How did your games and world change in 1977 / 1978?
Cross posted from my Man Of TIN Blog Two
Happy International or InterGalactic Star Wars Day – May the 4th be with you!
Tag: space figures
Intergalactic Women’s Day, Space Princeses and the end of FEMbruary 2022
Airfix Space Warriors and TimMee Galaxy Laser Quest Figures … but how to paint them? Bare legs or leggings in Outer Space?
Crossposted from Man Of TIN Blog Two to mark International Women’s Day and the end of FEMbruary.
Airfix 1981 54mm Space Warriors Samurai Robots?
Airfix’s very odd 54mm Space Warriors set from 1981 has this Samurai inspired robot figure. First blue based one painted by me as a youngster in 1981, the rest finally painted last weekend!
Complete with ‘Message from Space’ (the Japanese Star Wars) and Kurosawa Samurai movie inspiration (just like George Lucas then!)
Crossposted / Read more at my sister blog ‘Man of TIN Blog Two’:
https://manoftinblogtwo.wordpress.com/2022/02/13/airfix-1981-space-warriors-samurai-robots/
What will 2022 bring?
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 …
https://poundstoreplasticwarriors.wordpress.com/2020/12/31/new-gaming-year-irresolutions-2021/
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.
https://collectingpeterlaing15mmfigures.wordpress.com
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 future VTC Wide Games and 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 …
3. More Close Little Wars forest skirmishes and Close Little Space Wars Games in 54mm … I didn’t get a backyard garden galaxy game in this year.
My lovely Bold Frontiers cardboard trees didn’t get enough of an outing in 2021…
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.
More time for Bronte ImagiNations?
My Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and Snowball Games need attention!
My skateboarders could do with painting!
Not going to run out of fun things to do …
What are your New Gaming Year plans?
I hope that your gaming plans for 2022 go agreeably awry as well.
Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN, NYE 31 December 2021 / 1st January 2022
Steampunked Pound Store Plastic Warriors or WW2 tankers?
More strange plastic tat penny figures lovingly painted and based in gloss toy soldier style.
Crossposted from my Pound Store Plastic Soldiers blog:
Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN 23 August 2020
International Star Wars Day May the Fourth (Be With You)
Because there is only one space princess…
Even the recent gutsy female leads have an element or echo of Leia in the form of Rey lead character (Daisy Ridley) of the last three Star Wars films VII to IX and Jyn Erso in Rogue One (Felicity Jones), probably my favourite recent Star Wars standalone film.
Lots of space related postings over the last four very odd years including the gift of some 54mm plastic American Tim Mee Galaxy space figures from Alan Gruber which are now finally on my painting table.
https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2019/06/29/54mm-repurposed-space-figures
And the whole Flash Gordon thing in 54mm & 32mm Pound Store figure conversions …
Previously on International Star Wars Day
2019 https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2019/05/04/farewell-chewbacca-may-the-4th-be-with-you/
2018 https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/17/march-reading-minor-galactic-epic-fail/
2016 https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2016/09/25/in-a-garden-far-far-away/
Close Little Star Wars rules Back Yarden game 2016 Airfix / Star Wars figure mash upHere’s looking to the next Star Wars related day … Geek Pride Day May 25th. (Incidentally this is always my Man of TIN Blogaversary, my 4th coming up!)
If you know the date connection between Geek Pride Day and Star Wars, you win your Geek Points.
Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN, May the Fourth 2020
54mm Repurposed Space Figures
I was lucky enough earlier this week to catch up in person with Alan The Tradgardmastre of the noble Duchy of Tradgardland on his Ducal travels. We met for a cup of coffee in a beer and coffee tavern which is also a bookshop full of fashionable and political reading material. This sounds suitably Eighteenth Century for the Duke and the Duchy! Sadly it was too hot to wear a tricorne.
The Duke is a jolly nice chap, as you would expect from his blog (we were discussing A Very British Civil War at the time). We chatted variously about gaming, Toy Soldiers, interwar History, Scout Wide Games, the events overlap of gaming and re-enactors, the joy of simple rules and finished off talking about blogging and its many positive aspects such as the unusual openness about men’s mental health.
Unfortunately due to heavy traffic (too many stage coaches, ox waggons and sedan chairs on the road) I didn’t get a chance to make it home en route to pick up any ‘minis’ to show Alan such tiny delights as my new Phoenix 43 Scout trek cart or these space rangers to see if he recognised them. At least without ‘minis’ on the table, we were spared the curious, pitying or withering looks of onlooking drinkers and customers.
Once Upon A Time in a Garden-axy Far Far Away …
In return for home-casting some metal Scout figures, Alan the Tradgardmastre of the Duchy of Tradgardland blog sent me via the Duchy Post Office last month some American Tim Mee plastic space figures and some odd homecast and lead figures.
Looking at the post war GI or paratroop figures, I thought the unusual rifle and round helmet might make for some good space figures.
Just the ticket for a 1970s Airfix boy derailed by Star Wars and American 1970s Star Wars spin off sci-fi series …
A bit of a stylish Flash Gordon / Dan Dare 1930s / 1950s Sci Fi thing going on here.
The heads on the kneeling metal figures look like they have possibly been swapped or repaired.
A grey painted tuppenny 2p base gives the kneeling or plastic figures some stability; grey I thought is more spaceship like, metallic and neutral than the traditional sap green or bright emerald green of many old toy soldiers. I wanted to keep that shiny gloss 1950s Dan Dare space figure / toy soldier look though.
Equally an army of these could be expendable minions for one of those James Bond style private armies guarding the inevitable secret base. I can see a link to the blue uniformed Polish Airfix Para clones featured from Etsy in my Christmas 2018 posts. https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2018/12/03/man-of-tin-advent-calendar-day-3-vintage-1980s-polish-toy-soldier-airfix-clones-on-etsy/
I can see an influence of the late Thor Sheil’s Homecast army men ‘Toy Soldier Art’: Berlin Greys and Air Police.
http://www.thortrains.net/toysoldierart/colors3.htm
Anyway these three one-off 54mm figures from Alan might give me the colour scheme for my ongoing 54mm space figure project, one that has worked in smaller Pound Store Plastic 32mm scale:
You can have too much of Khaki Grunge. I like the chance to use some unusual bright colours from my collection of gloss acrylics – orange, sky blue, purple, gold, silver, red. I’m sure the Flash Gordon 1980 movie with the Queen soundtrack might have something to do with my space uniform bolder colour schemes.
You can see the 32mm Pound Store Plastic basis of the 40-50mm Pound Store pirate clone figure above:
Kev Robertson over in Australia, a long term sci-fi fan, has used his his past engineering skills to great effect on his latest blog post. As well as his own new series of 35mm space figures with a retro feel, he has been busy with scratch built sci-fi vehicles, walkers and mechs. Pure Pound Store Plastic Warrior blog scrap
build material this! Always an interesting blog to browse, Kev has blogged on various projects from sci-fi figures to railways.
https://dwarfenrealm.blogspot.com/2019/06/spaceguard-new-35mm-scratch-models.html
At the moment I can’t comment on many people’s blog posts (obviously a settings thing) so I thought I would mention Kev’s whole blog site.
Blog posted by Mark, Man of TIN on 29 June 2019
Le Toy Van classic space rocket and pound store space figures
A classic space rocket to match my Pound Store Plastic figure space conversions. More pictures at – Crossposted from Pound Store Plastic Warriors https://poundstoreplasticwarriors.wordpress.com/2019/04/16/le-toy-van-space-rocket
Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN 16 April 2019
Poundland Space Marines on Parade
Crossposted from my Pound Store Plastic Warriors blog another finished conversion project of these Poundland 36mm “Penny Dreadful” figures. More at:
Lots more Pound Store figure projects completed this weekend!
Blogposted by Mark Man of TIN, 5 November 2017
Pound Store Space Marine Pilot
Crossposted from my Pound Store Plastic Warriors blog, another crude plastic 36mm figure reImagi-Nationed. More at:
https://poundstoreplasticwarriors.wordpress.com/2017/10/24/poundland-space-marine-pilot/
Blogposted by Mark, Man of TIN, 24 October 2017.
Man of Tin blog 