Treasures from the Chicago Toy Soldier Show

 

Salt Box style clapboard house in 1/32 scale that I purchased at the show.

This weekend saw the Chicago Toy Soldier Show coming to Schaumburg, Illinois starting Thursday September 21 through Sunday September 24, 2023. There were 100 plus dealers from all over the country, coast to coast. The event was organized by Mike Murphy, who operates The Hobby Bunker out in Massachusetts. The focus of the show is on, wait for it, TOY SOLDIERS and runs the gamut from old plastic play sets to aged William Britain hollow cast metal figures.

On Thursday, Friday and Saturday the show has something that they call "Room Trading." The various dealers set up their wares in their hotel rooms and punters like me can walk through the halls of the hotel (on three floors) and go room to room looking at all of the goodies. The dealers put a sign outside their door so that one doesn't walk in a private room unannounced. Hmm, what could go wrong here?

On Sunday the dealers move their wares into a large banquet hall where they are all in one room and then the public can come in and browse or buy figures.

It's amazing how many of the old plastic play sets still remain and even more amazing that so many of the original boxes survived years of play, followed by Mom throwing everything in the garbage can when her son hit his teenager years. Are you detecting that someone here has a few issues to resolve with therapy?

A play set is a boxed collection of plastic soldiers and terrain (buildings, fences, earthworks, bunkers, etc) pieces that represent either a television show of the 1950s and early 1960s, or an historical era such as Romans, knights, Civil War, Cowboys & Indians, etc. The Marx company was probably the leading producer of plastic toy soldiers during this era. Examples of boxed sets include Captain Gallant (French Foreign Legion), Combat (WW2), Fort Apache, The Alamo, Tombstone, The Guns of Navarone, Gettysburg, Antietam and Johny Reb.

However, I wasn't particularly interested in any of the boxed sets, other than to click on my nostalgia button, but rather, I was searching for 1/32 scale (54mm) buildings and other terrain pieces. My priority goal was to find a Pennsylvania style barn that I could use as the Codori Barn at Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg.

Lo and behold, there I was walking into my very first dealer room MicShaun's Closet and the owner, Mr. David Cook, pointed me towards some foam 54mm buildings that come preprinted (by him). There it was looking right at me (sort of like the Big W in It's A Mad, Mad, Mad World), a red Pennsylvania barn in 1/32 scale! Che Ching, he scores!

The actual Codori Barn at Gettysburg, on the Emmitsburg Road

My foam Pennsylvania barn.

Pennsylvania barns in the Gettysburg often have the foundation built well above the ground and have a dirt ramp leading out from the second story of the barn. It's similar to what we call an English Basement or a Walk Out Basement in houses. David told me that this model was based on the Rummel Farm barn at East Cavalry Field in Gettysburg.

I also found a 1/32 scale clapboard house done in the New England Salt Box style, but I figure that it can stand in for a house in Gettysburg on my game table.

The front view of the Salt Box house.

Britain's Deetail Range of 1/32 scale Confederate cavalry

Britain's Deetail Union cavalry.

Britain's Deetail ACW Napoleon cannon and Union crew.

I also bought a Deetail 10-pound Parrot gun with Confederate crew.
The Parrot is the gun on the left behind the fence.

Current view of my ACW game table with the Pennsylvania barn in the 
upper right corner.

Finally, one of my best finds was a couple of bags of CTS plastic Civil War figures. I will post pictures of them in one of my next blog posts. They have a level of animation and action that looks superb. CTS stands for Classic Toy Soldier company, the outfit that makes the figures. CTS has its own webstore where you can find lots of different plastic figures and a few buildings.

Here are the links to the companies mentioned in this blog post.

Classic Toy Soldier Company

MicShaun's Closet

Britain's ACW Deetail figures

Artillery Batteries In My Rules System

 

Union battery section of two William Britain 54mm cannons: 3-inch ordnance rifles

Click Pictures to Enlarge

The William Britain company make a very nice set of moderately priced Deetail ACW artillery and crew sets. I have some of their 12-pound Napoleons and 3-inch ordnance rifles in my Union and Confederate artillery contingent. My arrangement is to have two gun models with four crew plus two helpers/gun in each battery. Batteries will have two guns of the same type, so I will not be mixing Napoleons and 3-inch rifles in the same battery. The Britains sets come with 4 crew, so I will paint two extra crewmen as "helpers" for each cannon. In my rules, we throw one D10 for each crew figure up to a maximum of four dice at long range and double dice (8) at short range. When a crewman is removed then one of the helpers can be added to the crew for the purpose of the number of D10s to be used.

Confederate battery of three 12-pound Napoleons plus limbers.
The two guns on the left are Britains and the one cannon on the right is
from the Americana range. The limbers are also from Americana.

Just for grins (and because I like the picture), here is a picture of the ACW game table and terrain. It is starting to fill up all of the space. I have 8 Union infantry regiments and 5 Confederate regiments. I will have a sixth Confederate regiment finished this weekend, giving me 6 Confederate regiments. I will keep painting Confederates until I have either 8 or 9 regiments, and then I will go back to painting Union blue figures. My infantry brigades will have three infantry regiments and there will be five brigades per side, or 15 regiments per side. That gives me 5 players per side, or 10 players total. I think that I will also have separate commands for each side's artillery arm. That will bring the game up to 12 players.

Fritz's ACW game tables. The one in the foreground is a 6ft by 12ft table and
the back table on the right is 5ft by 10ft.

I am using Cigar Box Battle Mats on my tables. Cigar Box is my "go to" provider or game mats in all of my games now. They are easy to transport to conventions and they fold up nicely. They look very very nice too.

I will have to make all of my own snake rail and post/rail turnpike fencing to fit with the 54mm figures that I am using in my Pickett's Charge Project for Historicon 2024.

My GMB Designs flags arrived the other day and so soon I will be painting the standard bearers and gluing the flags onto the flag staffs. To my eye, it looks like the 28mm GMB flags will work with my 54mm figures.

PS: please click on the pictures to enlarge the image. The pictures look so much better when they are enlarged in this manner.

Tenting Tonight at the Old Campground

 

I like to populate my game table with little vignettes of soldiers and civilians. Aside from the fact that they are fun to create and look cool to the tenth degree, they focus the eye to look for various “Easter Eggs” hidden hither and yon. So if you see or play in one of my games at a convention, then have a good time Easter Egg hunting.

Today’s fox is the Union encampment (or is it just the word “camp”) that I have tucked away in one corner of my game table. I like to place my vignettes in the corners of the table so that they don’t interfere with the play of the game.

There are three vignettes made by William Britain’s models from their American Civil War figure range. The first consists of three rank and file soldiers sitting around the campfire making coffee and eating food. The second one has two officers sitting on chairs enjoying “happy hour” while one of them is petting his pet dog. A third vignette has a man dispatching an unfortunate spring chicken  to his ultimate fate in the stew pot.

Then there are other vignettes that are not “off the shelf”, but rather, created from existing figures and modified, converted and grouped to make our own vignettes.

Meade’s headquarters  vignette that just uses existing figures that are simply grouped together in a manner that makes for a good creative story.

A traveling photography takes pictures of a couple of Union officers.

Buford In the Observation Tower

 

I do not have a 54mm (1/32 scale) Lutheran Seminary building for Gettysburg, nor do I wish to have one as it would be a HUGE model. So instead I used an observation tower made by Herb Gundt and placed an officer with binoculars up in the tower. The picture of the tower, previously posted on my blog, had a Union officer in a pointing pose. 

I found the officer with binoculars in the Armies In Plastic Union Artillery set of figures. The figures are all wearing long frock coats so I cannot use them. However, the officer figure can be used in my project. I have an idea to convert a mounted officer figure by swapping upper torsos and making a Union officer sitting on his horse and looking through his binoculars.

Berdan's Sharpshooters

 

Berdan's 1st US Sharpshooters form a skirmish line in front of the Union battle line.
These are 54mm Armies In Plastic figures.

Click on photos to enlarge

I had a little bit of spare time on my hands so I painted these 54mm First US Sharpshooters (Berdan's) yesterday. Yes, I painted all of the figures in one day!

These are Armies In Plastic 54mm figures. Because the uniform is entirely of green color, one large brush full of green acrylic paint gets you started, and then its just a matter of blacking in the belts and equipment, followed by some flesh tones, and then finishing off with the Old Gold and Aged Pewter metallic colors. Easy Peasy!

I have enough extra figures to increase the unit from 15 to 20 figures. Berdan's Sharpshooters were not involved in the third day of Gettysburg and Pickett's Charge. They did play a small roll in the second day as they went on a morning scout of Seminary Ridge. They found a lot of Confederate troops and so they high tailed it back to their own lines near the Peach Orchard.

Confederates in 54mm

 

The Liberty Rifles reenactment group at Chancellorsville this year.
The group portrays both Union and Confederate units.

Two 54mm Confederate regiments that I have painted within the past month.

Click on images to enlarge

This past week I have shifted my painting production from the Union forces to the Confederates. I currently have 8 Union regiments of 30 figures and 4 Confederate regiments of 30 figures, for a grand total of 360 figures. Two of the four Confederate regiments were painted over the last seven days.

The most recent addition is a regiment of figures that are in advancing poses and painted in a variety of "butternut" colors, whatever butternut is. The other three regiments are in firing poses and are largely clad in grey along with a mix of butternut colored uniforms. I like my Confederate regiments to look like they are on campaign, so I mix in a variety of poses from different manufacturers of figures that provide a certain individuality to the overall look. I also like to mix up the uniform colors.

The quality of the two pictures above is not up to my usual standards for they are a little bit blurry and out of focus. Since the Confederates are on one table edge and facing in the other direction, I had to climb up onto my game table and try not to knock over lots of plastic painted figures. Then I had to hold a high intensity lamp in my left hand and try to press the shutter button on the camera with my right hand.

Here is another picture of the  Liberty Rifles this year, demonstrating the look that I seek when I am painting a Confederate regiment. Note the different uniform colors, styles and hats. Click on the website link in this paragraph and visit the LR web page. This is a good source for Civil War uniform information.

This is the look that I am trying to achieve.

My painting is going along at a smooth and rapid pace. I expect to finish painting two more Confederate regiments by the end of this month (September 2023) and this would increase the CSA contingent to 6 regiments.

The Battle of Gettysburg Podcast

My nephew Alex turned me on to the Battle of Gettysburg Podcast this summer when we went on a battlefield tour conducted by licensed battlefield guide Eric Lindblade. Eric and Jim Hessler, also a licensed Gettysburg Battlefield Guide, do a monthly podcast about topics related to the (guess what) the Battle of Gettysburg. Eric showed Alex and I around the parts of the field related to the battle in The Wheatfield for the better part of two hours or more. It was the best battlefield tour that I have ever been on.

Both Eric and Jim are Daniel Sickles aficionados and I have to say that the tour gave me a new appreciation for why Sickles moved the III Corps up to the Emmitsburg Road and the Peach Orchard. When you are standing in the low ground where Sickles was told to deploy by General Meade and you are looking at all of that high ground in front of you, you begin to understand Sickles' thinking.

I now listen to the podcast while I am painting figures and it helps to pass the time away whilst painting 60 figures at a time.

Click on the link to the guys' website and from their you can find links to the podcast; or just enter battle of Gettysburg podcast in your Facebook search bar and it will take you to their Facebook page where you can find more information

Battle of Gettysburg Podcast

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More Real Estate On the Game Table

 

Hey look, Old Fritz has added some new ground to our battlefield. I dare say that it is good ground.
54mm Americana plastic figures.

CLICK ON ALL PIX TO ENLARGE

Yesterday I created more table top space on my game table in order to accommodate my ever-growing collection of 54mm American Civil War regiments. My main table measures 6ft wide by 13ft long and then I have a back table that measures 5ft wide by 12ft long. The back table had some of my 54mm Roman encampment on it and it was chewing up about 6ft of table length. So I put all of the Roman terrain away (took nearly an hour) and then set up some rudimentary ACW terrain on the back table.

I was putting this exercise off until my order for some new Cigar Box Battle mats arrived, and when they did arrive a couple of days ago, I knew that it was time to redecorate the back table.

The view from the main table looking towards the back table.

There it is: the Full Cleveland!
Main table is in the foreground and the back table is in the,well, background.

Once I have the terrain set up on my table I usually tinker around with the layout over the course of several days. For example, the first layout had two parallel roads running from the back table and going on to the front table. However, something just didn't look right, so I pulled up one of the roads and repositioned it so that it was running at an angle rather than in a straight line to the main table. Diagonal roads look better on a game table than do straight and parallel roads.

Straight road running across the width of the back table.

The improved road now runs diagonally across the table and looks more interesting.

Panorama view of the back table.

Here are some other pictures that I clicked this evening:

Meade's headquarters at Gettysburg

HQ and the nearby Union encampment.

A view of the main game table.

Union camp ground

Watching the troops marching off to the battle.

Union observation tower

I finished painting my third Confederate regiment of 30 figures yesterday and another 30 figures will be completed within the next day or two. That will give me 4 CSA regiments for a total of 120 figures. I will need 15 regiments for my Pickett's Charge game. The Union army has 8 regiments of 30 figures for a total of 240 figures. Thus I have 360 of the required 1,000 total figures that I will need for my game.

One thing stands out to my eye: I'm going to need a whole lot of trees. Much more than I already have, and believe you me, I have lots of trees. Both of the tables shown in these pictures are approximately 12ft long, but I will be using 24ft long tables. So in theory, I will need double the number of trees that you see on my tables at the present time. I will also need to make about 36ft worth of turnpike fencing for both sides of the Emmitsburg Road. Yikes!

Yes, I have some work to do.