War Game Figures

Designed after much research into the uniforms and weapons. By some of this countries leading craftsmen Chas.C.Stadden, Clive Knight. Holger Eriksson and David Scheinmann.

All 30mm, 25mm and Willie figures are supplied by mail order direct from manufacturers in Sweden.

Tradition of London are happy to tell that we know are agent for Tradition Scandinavia, Any further information or orders please contact Anders Lindstrom at anders@traditionoflondon.com

UK customers may also contact Spencer Smith Miniatures at peter@spencersmithminiatures.co.uk

War game figures and prospective war gamer

Have you ever commanded a Napoleonic Army of 50.000 men or watched from a nearby hillock as the guns blasted grapeshot into a charging mass of Cavalry, transforming it within a matter of seconds into struggling heaps of kicking horses and dying men? Undoubtedly not, but have you ever wondered why the field guns at Waterloo were placed in front of the Infantry instead of well behind them, or how the British Infantry of the day came to stand shoulder to shoulder instead of laying down and firing from cover? Has it ever occurred to you why the French Infantry advanced in massive columns, sometimes a battalion of men in width, instead of trying to reduce their casualties by spreading out in open order? If you had commanded the Prussians at Ligny could you have beaten Napoleon? Had you led the French at defeating Wellington? If the answer to these questions is yes, then you, my friend, are a prospective war gamer. Read more in the Tradition magazine No.1

The Emperor Napoleon and his Marshals and Generals 30mm

The war Game an Introduction By Charles Grant

Interest in the war game is far from being a recent phenomenon. Model soldiers or figures approximating thereto have existing for hundreds, indeed for thousands of years, and without going unnecessarily into the historical and archaeological details of figurines discovered in Egyptian tombs and the like, actual model soldiers as we know them or as near as makes no difference  have been made for some centuries, and it seems logical to assume that where model soldiers were to be found, some sort of war game was not too far away. Initially, however, the popularity of the model soldier was rather limited by the fact that they seemed generally to be composed of precious metal silver, for instance and that the cost of making them, usually by artists and craftsmen, was so prohibitive as to restrict their possession to the great ones of the time and their familiars. Louis XIII and Louise XIV of France had such miniatures and both Frederick the Great and various Czars of Russia seem to have been similarly fortunate. Happy, therefore, are we in this day and age when we can, without undue expense, raise powerful model armies if we like that sort of thing and wage massive campaigns without having to go without such essentials as clothes and food. 

30mm American Expeditionary Force 1917-1918

The war game with which we are primarily concerned has existed for a hundred years or thereabouts and stems chiefly from the Prussian General Staff Kriegspiel army exercises based mainly on maps whereby campaigns were planned and tried out in meticulous detail in anticipation of the day when the participants had to have a go at the real thing. Von Moltke, Schlieffen and other well known names figure in the history of the war game, but its direct ancestors in this country at any rate are two singularly unwarlike literary figures Robert Louise Stevenson, whose writings on the subject about the end of last century are rather overshadowed by those of the other, H. G, Wells, whose Little Wars was the original vade mecum of the war gamer, although by our present sophisticated standards it is elementary and naive. It took a long time for war gaming to reach its present stage of popularity, in the years between the wars being pretty much at its nadir, although immediately after 1945 the late Captain Sachs of the British Model Soldier Society most devotedly kept interest alive. His game was based on rules governing World War I and involved a rather heterogeneous mixture of tanks, cavalry, machine guns, etc., missile fire being provided by matches fired from Britains model 18 pounder and 4x7  guns, the troops themselves being the same firms  Toy Soldiers . The rules were simple and in retrospect seem quite unrealistic but even so the game was kept going. Indeed I have pleasant memories of one occasion I think in 1947 when I engaged, with Captain Sachs us umpire, no less a personage than the present editor of this journal and, happily, scored a somewhat narrow victory.

NMSF1 Napoleon on horseback
NSFF1 Napoleon
NSFF2 Murat
NSFF3 Marshal in full dress
NSFF4 Beauharnais
NSFF5 Bessieres
NSFF6 General of Cuirassiers
NSFF7 Poniatowski

25mm The French Army General Staff

In the last 15 to 20 years there has been a terrific resurgence of interest in the war game, more or less simultaneously with the increase in popularity of the model soldier itself, and two excellent books have been published on the subject, one in America and one in this country. War gamers, now keenly aware of their more scientific approach to the hobby, are far from concealing their absorption in what might have been considered at one time  Im sure it was  a pretty puerile sort of pastime. In these enlightened days the  What, playing with soldiers attitude seems to be pretty well moribund, if not completely defunct  and a good thing too!

If, then, we are to look at our subject in the broadest possible way, the war game can run the gamut from one extreme, where a couple of small boys set up rows of toy soldiers on the table or on the floor and strive to knock down the opposing troops with match firing cannon or some other missile  to the other, which reaches its ultimate in the highly complicated tactical maneuvers carried out by deepbrowed boffins on the staff on some army or another, such as those I have read of as taking place at Fort Knox, where radio controlled miniature tanks are used in battles on a table covering hundreds of square feet. The terrain is elaborate and realistic, and casualties and damage are recorded by photoelectric cells and worked out to the last detail by computers. Sounds really marvelous  which war gamer whatever the period of his interest, would not like to have a crack at directing operation son such a layout? Somewhere between the two extremes  and if I ignore the highly entertaining  boxed games based on various

Tactical problems or actual battles which one can play, it is not because I wish in the slightest degree to denigrate them, but because I simply feel that a war game must be played with actual model troops  is the war game we know, which is a descendant of the original  Kriegspiel  with, however, rather more  spiel  than  Krieg . Based on present day or historical strategy and tactics, it is governed by rules which as far as possible are designed to simulate the particular conditions of the warfare of ones chosen period, and it is played by one  yes indeed, solo games are not uncommon  or more players, to the discomfiture of one side and the delight of the other  although even the loser will as often as not find as much pleasure and excitement as the winner, and that is just as it should be. Probably the most thrilling game I remember was in a campaign wherein a raiding force of mine was hunted all over the place and was finally rounded up and taken it was tremendous fun.

 One interesting feature of the war game it that the players have to create their own body of rules or adapt one already existing, depending upon just what their requirements are as to available time, space and ready cash. It may seem strange  the principles of the art of war having presumably remained pretty constant throughout the ages  that enthusiasts have frequently the most conflicting views on all sorts of things, for example, the speed at which cavalry maneuver relative to infantry, but just as the historian uses available facts in the way best calculated to support his thesis, so the war gamer takes the data he prefers to back up his views on this or that war game rule  its only human, after all. Consequently meetings of war gamers are often fraught with fierce debates over such points. There are those who regret the apparent impossibility of achieving some kind of universality in war game rules but I am not one of them. Controversy always stimulates interest, and each player should formulate his rules in accordance with the physical circumstances in which he runs his war game  he may have unlimited time at his disposal or he may have but one weekly spell of a few hours  obviously the tempo of the latter game must be faster than that of the former. The players who have little available time may be inclined to opt for a  modern  type game, where speed of movement is high, and there are fewer troops on the table as a general rule. 

30mm The Duke of Wellington and his Staff

And this is one of the features, which make the war game so intriguing  to wit, the infinite diversity of periods one can choose as a background for ones activity. From the most ancient of Ancient Times  and there is a flourishing section of players who care for nothing more recent than the Middle Ages, and who fight Hittite against Israelite. Greek against Persian and Roman against Carthaginian with all the attendant delights elephants, chariots, phalanxes, slingers and so on  right up to modern times with their aircraft and armoured vehicles, there is literally no period of warfare which cannot be reproduced in miniature. Some periods, of course, are more difficult to cope with than others  modern warfare is, for a variety of reasons, rather a complex business to transfer to the war game table, and, as in orthodox figure collecting, some periods are more popular than others. No one need be surprised then that the wars of Napoleon are refought with great regularity, as are the campaigns of the American Civil War. The Franco Prussian War and the small  brushfire wars of the nineteenth century and later have their  aficionados while the measured formalism of the Seven Years War is rapidly increasing in popularity.

That the study of the military uniforms of certain countries or of their military history can be allied to ones war gaming is an attraction, but one need not be so circumscribed. There is nothing to hinder the creation of ones own imaginary war no limit to the fictitious powers, all of extreme aggressiveness which can be dreamed up, and no difficulty in finding a suitable  casus belli over which to commence hostilities. Several such mythical situations have been created by players who favor the  ancients , and I can reveal that my own name is actually a  nomdeplume  for the Marshal General of the Vereinigte Freie Städte, a sort of Hanseatic Leaugue, engaged in a more or loss permanent state of war with its neighbor, the Grand Duchy of Lorraine whose Grand Duke claims to be my son!, while  sometimes allied to one side, sometimes to the other  is another ruler, the Machiavellian Elector of TeutoburgAlthaufen who would be readily identified by readers as another contributor to these pages under the pseudonym of Brigadier Peter Young, D.S.P., M.C.  and a devious and cunning opponent he is!. The period of our wars is roughly the third quarter of the eighteenth century  call if for convenience the Seven Years War period  which we take as ranging from about the Battle of Fontenoy in 1745 up to the outbreak of the American War of Independence -a fascinating era, not at all as stodgy and devoid of military innovation as might be thought  it saw, inter alia, the beginnings of the light infantryman and the introduction  by Frederick the Great  of horse artillery. We have fought some tremendous battles in this type of war, with fifteen hundred troops and more on the table, but at the same time some of our most enjoyable affrays  and this is one of the benefits of running a campaign rather than sticking to a number of  big battles  have been minor skirmishes with only small numbers involved.

This indeed is a point I cannot too strongly emphasize  some of the most exciting games can be fought with only companies rather than regiments, and anyone who might be put off the plunge into the wonderful world of war games by what might appear to be a heavy initial expense in purchasing some hundreds of model soldiers need not worry in the slightest. With 30 or 40 men on opposing sides he could get all the thrills of a major battle, and in any case it is rather more usual for the tyro commander to take charge of a small unit  company, squadron or the like   than immediately to take control of an army. It is better, obviously, to begin in a small way and work upwards.

So, at the outset, we have the enthusiast who is eager for battle, but who first has to decide on a period which will serve as a background for his game. For the sake of simplicity  and for the very good reason that this is the type of game to be discussed in the articles of which this is the first  let us suppose that he chooses what we call the musket period, which can be taken as extending from about 1700 to the middle of the nineteenth century  it could at a pinch include the American Civil War and the Crimean War, although I daresay that this might be stretching it somewhat. Be that as it may, the general characteristics of this epoch in the annals of war are the use of the smoothbore musket by the bulk of the infantry, the employment of the smoothbore cannon, and the role of heavy cavalry as a striking force, although the last steadily diminished as the years went by. Many other lesser factors are involved but they could be discussed at great length and we should succeed merely in completely obfuscating the issue. There is also the additional but by no means negligible point that, throughout the 150 years we speak of, uniforms were generally most variegated and colorful, and a battle based on this period presents a most gratifying spectacle  you should see the Marshal Generals Putzenkammer Grenadiers in battle array! It may seem strange, in passing, that when considering all the profound changes on other spheres of human activity during this time, we find that the men at Balaclava went to war under practically the same conditions and with almost the identical equipment as did their ancestors at Blenheim. It seems then that no great changes are required between rules governing a Marlburian war game and those applicable to a Crimean one.

Having decided on a musket period game, we next consider the troops themselves and more particularly just what size of model soldier  20 mm., 30 mm., 40 mm, or 54 mm.  we mean to employ. Those of the first size are small, very popular, and well suited to a modern game 54 mm., the standard size, are too large, although there are those who still prefer them for the war game, and the 40 mm. Have been awkward in the past in that it has been difficult to get the necessary impedimenta, guns, etc., in this scale although this is improving somewhat.  So, by a process of elimination, there is left the 30 mm. Figure   a handy size, sufficiently large for each to have a little bit of individuality when painted, and small enough not to take up too much room when in the mass.

We are almost ready to proceed, but first we must have a battlefield. The novice, deploying only small forces on his debut as a war gamer, does not require a very great area. For the happy individual with a space room he can devote exclusively to his hobby, there is no problem   his table can be as large as he likes and a permanent fixture as well  but for the less fortunate type, it must be fairly small and convenient enough to be set up quickly and removed after operations without complete disruption of the domestic arrangements and the incurring of wifely wrath. Something like 6 by 4 would do  it could be a sheet of hardboard reinforced with wooden battens, and, if necessary, and if appropriate skill were to hand, it could be in two sections, hinged in the middle for ease of stowage.

Finally our troops are ranged in battle order  shall we say about 100 infantry, 20 or 30 cavalry, and a couple of cannon? With this force divided into two sides one could have a sanguinary little war in full blast in a few minutes. What a pity they are all immobile! It would be marvelous were they able to march, countermarch, deploy and charge of their own accord, but alas no  it is the player who must move them around, and to do so he must follow certain rules, which, as they apply to this  musket  period, it is proposed to discuss in subsequent articles. To read more in the
Tradition Magazine no.14

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