Seven Years War Assn Convention This Weekend

 

I couldn't make it to this year's Seven Years War Association convention this year. I thought that I would therefore post several pictures of my SYW collection of Minden Miniatures instead.

Camp Life

Here are some pictures of the Prussian camp that I set up last Autumn. They show some scenes in and around the camp.

Prussian dragoon on scouting assignment, Minden figure converted from a Minden lager.

Blacksmith or farrier. The wagon is from Berliner Zinnfiguren

Picket duty outpost with Prussian dragoons

Prussian pioneers marching off to work

"Your papers please"

Some of the towns and villages in Silesia

Ian Weekley buildings from the 1980s still look good by today's standards.
I like that the cut and fit of the models are not "perfect", giving them a 
more realistic appearance.

Another view of the Ian Weekley village. I have found that using a mass of buildings
positioned in various angles make for a good look. I learned this trick from seeing
some of the dioramas in the German Army Museum in Dresden.

Here is the larger town in the area. Buildings were made by Herb Gundt.
I made the roads and the figures are Minden Miniatures, of course.

Yet another table in my Silesian villages set up on two 6 x 12 feet tables in my basement.
The church was the first building that I ever made, circa 1988. Not bad for a first effort.
Materials are plywood, a ping pong ball, and individual roof tiles cut out of cardboard.
That was a grueling task (gluing the roof tiles onto the church).

As Phil Olley would say, "every war game table should have a windmill on it."

The fourth village on the game table. I like to put my villages in the corners
of my game table so that they are out of the way where the battle occurs.
This particular village is long and narrow, much like one would see in Silesia.
The town buildings were often erected along the main road rather than grouped
together. These are mostly Herb Gundt buildings with one Ian Weekley model.

My game table philosophy is to put my villages in the corners of the game table so that they do not interfere with the war game battle. Most of the time my scenarios do not involve fighting inside towns as SYW battles tended to be fought on open ground, rather in the villages. Of course there are exceptions to this, however, I have found that buildings can ruin a good war game because they bog down the action and generally do not produce a good game.

Roads should be laid out in diagonal patterns to avoid the same old same old table top look. I don't like to see every road in straight parallels to each other. Diagonally placed roads have a more realistic look to them. I learned this little trick from my friend Keith Leidy.

Trees look good on the table top and undoubtedly some of the action in real battles were fought in wooded areas, but they interfere with the flow of a good war game. In the SYW, fighting in wooded areas tended to be done by light troops such as Croats, Frei-korps and specially recruited light infantry regiments.

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