Excited by gaming possibilities with the new plastic Backyard Battalion figures by Reis O’Brien which arrived this week from the USA!
Post / Crossposted from my fully colour illustrated Scouting Wide Games for the Tabletop blog: https://tabletopscoutingwidegames.wordpress.com/2024/04/24/backyard-battalions-usa-and-three-man-sorry-kid-patrols/
A look close up at the old Spencer Smith 30mm Plastic figure poses range for WW2 or Moderns and the Tradition Of London SAE Madeira 1950s Holger Eriksson metal originals (still available). “Moderns Not Recommended” according to Phil Barker …
Blog posted / Crossposted from my fully colour illustrated Man Of TIN Blog Two https://manoftinblogtwo.wordpress.com/2024/04/09/30mm-spencer-smith-sae-figures-ww2-moderns/
Vintage 30mm Spencer Smith Miniatures and SAE Madeira figures – WW2 US Infantry (“Moderns not Recommended”?) – in plastic and metal – with a dash of Phil Barker, Donald Featherstone, classic Wargame books and vintage Airfix – what’s not to like?
Crossposted from my fully colour illustrated Man Of TIN Blog Two:
Blog posted / Crossposted by Mark Man Of TIN, 7 April 2024
Holger Eriksson, Swedish African Engineers, Spencer Smith Miniatures, Donald Featherstone, vintage 1950s figures …
Crossposted from my Man Of TIN BlogTwo, a new rabbit hole opened by buying Spenser Smith plastic 30mm WW2 Modern Infantry
https://manoftinblogtwo.wordpress.com/2024/04/01/the-curious-sae-madeira-30mm-figure-story/
One of the series I have been watching on Netflix subcscription is the curious mash-up animation Hilda.
It’s a children’s animation about a strange blue haired girl called Hilda and her mother who move from a stone troll and tiny elf infested wilderness and forest to the urban safety of the nearby town of Trolberg, a city protected by bell towers. Trolls do not like the sound of bells. The city is patrolled by airship and pompous imcompetent Troll Guards. Trolls however have destroyed Hilda’s childhood home.
From its Lofi 80s video game soundtrack to its infusion of Scandi supernatural mythology, this is a strange mixture of 80s retro Stranger Things (young teenage friends on bikes with lots of freedom) and a lively weird kids animation series.
Luke Pearson’s animated series (based on his graphic novel series) has that Harry Potter edge of myth, monsters and witchcraft with dark forests and ‘safe by day, dark things happen at night …’
There are many Scandi folklore elements:
Some of these tiny elves are planning strategy on a war-games type table, when giant girl Hilda comes to see them in Series 1 Episode 1: Chapter 1: The Hidden People.
You will also find
Of interest to my Scouting Wide Games for the Tabletop Project, Hilda joins the local Sparrow Scouts, whose uniform seems based on US Boy Scout or Girl Scout type sashes for badges.
Screenshots from Netflix series for (Uniform) reference and series review only.
You can explore more at:
https://hildatheseries.fandom.com/wiki/Hilda_Wiki
Blog posted by Mark Man Of TIN 21/22 March 2024
B.P.S. Blog Post Script
Hilda / Trolberg has a slight feel of the walled or gated community with a terrible threat outside the walls in the much more adult series of books and TV series by Blake Crouch called Wayward Pines
https://poundstoreplasticwarriors.wordpress.com/2022/11/13/wayward-pines-series-1-and-2/
Wayward Things maybe as a fusion?
My version of an unboxing video, this is an unTINning blog post. Old toy soldiers in a Toffee Tin.
Read and see more on my fully illustrated ‘tuppence coloured’ Man Of TIN Blog Two:
https://manoftinblogtwo.wordpress.com/2024/03/17/old-toy-soldiers-in-a-toffee-tin/
In Dick Francis’ 1984 detective novel Proof, recently repeated on Radio 4 Extra, a murderous gang leader who has been counterfeiting wine and whisky has been traced to an old closed bottling plant, thanks to clues in a diary which mentions meeting some one for the mysterious “w g”.
Plotspoiler: one of the characters in the novel is murdered in the novel method of being head wrapped and suffocated in mod roc Plaster of Paris fabric strip that wargamers and railway modellers use.
As the two main characters, Tony Beach a wine merchant and Gerard Macgregor a private investigator explore the bottling plant, they open a door to find …
“… What had probably been designed as a board room but the whole centre space was taken up by what at first glance appeared to be a snooker table.
But it wasn’t snooker that was played on it. The whole table was covered in miniature green mountains, wooded valleys, plains and plateaus, all of it green and brown like the earth with a winding ribbon of pale blue in a valley as a river.
I stared at it in awe.
“What the hell’s that? It looks like a battlefield.”
Oh yes of course, now we know what “w g” stands for – ‘War Games’.
“Good Lord, that’s what Charter Junior came here for. Where are the soldiers?”
Well, look at the shelves, hundreds of them, all tidily stacked in different uniforms.
Tanks, guns, missiles, incredible.
Helicopters, First War biplanes, barbed wire. God, it’s extraordinary
Hand painted, some of them.
Wait a minute, those mountains … listen, they’re hollow inside. You know what they are made of? White stuff …
Plaster of Paris … yes,
Look at the edges like bandage. I think he’s modelled the whole countryside in it.
“Not an ear nose and throat consultant but a wargames fanatic. Simple material, easily moulded, sets hard as rock …”
********
Yet again wargames and wargamers are seen as “fanatic”, associated with crime and villains, whether in James Bond The Living Daylights or the detective series and film of Callan with Edward Woodward.
It could have as well as been a model railway, if it was just the clue of the Plaster of Paris bandage terrain that was required but a wargames table seems to suggest strategy and cunning. Or maybe fanatics with inhuman murderous tendencies …
Dramatised from the novel for radio by Ernest Dudley. The novel may have even longer descriptions of the table and troops.
1984 novel by Dick Francis, steeplechase jockey turned crime writer.
Blog posted by Mark Man Of TIN, 15 March 2024
B.P.S. Blog Post Script
Searching ‘Dick Francis + Wargame’ This murder weapon is mentioned in a Vintage Wargaming Post
http://vintagewargaming.blogspot.com/2012/06/wargamers-in-literature-1-neville.html?m=1
Crossposted from
https://manoftinblogtwo.wordpress.com/2024/03/03/d-day-replayed-june-2024/
I found out about this Scottish gaming event through the Waterloo Uncovered newsletter, as it intends to fundraise for the veterans’ mental health through battlefield archaeology project.
Waterloo Uncovered and Professor Tony Pollard hosted the Waterloo Replayed event a few years ago.
https://www.facebook.com/dday.replayed
I won’t be attending as it’s not my type of game, scale, rules or period
but I hope it is well supported
and is successful both in raising funds for work with veterans through Waterloo Uncovered and for marking the historic event in a public and educational way.
I am sure ‘replaying’ D-Day as part of the commemoration will invite much discussion and discovery.
Blog posted by Mark Man Of TIN, 10 March 2024
Scrap modelling and cheap cardboard ideas for modelling corrugated iron: Crossposted from
https://manoftinblogtwo.wordpress.com/2024/03/07/old-tin-roof-from-cardboard-coffee-holders/
Bits and Bobs for Repairing Broken Britain’s 54mm lead figures from John Forman – Crossposted from my fully colour illustrated Man of TIN Blog Two:
https://manoftinblogtwo.wordpress.com/2024/03/02/more-broken-britains-from-john-forman/
Man of Tin blog 