Hot Reception

Gun and crew by Hinchliffe (SYW range)

Christmas is an anxious time if you're Hessian - but this year we're ready for you Mr Washington!

More Inspiration from Hamburg

Inspiration 2

A recent post by John Ray reminded me that i had meant to post these for ages...

Pictures of Erich Rohde's collection featured in various issues of Tradition and Miniature Warfare in the early 1970s; I didn't see them for another decade, but they, together with images of Phil Robinson's (mostly Hinchliffe) SYW collection, set the tone for what a SYW game should look like.

I know almost nothing about Rohde, but Hamburg based maker Uwe Lacina gets a brief mention in Garratt's 'World Encyclopaedia'.

It's Alive!

Elite Miniatures flyer.

So it turns out it wasn't dead - merely sleeping. Elite's SYW range wakes up with a new release of Austrian infantry.

A Brief Charles Stadden Interlude

They are not shiny, they're not even wargame figures, but they are by Charles Stadden - so well worthy of inclusion.

These images are just 3 pages from the slim 'Model Soldiers' volume published by Tradition (strictly speaking Belmont-Maintland Publishers Ltd) in 1967. Text by JBR Nicholson and photography by the doyen of model soldier snappers - Philip O Stearns.

All the figures illustrated are 54mm, and would probably be considered a touch naive by the standards of today's top modellers, but they retain a real charm that certainly appeals to me. More from this book anon.

That Classic Mil Mod Cover

I remember being transfixed by this Hezzlewood and Ray created FIW set piece pretty much from the moment i collected the magazine from the local newsagent. Neither Suren nor Stadden figures were on my radar at the time so seeing such finely sculpted figures for the SYW was a revelation (Spencer Smith's these were not, and, although i liked Gilder's SYW cavalry, the infantry he did for Hinchliffe were a bit too chunky for my liking).

I guess this cover was arranged to coincide with the launch of Hezzlewood's Pax Britannica range (ads for which appeared in early editions of Miniature Wargames, which places them in 1983 or '84), and the majority of the figures featured appear to be standard PB castings. Apparently John Ray painted the British, and Hezzlewood the French (and rumour has it he didn't bother painting the legs of the chaps defending the stockade). The buildings look suspiciously like the creations of the late Ian Weekley of Battlements fame.

Nearly 30 years on this remains an inspirational image and one of my all time classics.