Wargamers apparently have adopted this word in the realm of figure quality. Metal miniatures with heft matter. The rise of the plastic miniature in 28mm I suspect is the driving force. There have always been metal miniatures – well since the days of H G Wells and the 54mm lead soldier.
There have been plastic figures since the 1960’s, maybe even before that. Plastic has been the 20th century wonder material that is now the 21st century waste problem. So the appearance of plastic soldiers is from a wider phenomenon.
Heft appears to be a popular north american term for weight and so much more expressive I think. So not just “feel the weight of this I just hefted” said the man from Gloucester (UK) but “feel the heft in these” said the man from Philadelphia (USA)?
Apparently metal wargames figures are so much better in metal. I guess they perform better on the gaming board. Mind you plastic figures can be bought in their hundreds for the price of tens of metals, especially those metal figures blessed with detail from all that valuable tin in them. And then of course there is the quote “quantity has a quality all of its own”; was that said by a certain Mr Josef Stalin?
When it comes to books heft no longer applies to the vast swathe of “E” books. Yet in the realm of the printed book there is still room for heft.
Most of my printed books are paperbacks and they do their job well. Then once in a while you acquire something on a different scale.
This then is heft – John Blair’s Building Anglo-Saxon England published by Princeton University Press.
Anglo-Saxon buildings are rare, raring than Romano-British ones. The simple reason is building material. We are back to the plastic waste problem. Maybe just maybe in a hundred years from now all the metal miniatures might have been melted down and reused while dozens of plastic soldiers survive. Unlikely but maybe. Anyway the lover of anglo saxon buildings is frustrated because they all “rotted” away to leave some post holes and thats it. Except John Blair has published a lavish and I mean lavish, book on the buildings of anglo saxon england painstakingly reconstructing for our minds this aspect of dark age britain.
remember dark age britain on this blog means anything between the 4th and 11th centuries.
The book wins the “heft” competition in my collection!
The Wargaming Erratic 