive on the mid-day train!

As with all of my toys, I do still like to play games with them and not just leave them languishing in cabinets or boxes. I am a gamer at heart, so all that was missing now to bring this collection to life, was a decent set of rules. These presented themselves to me in 2017, when Osprey published 'Dracula's America , Shadows Of The West'. 

These rules are for a Gothic Horror skirmish game set in the Old West which sounded interesting. To paraphrase from the rear jacket of the book.......

'It is 1875, and Count Dracula is president of the USA. President Lincoln has been assassinated along with his administration and in the chaos that follows, dominating the Senate, Dracula declares himself president for life!'

This is of course total fantasy, as the Whitehouse could never be inhabited by a malign character with ambitions to become President for life. Nonetheless, my curiosity was piqued and I bought the book.

In my next post, I will talk about the rules mechanics in the context of an actual game, which I will be playing with my very good friend and longtime fellow gamer, John C. So until then...

Tara a bit!