Some Little Wars Pix

War of 1812 Game - Knuckleduster Figures. Click all pix to enlarge.

I did not have a lot of time to roam through the game area at Little Wars for photo shooting, but here are a few that I snapped before the dealer area opened at 10AM Saturday morning. These were some of the better games that I saw, in terms of either terrain or colorful figures, or guys just having a darn good time of it. Click all pictures once or twice to enlarge the view.

Japanese Samauri game in 28mm

Knuckleduster Figures Booth. Nice laser cut building kits and nice Western and 1812 figures.

A Napoleonic game of sorts, using 15mm figures and nice looking terrain boards.

The Last Square's annual WW2 mega game. 

Napoleonic game featuring nothing but cavalry. Lieberwolkowitz 1813 perhaps? Great concept and I could tell that the players were really enjoying themselves in this one.

Geo Hex Terrain still looks great.

Thoroughbred Figures Booth - some great looking 15mm ship kits.

I did not have much time to do any shopping for myself, but I took advantage of the fact that The Last Square was across the aisle from the Fife & Drum booth, so I picked up a lot of Silfur Tufts to use for my figure bases. I also acquired a copy of Muskets & Tomohawks skirmish rules from Mr. Extra Crispy himself, who read my comment on Face Book that I could not find a copy of the rules in the dealer area. So on Saturday, Mark stopped by my booth and I bought a copy of the rules from him. How's that for personal service? (thumbs up in my book). I also bought a book on Gettysburg that featured drawings by Keith Rocco and pictures of the actual equipment that is at the Gettysburg National Park museum. I can't recall the name of the book right now, but it is a very nice book to have if you are an ACW buff.

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Fife & Drum at Little Wars

Fife & Drum Booth At Little Wars Convention

I have just set up my dealer booth at the Little Wars convention, located next to the Litko Bases booth and across the aisle from The Last Square. Thank go to Karl at the Last Square for lending me a pair of scissors to cut the cord used for attaching the banner to the table, and to Paul at Litko for his knowledge of Boy Scout knots, particularly the Clove Hitch, which he used to help me tie down the banner so that it would not sag. I found all of the dealers to be very helpful to this newbie in the dealer trade. It was much appreciated. And finally, thanks go out to Robert Bowling, the director of the dealer area at Little Wars, for all his help in getting me set up at this very first convention that I attended as a dealer.

I really like the way that the Fife & Drum logo turned out on the banner that I had made at a local FedEx Store (formerly known as Kinkos). My sincere thanks go to Henry Hyde for designing the logo and for also creating the artwork for the cardboard headers that you see on the bags (in Red for British, Blue for Americans, and Green for Artillery Equipment).

Little Wars Convention Preparation

Filling up the carrying boxes with bags of Fife & Drum Miniatures. Click all pix to enlarge the view.

I have spent the past several days bagging Fife & Drum Miniatures into 3" x 5" plastic bags (4 figures per bag) and stapling on the card headers to make it easier to identify what is in each bag. I have placed the Fife & Drum logo onto the headers, and color coded them: Red for British figures; Blue for American figures; and Green for artillery and equipement.

After attending several smaller conventions, I quickly figured out that it was insane to bring 100 different plastic bins full of figures and then try to sell and pick the figures one at a time during the convention. The bins take up too much space in the car, and it takes forever to hand pick individual figures per each customer purchase. Regretfully, I have decided to start selling the figures in bags of 4 figures for $8.00 per bag of infantry. Artillery equipment and mounted officers will continue to be sold as individual models with one per bag.

Using this new system, I am able to carry all of the figures in only six large boxes, while reducing the number of SKUs from 100 to about 32.

Green card headers signify artillery and equipment models.

Blue card headers for American figures, and Red card headers for the British figures.

I will be attending this year's Little Wars convention in DuPage County, Illinois this Friday and Saturday April 26 and 27, respectively. So if you are attending the convention, stop on by at our booth and take a look at the miniatures up close and first hand. 

Take a closer look at the artillery wheels in the green bags. These figures are straight out of the mold and into the bag. You will note that there is absolutely NO FLASH filling up the space between the wheel spokes. No compare these to some of the other brands of AWI figures, particularly the ones made by the Gods, and you will see that they are often full of flash and thin little venting spiders that are really annoying to deal with when you are trying to prep the figures for priming.

At Fife & Drum, we believe that our customers deserve superior casting quality when they purchase our figures. I really hate cutting off bits and pieces of metal flash. It takes a lot of extra time and often I find that I missed a little thread of metal (spider vents, as we call them) only after I have primed the figures and am actually painting them. Oooooh, that really peeves me when that happens. Well guess what, you will never have to deal with irritating metal flash when you buy Fife & Drum Miniatures.

Simply put, you the customer deserve superior casting quality to go along with superb figure sculpts and top notch service. You have my word on that.

28mm British Brig in Drydock

HMS Pegasus, from Laser Dream Works

Well, no I've done it! Lured in by those sinister naer-do-wells at Laser Dream Works ("oh, yes; our ship models are easy to build" :) ) I pulled the trigger on ye olde mouse and clicked away $130.00 to purchase the little beauty shown in the picture above. It is a British Brig, as described below, and it will serve in his Britannic Majesty's Royal Navy, stationed at the port of Lisbon, circa 1809 -1814.

This wooden model kit is a reproduction of a 10-gun British brig based on admiralty drafts for ships to be built on Lake Chaplain. This faithful reproduction is for use with 28mm figures. The ship's deck is 19 inches long and 6 inches wide. It's overall length is 30inches and she is 24 inches in height. The ship comes with all the materials to build the hull, masts, and yards. It comes with ten of our 24lb cannon.  This kit is of intermediate complexity and takes from six to ten hours to complete.

I envision the model being used to film some scenes in the Iberian Campaign that Bill P. and I are conducting during the Napoleonic wars. I have no doubt that Bill will come up with some creative means to use the ship as a back drop for one of the episodes in the campaign.

The only fly in the ointment is that I've never attempted to build a sailing ship model and the prospect of rigging the darn thing is kind of daunting to me. However, I'm willing to give it a try.

1806 Success!

The FG Miniz crowd funding project surpassed the €10,000 stretch goal, so this means that the hussars will go into production along with the field artillery , grenadiers and musketeers.

Thanks to those of you who gave a financial assist to this project. I have connection with the company, I just like the look of their figures.

Your Help Is Needed for 1806 Prussian Hussars

The Indiegogo project to crowd fund an exquisite range of 28mm 1806 Prussians is in its final hours -- about 25 hours left at the time of this writing. The project has reached its initial target of €7,000 and also hit the first stretch goal of €9,000, which unlocks the Prussian artillery and gun crew. Now the next stretch goal of €10,000 is within sight -- we need less than €500 to hit this level.

What will happen? This would unlock the Prussian Hussars and make all three basic combat arms available to subscribers. The goal is within sight and your contributions are needed NOW. If you have any interest in the 1806 Prussian army, one that is greatly under served in the Wargame figure market, then now is the time to make the final push of €500. Any contribution will make a difference and you can get on the bandwagon with a minimum contribution of €25.

1806 Prussian Funding Site
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/28mm-1806-1807-prussian-army?c=home

Click on the link above if you wish to make a contribution. I have no ownership interest in this project, but having seen the initial infantry figures, I am a big believer in what the company, FG Miniz, is attempting to do. We are sooooo close to unlocking the hussars.

I thank you for indulging me on this project . The picture below is a bit distorted due to the limitations of posting this via my iPad rather than on my home computer. But if you go to the campaign site you can see better quality pictures. If the link provided above is not active, then copy and paste the URL to your search engine and that should do the job.

Fritz

AWI Game Setup

The British Are Coming!  Fife & Drum Miniatures

Terrain setup for Brown's Farm AWI scenario.

Here are several pictures of the table top setup for an AWI scenario that I have been tinkering with. I ran the game two times at the recent Seven Years War Association convention (for which it won the best of show game - The Mitchell Cup). I did not like the way some of the events unfolded during the game so I have tweaked the scenario a little bit in the hope that it will improve the game. I plan to run my next play test at Chez Protz on May 4th so I will have a chance to see how well the changes work.

Royal Artillery enters the town of Gloveton, escorted by the 16th Light Dragoons.

This weekend, I started painting a company of the 45th Regiment in Wellington's Peninsula army, but after doing a back of the envelope calculation of the forces that i need for my Historicon games, decided that I had better get back to painting AWI figures, and soon! So I completed six Perry 16th Light Dragoons to add to the vanguard of my British AWI army.





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