Nazaire Beeusaert and old Belgian toy soldiers

A long time ago I posted on this blog about old Belgian toy soldiers in my collection, produced by Nazaire Beeusart, who led a toy factory in Deinze, Belgium. 

Since then, I did acquire more of these old toy soldiers and even have tried repairing and repainting some of them.

Recently, I visited a local museum in Deinze near Ghent to see a total different exhibition, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out they had a display window specifically dedicated to the toy soldiers made and sold by Nazaire Beeusaert.

New Recruits ... Belgian Toy soldiers

Yesterday, a package arrived in the post from The Tin Soldier (handmade toy soldiers from Antwerp), to join my ranks of WW1 Belgians.

These are the boxes. Looks promising.

First box, 4 Carabiniers in 1914 uniforms:

An Officer of the "Lansiers te Paard":

A Lancer trooper (I have to straighten his lance a bit, it got bent when I got him out of the box):

A Belgian Guide, 1914:

Nice additions for the decorative elements in the wargaming room!

Sometimes you find something fun ...

Here are some new recruits I picked up earlier today in the local "kringwinkel" (roughly translated: recycling store or 2nd hand store), a store where people can leave their old stuff, and it can be bought by others. I usually pop in once every month or so (it is conveniently located right across the post office and bakery in the village where I live). Usually, I buy some old books (I quite often donate books myself), sometimes some old tools or stuff for the kitchen.

But today, I saw these old Britains Deetail figures ... so I couldn't resist bringing them home. Perhaps they might even be fielded in a 54mm  skirmish game ... 

New 54mm recruits

A package arrived today, with some new 54mm toy soldiers for the display cabinets in my wargaming room. I ordered them from The Tin Soldier / De Tinsoldaat, a Belgian company based in Antwerp that produces toy soldier sets in a classic style. 

So here are my 2 sets, a group of WW1 Belgian Grenadiers (my old regiment), and a trooper of the Royal Escort (Rijkswacht Koninklijk Escorte).

Card-driven Narrative Wargaming (3)

As I explained in my previous post, for my narrative wargame I also needed a quick set of tactical rules to govern movement, combat etc. for a unit.

The rules are below were quickly written - it always helps to have a bag of gaming mechanics ready ;-) The rules are inspired by the Battlecry/Memoir44 (Command and Colours) games.

Movement and combat should be self-explanatory, but perhaps the damage resolution system needs some explanation. I've become a fan of NOT removing toy soldiers from the gaming table to indicate unit status. I like the visual spectacle of having full units - after all - the visual spectacle of the game is what we're doing this for, right?

So, I need some other system of indicating "damage". I have a bag of coloured wooden chips (the actual chips are from a 80 year old boardgame, so they fit in nicely with the classic toy soldier look). Depending on the colour of the chip drawn, the unit loses some of its capabilities. So there is a gradual decline in movement, firing, or rallying. The bag has 10 tokens of each colour.

As a core, these rules worked really well. They are of course simple, but in my narrative game, they also weren't the focus, the narrative deck was the main mechanism to drive the game forwards, and I didn't want players to lose too much time pondering about all sorts of tactical options for each and every unit.

Note: there's still an error on the sheet - the Rally action is as stipulated by the Artillery for all troop types.

Imaginations in 42mm (16)

I decided to add a few units to my 42mm imaginations armies for the Warcon conference, 4 weeks from now. My main forces are composed of Irregular Miniatures (Balkan range), but over the years I have amassed toy soldiers through 2nd hand sales, so those are a good source for putting together some additional units. The generals I painted up for both armies also came from this pool of figures.

I keep these figures in several drawers. You can see there is quite some variation in style, but 2 ranges seem to stuck out: SchildKröt and Schneider. Both were sold as homecast kits, so the quality of the actual soldiers is variable.

 

Since I seem to have quite a lot of Schildkröt figures, these seem like a good candidate to make some additional units from:

But also the Schneider figures can be formed in a nice unit:

Of course, I still will have to (re)paint them. Two cavalry units are already on my painting desk. We'll see whether I find the time to complete them all.

First Fantasy wargaming figures ever?

Over the years, I have become more and more interested in the history of our hobby. Part of that is an interest in old figures, whether proper wargaming figures or toy soldiers.

A recent post on the Playing at the World blog led me to buy the "first fantasy wargaming figures ever" from Historifigs. They have the old Jack Scruby moulds, and the figures are still for sale. So I ordered a set of each one of this old set fantasy figures. As you can see, the figures are rather crude by today's standards, but for me, they have a lot of character.

Jack Scruby fantasy figures.

There is of course a philosophical question here. These figures are newly cast, but based on old moulds. So are these new figures or old figures? Does it matter for the collector? Or is a vintage figure only vintage when it was actually produced back in the day? Etc.

I was curious whether these figures really are the first fantasy figures. They probably are, being produced during the early seventies, along with the fantasy range from Minifigs. But was there anything earlier in the range of toy soldiers - i.e. in toy ranges not marketed as "wargaming figures"?

I started looking in one of my reference books on toy soldiers, Norman Joplin's "The Great Book of Hollow-Cast Figures", always a good source for tracking down old ranges of toy soldiers. Since (classic) toy soldiers and wargaming were very connected hobbies till the sixties, it seemed to me that if there was an interest in fantasy gaming before the seventies, it should be visible in toy soldier ranges.

Browsing through the pages, there weren't that many "fantasy" figures to be found in ranges that were available up to the fifties. There were however, many medieval and antiquity types of all sorts (and which could be used for fantasy gaming -- see also Tony Bath's Hyboria campaign), but not real fantasy as we know it today. The closest were figures based on fairy tales, children's books (Alice in Wonderland, Winnie the Pooh), Disney characters, or figures based on pulp stories (e.g. Tarzan). There is however a significant range of space figures, e.g. Flash Gordon. A few examples are shown below.

In hindsight, this is perhaps not surprising. The "fantasy genre" as we know it today really only gained popularity after the publication of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, especially "high fantasy" set in complete imaginative worlds (see history of fantasy literature). And since toys tend to follow popular trends (and for wargaming, we need a setting with empires, battles and so on), it is perhaps not surprising that proper high fantasy figures only saw the light of day during the early seventies.

Grenadier Music Band (5)

Finally, all Charbens finished. Simple block colour scheme, matt varnish, then gloss varnish. The blend in nicely with the other toy soldiers in the wargaming room.

Grenadier Music Band (4)

And this is how they look with a good coat of varnish applied. The last row has some Britains from the Ceremonial Collection, the 2 front rows are the ones (re)painted by me. Of course, the (lack of) detail in the Charbens is noticeable, but that was to be expected.

Grenadier Music Band (3)

I finished the paintjob on 6 toy soldiers. 2 are Britains from the New Metal range (70s), the other 4 are plastic Charbens. I tried to paoint them in a colour scheme as close as possible to the current Ceremonial Collection Britains.

Only thing left to do is to varnish them (first a matt spray, then a gloss coat).

Grenadier Music Band (2)

In a previous post I showed some of my toy soldiers which have been sitting on my painting table. I didn't have much time for the past month (exams and all that), but finally started working on some of the figures again.

The plastic music band turned out to be Charbens figures, and I mounted them on plastic 20x40mm bases to give them more uniform look (and a more stable pose). I will repaint them, such that they can join my other figures in the wargaming room.

Below you see (left and middle) two Guards figures from Britains. They are not from the Deetail range, since they are completely made of metal, except for their bearskin hat and their rifle, which is plastic. Probably figures from the 60s? On the right you see a modern Britains figure from the Ceremonial Collection ange. The idea is to (re)paint the two old figures such that they match the one on the right ...

The Case Against Toy Soldiers

One of the benefits of browsing old magazines, is that you come upon opinion articles written a long time ago, but which still seem to be relevant today.

One such piece is "The Case Against Toy Soldiers", written by Paddy Griffith and published in issue 13 (June 1984) of Miniature Wargames. It is shown here below.

It stirred up quite some debate in the following issues. You can still read Phil Barker's response on his website. See also this more recent blogpost discussion on Keith's Wargaming Blog.

The bottom line Paddy Griffith was making is that toy soldiers are not a very good medium to play wargames and/or study military history. They have all sorts of restrictions, and by emphasizing the tactile and visual aspect of the game, they restrict the thinking aspect.

I understand this point of view, and I even concur. I also do think that toy soldiers are not the ideal medium when one wants to study warfare or simulate the tactical challenges of a given period. But, perhaps that is also not what miniature wargaming is all about. For me, miniature wargaming is a very tactile hobby that allows you to play with toy soldiers on a visual attractive table; and which is inspired by military history, but does not necessarily  try to emulate or simulate tactical or command challenges. The game is built upon toy soldiers as a medium - the toy soldiers are not an afterthought. And yes, this brings about limitations, and it's important as a wargamer one is aware of these restrictions. But it doesn't make the toy soldiers games less enjoyable.

Grenadier Music Band

In order to try something new, I decided to start painting these plastic ~54mm toy soldiers. I've had them lying around for quite some time, but never got around cleaning them up and painting them. In the photograph below, I have only removed the flash, so the paintjob is still the original applied many years ago, I guess by the original manufacturer.

I have a small collection of the Britains Ceremonial collection, and these will go nicely with them to make a larger display.

Maker unknown, so any help to identify them is appreciated.