Some Found Terrain and a few more 15mm Peter Laing figures

What do you see when you look at this polystyrene packaging?

Some may look at this as unrecyclable junk.

I look at it and see …

a doorway,

high walls,

an adobe fort or compound, especially for tiny troops like my 15mm Peter Laing figures.

What do you see or would you make out of it?

Obviously some kind of walkway needs to be improvised inside around the high walls as a firing platform or raised walkway. This could easily be done with lolly sticks or coffee stirrers laid onto matchsticks or cocktail sticks projecting out of the walls, much in the style of the Airfix Foreign Legion Fort.

Similarly doors and repairs to the wall dips and ‘damage’ can be improvised with coffee stirrers and card.

A rough coat of acrylic off-white for the walls and a sandy base colour should not harm the polystyrene (some glues, sprays and paints can melt it).

One project for a rainy day when hands need to be kept busy.

Some 15mm Peter Laing figures for scale…

Around the time this arrived in the house (the family are now well trained to show me interesting packaging before it reaches the bin or recycling), I also bought a handful of Peter Laing 15mm figures from an online dealer. I spotted these Laings amongst several more lots of “Wild West Infantry” figures and cavalry that were confusingly labelled as (but definitely not) by Laing. Nice enough figures but not Laing ones.

For a few pounds I bought ten settlers or backwoodsmen and rarer still, what I take to be a pair of Peter Laing female settlers. They were all curiously mounted individually on metal squares. Even if they are not Laing females, they are a good enough match.

These are in Peter Laing catalogue terms,

probably F3006 Female Settler

https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2020/04/05/peter-laing-15mm-union-infantry-obes-rebased-and-flocked/

And from the Peter Laing American War of Independence Range:

F321 Rifleman hunting shirt standing

F322 Rifleman hunting shirt firing

https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2016/09/05/peter-laing-marlburian-figures/

Sadly now Peter Laing figures (the original or first 15mm figures, launched almost fifty years ago in autumn 1972) are long out of production and the moulds vanished, so second hand or recasting is the only way to acquire them.

I have been collecting Peter Laing figures since about 1982 as a teenager when I began my first proper (i.e. metal) wargames army, spending pocket money and paper round earnings on his English Civil War range. He was a efficient and friendly chap to deal with, even with my tiny schoolboy orders. I still have and use these figures today.

Peter Laing figures have a small and loyal following, with a dedicated MeWe online group run by Ian Dury which has replaced the former Google+ community pages. Here we post pictures of our Laing figures and games, as well as highlighting any second hand Laing figures for sale online that we come across. All welcome!

https://mewe.com/join/peterlaingfigures

Established 2019 the Peter Laing MeWe page

Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN 29/30 April 2021

Hing Fat 54mm WW2 Italians painted

Crossposted from my Pound Store Plastic Warriors blog, see more pictures of my latest painted sample 54mm plastic figures from Hing Fat (thanks to Peter Evans who sells them via Figsculpt https://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/figsculpt on eBay)

There’s also a comparison with the scarce Airfix 1:32 Italian Infantry figures.

https://poundstoreplasticwarriors.wordpress.com/2021/04/27/hing-fat-54mm-plastic-ww2-italian-infantry/

Battling Aggie and the Bald Headed End of the Broom!

Beware the Bald Headed End of the Broom!

A simple scrap kitchen towel for a headscarf transforms one of Steve Weston’s 54mm plastic Mexican peasants into a spirited serving girl, scolding Goodwife or feisty fender-off of invaders from medieval to Tudor times through to the English and American Civil Wars and the Wild West onwards.

This is another figure for my slowly developing 54mm figure and pound store conversions towards a raggle-taggle Arma-Dad’s Army militia muster and civilians to fend off the Spanish Fury of Armada invaders of the southwest coast in the 1590s.

And the title?

Crossposted from my Pound Store Plastic Warriors blog – read the more fully illustrated blog post here:

https://poundstoreplasticwarriors.wordpress.com/2021/04/26/the-bald-headed-end-of-the-broom-battling-aggie-defeats-the-spanish-fury/

Blog post by Mark Man of TIN, 25/26 April 2021

Flats 30mm Battle for the Mountain Fort

Brave Alpinieri raid the Mountain Fort and Railway – Bruschia Attacked!

My latest quick 30mm flat skirmish was played out on a rocky terrain of Heroscape hexes and a ‘paint and make’ your own push out wooden 3D castle set. A railway line was quickly added and train in a tin locomotive and wagons.

Solo game played using 30mm flats and simple skirmish rules (details from previous posts).

Early morning light … The Bruschian forces in the Mountain Fort are attacked by their rival neighbours the Alpinieri, crack Mountain troops.

The Alpinieri, headed by Capitano Alberto Bertorelli, aim to disrupt the train line, destroy supplies and possibly take and hold the Fort.

2d6 were thrown to work out when the Mountain Train will arrive with the fur-hatted Bruschian reinforcements to change the guard – it will arrive in turn 12.

Birds eye view of the portable game board and gathered Forces

The blue white and red Bruschian flag flies over the Mountain Fort

Bruschian sentries patrol the station halt and battlements of the Fort – another quiet early morning?

Turn 1 – d6 thrown for deciding which compass point the Alpinieri raiding party would enters by – they emerge NW at the back of the Bruschian Fort.

Spotted quickly by sentries, the alarm is raised just before that Bruschian infantryman is shot and plunges from the battlements.

The first Alpinieri casualty shot down by Bruschians in the Fort

Some Alpinieri carrying boarding ladders sneaking round the back to attack the gun emplacement.

Explosive satchel charge swung into place to blow the drawbridge down.

A Bruschian artillery shell hit the gathered Alpinieri troops around the drawbridge, knocking out three troops including Capitano Alberto Bertorelli.

More Alpinieri rush into the castle in a final attempt to capture it. There is fighting in the courtyard, as Bruschians fire down from the battlements at Alpinieri troops inside the courtyard.

They hear the morning train in the distance.

A blockade of boxes, ladders, barrels and carts has been made across the railway track by several Alpinieri. One of the Alpinieri takes aim at the train from the station halt windows.

Turn 12 – the train arrives!

D6 Dice thrown to see if the train will brake in time or be derailed. It smashes into the barricade and derails into the station building, flattening the Alpinieri rifleman inside.

Dice thrown for each of the Bruschian reinforcements inside the train carriage and caboose. Only two are killed, the other eight and their officer survive unharmed.

Bruschian reinforcements stagger from the train wreck and head for the Fort.

The Bruschian officer calls to the Bruschian reinforcements down below – they head towards the Fort.

The last Alpinieri before his leap down the rocks to escape, only to be swiftly shot down.

The Alpinieri may have perished to a man but they achieved their mission – they damaged the railway system and the took out most of the Fort garrison.

The Figures

WW1 troops 30mm Flats bought at random on EBay about 5 to 10 years ago. They were already painted but needed a little paintwork touching up in places.

Happy St George’s Day – It’s Shaxberd’s Birthday!

Happy St George’s Day!

1. It’s Shakespeare’s Birthday! Last October I knocked up this pound store plastic Bard for my ongoing Arma-Dad’s Army Elizabethan 1509s Home Guard scenario …

https://poundstoreplasticwarriors.wordpress.com/2020/10/26/shaxbeard-the-armada-and-war/

Toy Theatres had an attraction for many men of letters including early wargamers like RLS, GK Chesterton and H G Wells.

https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/h-g-wells-little-wars-floor-games-toy-theatres-and-magic-cities/

There is an excellent Shakespeare toy theatre available from Pollock’s Covent Garden shop: or support the Royal Shaxberd / Shakespeare Company shop in Lockdown: https://shop.rsc.org.uk/products/shakespeares-toy-theatre

2. April 23rd is also St George’s Day, an under celebrated and quite odd National Day whose main point is to ignore it if you’re English and not make a fuss about it unlike other country’s more noisily observed National Days.

Portuguese image of a Boy Scout on horseback like a knight of old slaying the dragon of evil.

https://tabletopscoutingwidegames.wordpress.com/2021/04/23/happy-st-georges-day-to-all-those-fabulous-beasts/

https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2019/05/05/further-wide-game-design-ideas/

“If I should die … a corner of a foreign field that is forever England”

3. It is also Rupert Brooke’s death day – 23 April 1915 – whilst serving with the RNVR en route to Gallipoli. Brooke was amongst the first to die of the well-known WW1 poets. His Neo-Pagan circle of artistic bohemian wealthy Edwardians included Harold Hobson, an early player of H.G. Well’s Floor Games or Little Wars:

https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2021/02/05/three-more-players-of-h-g-wells-floor-game-little-wars-1913/

Brooke met Wells when he as an emerging literary talent met several leaders of the Fabian movement including George Bernard Shaw, Wells, Beatrice and Sidney Webb. Like fellow Fabian Society members he developed an enthusiasm for long walks, camping, nude bathing, and vegetarianism (Spartacus Educational website). Through the Fabians, he would also have known E. Nesbit and her husband.

Rupert Brooke took part in the Royal Naval Division action at Antwerp, October 1914, often seen as one of Churchill’s “piratical adventures”.

“Brooke’s accomplished poetry gained many enthusiasts and followers, and he was taken up by Edward Marsh, who brought him to the attention of First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill. Brooke was commissioned into the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve as a temporary Sub-Lieutenant shortly after his 27th birthday and took part in the Royal Naval Division’s Antwerp expedition in October 1914.”

“Brooke sailed with the British Mediterranean Expeditionary on 28 February 1915 but developed pneumococcal sepsis from an infected mosquito bite. French surgeons carried out two operations to drain the abscess but he died of septicaemia at 4:46 pm on 23 April 1915, on the French hospital ship Duguay Trouin, moored in a bay off the Greek island of Skyros in the Aegean Sea, while on his way to the Gallipoli landings (Another Churchill’s brainchild). As the expeditionary force had orders to depart immediately, Brooke was buried at 11 pm in an olive grove on Skyros.” (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Brooke)

https://www.nmrn.org.uk/news-events/nmrn-blog/remembering-renowned-war-poet-and-serviceman-rupert-brooke

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/27/rupert-brooke-death-first-world-war-poet-1915

So Happy St. George’s Day and celebrate Shakespeare’s Birthday (which is traditionally his Deathday too.)

Remember Rupert Brooke’s death and the many men who died at Gallipoli as well. Anzac Day this year is on Sunday 25th April 2021.

Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN, 23 April 2021.

Home casting figures – functional repairs and old toy soldier DNA

Useful tools of the repair trade – pin vice and file – to repair a miscast musket.

Miscastings or half castings that are not too bad do not always go straight back in the ladle.

To avoid fumes and mess, I restrict my casting to days outside in warmer weather with no threat of rain; hot metal and moisture make an explosive mix.

As a result casting days (or days when I have time and feel like casting) are infrequent enough that I save the 90+ % figures that are ‘nearly all there’. I can then do some simple repairs on missing musket tips and other fiddly bits. Even missing heads can be swapped …

“Where’s your head at?” Missing a head, why not try swopping one with a Pound Store figure?

Such repairs that I make are usually fairly simple ones, such as drilling out a miscast musket to insert a short piece of wire.

Second casting session a few days ago – a few missing musket tips, heads and bows to repair.

On the repair tray where missing musket tips are replaced, heads swapped and bows repaired …

The perfect casting, the half cast musket and a masking tape, wire and glue repair.

Old Toy Soldier DNA

You might notice from photos that I often drill, file and repair over sheets of white A4 paper, which I have folded into four and unfolded again to make a cross shaped crease.

This is because I keep the metal filings, drilling ‘swarf’ and trimmings from old Hollowcast figure repair, roughing up the base when rebasing or cleaning up home castings.

From time to time during repairs, I carefully slightly fold the crease-crossed A4 page and slide the metal filings and trimmings into a small lidded pot.

Why do I keep this toy soldier ‘magic dust’ mixed together in a small pot of this “old toy soldier DNA“?

It not only keeps the workbench of my roll-top desk clean but it also means that I can then add a minute pinch of this unique and special mixture from time to time to the casting ladle when home casting.

Each new shiny casting might then have inside it a tiny nano-percentage of an old Britain’s hollowcast casting or old flat tin figure.

Each shiny new casting then might have a small part of all the accumulated bravery, courage and adventure from the countless battles that the old damaged hollowcast veterans (from various makers and owners) have been through over the last hundred years or more.

Reinforcements for Tradgardland, Lurland or Afrika?

A small number of these unpainted Schneider castings of pith helmeted Colonial figures and fierce Natives will soon be heading towards Alan Gruber at the Duchy of Tradgardland blog as reinforcements for his interesting Lurland and Ost Afrika campaigns.

http://tradgardland.blogspot.com/search/label/Afrika

http://tradgardland.blogspot.com/search/label/Lurland

Alan has sent me some interesting spare figures and heads to keep me busy throughout Lockdown, so this is a small thin flat thank you heading to the Duchy of Tradgardland Post Office.

Fight well my tiny men, you have the brave DNA of old toy soldiers in you!

Previously on Man of TIN …

Here is one of the first blog posts that I wrote back in 2016 “type casting”. My WordPress avatar / host page @26soldiersoftin is still named after these famous “26 soldiers of Lead” of Gutenberg (or whoever first said this quote).

https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2016/05/27/typecasting/

We finish with a fine picture of a dapper, almost Duke of Edinburgh looking Donald Featherstone, casting away on the kitchen stove in his cheerily enthusiastic 1960s book Tackle Model Soldiers This Way.

“In the author’s house, everyone slaves over a hot stove”. Note the plate drying rack and safety equipment of a shirt and tie. An inspiration to us all!

Inspired?

If you want to have a go at casting, these companies sell new moulds and casting equipment:

Prince August (Ireland / UK/ EU) do some great starter sets at their website

https://shop.princeaugust.ie

or their official eBay shop mouldsandminis https://www.ebay.co.uk/str/mouldsandminiatures?_trksid=p2047675.l2563

Berlinner Zinnfiguren (Germany / EU) https://www.zinnfigur.com/en/Casting/

In America, Rich at Dunken has now acquired several old manufacturers’ collections of moulds https://www.dunken.com

Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN, 17/18 April 2021.

Hing Fat 54mm Plastic WW2 Russian Infantry samples painted

Shiny toy soldier style painted Hing Fat 54mm Russians on the painting table awaiting the gloss varnish of victory …

Crossposted from my Pound Store Plastic Warriors blog – some more interesting Hing Fat 54mm plastic sample figures gifted to me by Peter Evans. (Thanks Peter.)

More photographs and the full range shown at:

https://poundstoreplasticwarriors.wordpress.com/2021/04/14/54mm-hing-fat-ww2-russian-sample-figures/

Peter currently sells these ‘Made in China’ Hing Fat figures through his eBay seller site figsculpt https://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/figsculpt

Size comparison with my repaired childhood Airfix 1:32 (2021, currently unavailable)

Previously on Hing Fat samples posts: WW2 French

Next sample trio: probably WW2 Italians?

Meanwhile on a tinier Russian Front …

What, no Soviet women in these 54mm figures? Annie Norman of Bad Squiddo Games is producing a new range of 28mm Soviet women of WW2 on Kickstarter and then via her web shop. I don’t collect or play with 28mm figures at the moment but I have bought several vignette packs of her interesting female figures like her Land Girls. https://badsquiddogames.com

Blog Crossposted by Mark Man of TIN 15 April 2021

April – First Casting sessions 2021

Today’s Castings ready for trimming and filing …

Today’s casting session outdoors in the garden sunshine worked much better than one last week late afternoon with a chill in the wind.

These are mostly 45mm – 50mm Flats from old metal Schneider moulds.

The metal Schneider type home casting moulds do not work so well or the metal run so well if they lose too much heat between each cast.

Last week’s casting session – colder weather – and some scenics

I am keeping some of the miscast ones to see if I can repair muskets or rifles and swap missing heads with …

Pound Store Plastic figures.

Schneider mould 69 – colonials and highlander

Schneider mould 56 – settler and natives

Schneider mould 70 – charging colonial officer and bayoneting soldier

Schneider mould 80 – peaked cap kneeling and standing firing

Mixed in amongst last week’s castings you can see some flat scenics, which did not cast fully – low brick or stone wall, wall and hedge section – and a successful churn. Five bar gates are as tricky as cannon wheels!

I was also testing out an old silicon home cast / home made moulds that I bought a while ago for a Britain’s American infantryman in 54mm. The 50mm little Indian infantryman is an attractive figure, again randomly acquired.

Now for a trim and tidy up …

Meanwhile back at the Flat 2D ranch …

Alan Duchy of Tradgardland blog has been doing some unusual small Flats skirmishes of late such as these:

https://tradgardland.blogspot.com/2021/04/lurland-skirmish.html

https://tradgardland.blogspot.com/2021/03/forgotten-sons-of-semi-flat-homecast.html

https://tradgardland.blogspot.com/2021/03/afrika-palms-and-portuguese.html

Spot the same Schneider figures I cast this afternoon! Reinforcements?

Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN, 14 April 2021

The Land Of Counterpane Invaded Part 2 – The Battle

The Counterpane battlefield

The Land of Counterpane Invaded – Part 2 The Battle

Land of Counterpane Invaded Part 1

Part 1 – ‘Making the Bed’ – Crossposted from my Pound Store Plastic Warriors blog: https://poundstoreplasticwarriors.wordpress.com/2021/04/07/the-land-of-counterpane-invaded-part-1/

The Land of Counterpane Invaded! Part 1