Zvezda – The Wargaming Erratic

Shieldwall

Many years ago, although it seems only recently to me, I bought several titles from the Warhammer Ancient Battles booklist – they included Siege & Conquest – all about the siege; Chariot Wars; the WAB basic rule set itself; The Chinese Warring States and all that plus Shieldwall. A fairly random mix you might say which is correct.

I never really bought into Warhammer or Games Workshop after I returned to wargaming in the late 1990’s. I dropped neatly into 15mm and DBA. The 600mm square tabletop battlefield, relatively small metal mountains that could be painted and a simple ruleset that was popular all fitted my constrained interests and time.

And yet despite plenty of enjoyment 15mm became a compromise and once the restrictions on table size were removed I returned to the idea of 25mm (old style) which I suppose is my roots. Despite buying some 28mm figures that size has failed to ignite my interest.

I have discovered that 20mm/25mm or 1/72 is the figure size that appeals to me: Sufficient in size for each individual warrior, painting repays in the visual look while the table top is of the order 6′ x 4′ or 1.8m x 1.2m which is my limit.

And my 25mm wargaming odyssey has taken me back to the past with 1/72 plastics displacing metals but in the modern style from prolific manufacturers such as Zvezda, Strelets, Hat, Ceasar and the occasional Orion, Mars, Emhar and ok even vintage Revell. But it is not all plastic – tumbling dice miniatures have offered up some really nice figures to compliment the plastics. And so to have SHQ, Newline and Irregular Miniatures.

One thing I have done since returning to the hobby is read and that includes reading rulesets. In fact reading them more than I play them!

You need only one ruleset to play wargames for any one period. So I can’t explain why I have dozens. Yet rulesets are personal statements. In their way they seem to me someones interpretation of history albeit through their take on gaming mechanisms. So they are still history books in a way and thats how I consume them.

I only have historic wargames rulesets – fantasy wargaming is something I left behind in the 1970’s – Sci-Fi I could never get my head round.

And fantasy was for me doing dungeons and dragons in the 1970’s before it all took off. And yet my historical interests have always been tempered by an interest in historical fiction. Not the Sharp novels ilk. More a case of a parallel universe where so much is instantly recognisable yet the story lines, characters, countries have different names.

Each to their own as they say.

Well being inclined to Anglo-Saxons at the moment I dug out the Shieldwall book which I kept because like Chariot Wars it felt like a well researched and back then a well designed package. I never played the WAB ruleset with Shieldwall. Just maybe I might give it a go now.

Of course it is approaching vintage (25 years plus) and oldhammer is probably in the Oxford dictionary as a particular type of old wargamer already.

The constant theme though is to enjoy reading history, enjoy imaginative history and paint miniatures and if with a fair wind play some games. In short it is escapism – taking pleasure in playing with imagination.

Do bases matter that much?

Do bases matter that much when it comes to miniatures used in wargaming? By current standards they clearly do with plenty of trade offerings available and a wealth of DIY advice online.

Also the preference for elements without individual figure removal permits more imagination to be applied around a base. Perhaps the exception is skirmish gaming but even here you have the option of sabot bases providing the individual figure movement while retaining the convenience of the larger element base which can still be given varying levels of decoration.

My basing journey has been pretty basic. Back in the dim and distant past I painted desert or green paint onto cardboard bases. I still have them and they work after a fashion. The figures are 25mm. They look a bit tired though.

Then I started a 15mm phase and actually paid for painting including basing. The quality was good but somehow they did not grow on me. They look accurate but……

I did some of my own and I was even less happy!

And then I caught the plastic fantastic bug and returned to simple painted bases for some 1/72 scale figures.

In the middle of this phase I moved into 28mm figures and thought they needed something extra. As it happened despite all the wealth of offerings and advice in all the various magazines and books I had collected, I stumbled across the humble warhammer guide in one of their rulebooks – maybe shieldwall – where they recommended simply gritting the bases, basecoating and drybrushing once. Somewhere I found a suggestion to use budgie grit. I tried it and painted it up, except no dry brush, but added some static grass and…… I was still underwhelmed. There is no pleasing some people.

I then had another surge of plain painted bases when I reworked more of my old 25mm metals.

You can see them next to the Zvezda Russians above – Minifigs French circa 1972? and Tradition Russians from the mid 1970’s. The bases they replaced were very dark green painted airfix box card – the figures have been transformed in my view, although unbelievably garish – they cheer me up!

And then I decided to do some mediterranean normans. Coincidentally I had watched both British cycling, Le Tour and La Vuelta races and the penny dropped. All my scenic basing had generally used dark green/dark brown earth (or grey brown for 15mm) colours – and I had not recognised why I liked the bright green bases beyond their simplicity. British cyclists rode through dark earth countryside with bright greens but La Vuelta cyclists went through fantastically bright coloured soils of many hues and even with brighter green shrubs and trees on top. (well except in the picos mountains in the north).

So I got my paints out and started experimenting – and so I have now found what I want for my Normans. Well until the butterfly lands on the next flower…..

In my next post I will share the results.