Man of TIN Blog one is now almost 100% full of its free GB amount after six years of photo-heavy blogging about gaming and toy soldiers. I will maintain Man Of TIN Blog one and crosspost as needed from its progression / extension site Man of TIN Blog Two.
Specific posts about Scouting Wide Games, Sidetracked (railway overlaps with gaming) etc. will continue to go out on their own niche WordPress blogs.
Blog links posted by Mark Man of TIN, 8/9 October 2022
Anyone else made any foolish unachievable resolutions for this year’s gaming?
Battling Bronte Sisters (Bad Squiddo 28mm Little Wolves Amazons) meet 25mm Prince August Homecast cavemen boggarts. As close as I will get to Silver Bayonet?
*
It’s that time of the year when New Year’s Resolutions are optimistically made … but maybe not in this house.
My New Gaming Year’s Irresolutions for 2021 were kept deliberately vague …
but even then my vaguest plans for New Gaming Year NGY 2021 often went awry, mostly due to COVID.
The local village Spring Flower and Craft show 2021 never happened so no #FEMBruary figures from Bad Squiddo painted as planned but I did paint some later in the year – The Battling Bronte sisters.
Thanks to Covid levels, I never made it to the Woking 2021 54mm Little Wars Revisited Games Day when it finally happened. Covid dependent of course, but hopefully I might make it in 2022 with my Boy Scouts and snowball fighters who need more gaming time https://littlewarsrevisited.boards.net/thread/847/woking-games-saturday-march-correct.
My local history research project talk on WW2 in my local area (as a fundraiser) was postponed by COVID from autumn 2021 to late May 2022.
I think the NGY Irresolutions 2020 will still stand after a year or two interrupted but who knows what might happen in 2022?
New Gaming Year’s Irresolutions 2022
In no particular order
1. Cataloguing Peter Laing 15mm figures as part of celebrating the 50th anniversary of the now out-of-production Peter Laing figures, possibly the first 15mm figures when they launched in October 1972.
As well as cataloguing what I have over the next ten months, fellow members of the Peter Laing collectors circle on MeWe have been helping me identify figures and supplying photos of figures I don’t have. Then there’s painting and basing more of my unpainted Laing figure stash and getting in some more 15mm skirmish games?
Peter Laing 15mm Chasseurs d’Alpins (WW1 Range) complete with walking sticks!
2. England or Cornwall invaded – Variations on Operation Sealion / Leon Marino
Still playing around with skirmish ideas as part of my Look Duck and Varnish Blog ongoing Operation Sealion Home Guard games, but also found out more about the WW1 ‘Gorgeous Wrecks’ or Volunteer Training Corps, good for futureVTC Wide Gamesand Victorian / Edwardian / WW1 era ‘what if’ games.
Arma-Dads Army! 1590s Home Guard Elizabethan Muster of conversions and ECW figures against the Spanish Fury, Chintoys Conquistadors and pound store Pirates …
Two Britain’s Ltd. broken Scots charging – a favourite pose – with part repaired rifles, two more figures from the Waifs and Strays group of figures 2021 – “Waifs and Strays” sounds like it should be a Victorian Regimental nickname.
4. I look forward to some more enjoyable tinkering with 54mm repairs of broken lead figures to add to various units. Over the years I have been stashing away battered and broken figures from various donations – cowboys, Indians, redcoats, Scots and Khaki figures – along with the odd intriguing figure bought online.
Arrived last year and put away for Christmas – some very heavy, solid lead and fairly paint distressed Terraton 54mm-ish German semiflats to repair and rebase. Indians, redcoats, trees and farm animals …
5. What else might happen?
Weather permitting maybe will even get some more home casting done outdoors?
Pound Store Plastic figures, Early War Miniatures 1940 Range (for Svenmarck invaded!) and vintage Airfix OOHO figures to restore or rebase for some skirmish games.
Heading off a few weeks ago from the West Country to Woking, trek cart and all, to take part in the 54mm Games Day …
Recalled to Base: Heading back to the West Country without reaching Woking, due to the changing national situation
Daisy Patrol and the other tiny patrols of early Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts were travelling across and down from Tradgardland, Scotland and up from the West Country to meet at a tiny “lead Jamboree” in Woking and demonstrate Scouting Wide Games for the Tabletop. They have now turned homewards.
Sadly our tiny #MARCHing band of scouts who set off in #FEMbruary didn’t quite get to Woking. Maybe next year!
Neither will Alan Tradgardland Gruber, my co-creator of the Scouting Wide Games for the Tabletop games be attending, for much the same reasons.
I hope that Mike Lewis the organiser and the other players have a great day. I look forward to seeing the photos on the blogs.
This is purely a personal decision, due to the changing national situation of Coronavirus, being part of that at-risk group with existing medical conditions of past lung problems and diabetes.
IWD March 8th is also the end of #FEMbruary, the gaming, modelling and painting challenge by Alex at Lead Balloony to include more believable female miniatures in gaming and encourage more female gamers and modellers. My completed Girl Scout Patrol above is my contribution:
So today is a good chance to celebrate the achievements of remarkable women like Agnes Baden-Powell and Juliette ‘Daisy’ Gordon Low, founders of the Girl Guides and the Girl Scouts of America.
Agnes Baden-Powell set up Guides before Olave Baden-Powell, BP’s wife, became Chief Guide
An excellent biography of Juliette Daisy Gordon Low by Stacy A. Cordery .
Archery was one of the skills Daisy Gordon Low encouraged her Girl Scouts to practice.
Boy Scouting or Scouting for Boys offered so much to Edwardian girls that many embraced the opportunities offered to boys. Baden Powell did not discourage this but aware of public opinion on boys and girls mixing unchaperoned, eventually asked his sister Agnes to create a specific movement for the thousands of Girl Scouts – and that is how Girl Guides was born.
Alan Gruber and I have been tracking down more about early scouting, both boys and girls, to add strong period flavour to our future Wide Games. Very few Girl Scout or Girl Guide gaming figures exist.
Latest update on the Scouting Wide Games for the Tabletop project with Alan Gruber, Tradgardmastre of the Duchy of Tradgradland blog. Today I playtested some rules additions by Alan:
When no one makes cheap 54mm plastic scouts, what can you do but convert some of the cheapest rackety cloned and distorted toy soldiers into Boy and Girl Scouts? Some of this worked well. Read more at:
Quick making and PVA gluing of polystyrene Snow Forts
Wide Games or Outdoor Games from Baden Powell’s Scouting for Boys 1907/8
The Snow Forts game in progress …
Setting up the game board and Lego based snow fort alternative build.
This was a ‘jolly good fun’ short game, featuring a small force of Gladys and four other Girl Scouts of Daisy Patrol, defending their snow fort with snowballs against an attacking force of eight Boy Scouts of Red scarved ‘Bull’ Patrol.
I will post a full game write up in the next few days, my first playtesting of some simple Scouting Wide Games rules.
It takes three Snowball hits on a defender in the Snow Fort for them to lose their ‘life’ (restored once journeyed back to HQ tent camp), but only one hit to take the ‘life’ of an attacker.
Snowball ammunition is unlimited. One scout equals one figure.
Ranges were set out or measured using lolly sticks, for close range (one lollystick – 4,5,6 is a hit on a d6), medium range (two lollystick distance, 5 or 6 to hit) and long range (three lollysticks – 6 only to hit).
Movement on snow and ice was half normal pace, (so using half a lollystick marker to measure) and no fast Scouts Pace (a strange mix of periods of running and walking) was allowed due to weather and terrain
Alan Gruber, Tradgardmastre of the Duchy of Tradgardland blog is also going to be working on the Scouting Wide Games rules and borrowed RPG elements like individual character cards.
I added some simple RPG style elements like names, age or scout ranking from Tenderfoot to First Class Scout or Patrol Leader, and badge or character achievements.
For example, Gladys the Patrol Leader of Daisy Patrol of the Girl Scouts and young Ernest, Second Class scout of Bull Patrol (Red Scarves) both have Marksman scout badges, adding +1 to their chance of hitting a scout of the other patrol with a range weapon like a snowball.
Jolly Good Fun! The game ended sportingly with three cheers for the winners and three cheers for the losers. Afterwards Agnes and Ginger of the Daisy Patrol of Girl Scouts built a “Snow Scout”.
I will also be developing a separate WordPress blog for the Scouting Wide Games project, for storing pictures, rules, research and play-testing. Watch this space for details: https://tabletopscoutingwidegames.wordpress.com/
The 1914 Christmas Truce – was there a Snow ball fight?
I dug out some old Airfix unarmed WW1 figures. The Snowball fight element of this game lends itself to both civilian, Christmas and military scenarios.
The Christmas version using tree ornaments – red versus white and blue.
Quarter Staffs, Boys Life Magazine June 1912 – from Pinterest / Northern Bush website.
Having completed the second part of a local history project talk on how my local area of the southwest U.K. changed during and after WW1, I can return back to my 2019 project putting Scouting Wide Games onto the tabletop and in future on the floor out into the garden.
Talking of garden games,it is well worth checking out the extraordinary blog of Mannie Gentile Toy Soldiers Forever reacreating an American Civil War battle with unpainted plastic figures. Look up the 17 September 2019 blogpost on the Sunken Lane http://toysoldiersforever.blogspot.com
I am lucky to be sharing this Scouting Wide Games ‘journey’ of rule writing and puzzling out game mechanics with Alan Gruber of the Duchy Of Tradgardland blog. After meeting up with him a few weeks ago, he has taken away a set of our draft scratch outline rules to work out some possible rules and workable scenarios. Many of them can be found here:
Scouting Wide Games is non-violent* combat with only the loss of a wool or scarf ‘life’, melee with quarter staves, range weapons like whiting balls or snowballs. It should be “jolly good fun”.
* Elsewhere on other scout games post, Nobby has commented on how deviously painful scout quarter stave fighting could be in the wrong hands.
One possibility, with only eight figures in each Patrol, is to use a Role Play Game approach of a character card for each figure with different scout badges of skills and achievements amongst your Patrol.
Lots of work to do to get this playable …
Pinterest is a great research tool and source of images for gaming projects. As part of the Wide Games project, I have been looking at ‘Early Boy Scout and Girl Scout’ images on cigarette cards.
I came across this Northern Bush web page on camping and scouting reading resources:
Bob a Job for the War Office? Phoenix 43 range (S and D models) scout trek cart, scouts and scoutmaster group. Crate – old Tamiya 1:35 stock.
My recent broken figure conversions to Girl Scouts admire the Trek Cart
Beautifully detailed moulded figures with scout badges and all …
I have pretty much finished painting my Trek Cart scout group of Phoenix 43 figures, apart from gloss varnishing them.
1\43 Phoenix 43 S and D Models Scouts and Trek Cart
At first it looked a little fiddly but fitted together well with little flash.
The Trek or Trek Cart is mentioned in very early Scout cigarette cards.
First series Ogden’s cigarette cards – Boy Scout Series 1 to 5 Cigarette Card Images, an internet book / reprint by Trading Card Enterprises, LLC
It is also pictured as an iconic bit of scout history in the 1990 Cub Scout Handbook history of Scouting pages:
Baden-Powell’s Mafeking idea of ‘Model Soldiers’
An interesting conversion idea for a Boy Scout patrol with turbans – plenty of world Boy Scout uniforms on cigarette cards on Pinterest. Cub Scout Handbook, 1990.
Close up of the trek cart picture illustration 1990 by Martin Aitchison
Search around and you will find that trek carts were once quite iconic for the scout movement, such as this book cover illustration.
Pinterest is a useful source of images and there are Trek Cart sections on there, from which I have taken some screen-shots as reference pictures for painting my trek cart model.
The dark green works well as a scout colour (Pinterest image source)
Bright and colourful Trek Cart paint scheme
Good design and colour references for vintage trek carts from a Pinterest search.
S and D models Phoenix 43 Trek Cart No. OF154
I chose a dark green Gloss simple paint scheme for my trek cart with no wording.
The trek cart or baggage waggon train provides a good target or focus for many Wide Games / tabletop gaming scenarios.
I never made the link between scout trek carts and the Wild West type pioneer trek carts featured in this episode of Mormon and American West history.
Recreating the Mormon pioneer treks of the 1840s
This is a pioneer story as gripping and tragic as that of the Oregon Trail.
“To cut down on expensive wagons and oxen, some 3,000 of the [Mormon] pioneers subsequently used low-cost wooden handcarts that were light enough to be pulled across the Great Plains. One family or five individuals were assigned to a handcart, with 18 to 20 people sharing a tent. A cart hauled no more than 200 pounds — about 17 pounds of baggage per person. Each highly organized company was led by an experienced guide and was accompanied by at least four oxen-drawn supply wagons.
The first party of handcarts set out from Iowa City, Iowa, on 9 June 1856 with a company of 266 people from England, followed two days later by a second company of just over 200. These early handcart brigades successfully arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, but the trips were not easy. Pioneer journals recorded harsh weather, the threat of hostile Indians, the death of fellow travelers and the ongoing hardships of hunger and fatigue.”
As mentioned before, the Man of TIN blog supports no particular faith denomination. All are welcome at the Man of TIN blog.
Trek carts which disassembled were made in the early William Britain’s Boy Scouts Range, seen here featured in James Opie’s Britain’s Toy Soldiers 1893 – 1932:
Two of my repaired Broken Britain’s 54mm Scouts beside Britain’s Trek Cart pictures in James Opie’s book.
Trek Carts can also be found in smaller OOHO railway scale figures by Modelscene / Peco.
OOHO Modelscene Peco railway series trek cart and Scouts with berets
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