My WoFun plans

WoFun Bavarian Foot

It will take time to sell off the armies I've decided to let go, and completing what remains of the lead mountain is even more uncertain, but as readers and fellow compulsive collectors will appreciate, I can't let that stand in the way of my accumulation of new WoFun armies! 

I've now got enough English Civil War standees for the Montgomery scenario in For King And Parliament, and can move on to collecting something else, at least for now. 

 

The areas that interest me most are the War of Spanish Succession, the '45 Rebellion and the Peninsular War, all in 18mm. Since posting my first impressions of WoFun I have settled on the 18mm ranges which I now think are the best balance between aesthetics and versatility. I have also been in contact with Vali Dumitru at WoFun and they are happy to supply half-sprues, removing the duplication problem with 18mm. I also asked about their plans for metal standees, but these aren't for now. WoFun are great communicators and couldn't be more helpful. 

 

Renewal of interest in the WoSS was originally inspired by Simon Miller's forthcoming Lust for Glory rules, but I can also use Maurice, and, at grand-tactical level, Bloody Big Battles, games I play already. 

 

The '45 has been a very long-standing interest. I've planned to do it several times, but never committed, partly due to the prospect of the mass painting of tartans! WoFun changes all that. 

 

I already play Blucher with unit cards at grand-tactical level, but Napoleonics at tactical level is another thing. There's a huge choice of rules for this, but I'm leaning towards General d'Armee 2 despite its complexity, and looking at the Peninsular War because it's a rich area and, for me, a fresh subject to study. The same armies could once again be used with Bloody Big Battles at grand tactical level. With 30mm wide bases, the 18mm WoFun standees are close enough to the 25mm BBB standard. 

 

The story doesn't end there as there are lots of other ranges that may become available such as the Monmouth Rebellion. The armies for that are on the small side but might work with FK&P.

Too much stuff

I've got too much stuff, a lot of it completely unpainted or unfinished. I've made a list. So far the inventory covers just the land forces, and it's by no means fully detailed. As I intend to keep this list of shame updated, I've added it as a page (Periods & Scales) to the top menu.

I intend to sell off the stuff I least want and, if I can, work on the unfinished stuff I most want to keep, theoretically meeting somewhere in the middle. 

eBay used to be the obvious place to go to sell off wargames figures, but I've seen very negative reviews recently. Selling stuff at shows is possibly better, but will take a lot longer.

The only figures I'm going to buy in future will be WoFun standees, painted 3D figures (if the temptation arises) or maybe unpainted 2mm/3mm models that could be finished relatively quickly.

Consolidating my figure collection follows on from the great purge of my library, an ongoing process I started over six years ago. The book purge has made life more manageable, and there's nothing I regret getting rid of.

The immediate problem with the figures is that many of these are stacked two-layers deep so I can't immediately see everything I've got at a glance. So the first step is to send more books to charity shops so I can spread the figure boxes out. As I said, I've got too much stuff.

WoFun: storage logic 3

The final format for storing my WoFun standees, using 5mm EVA sheet stuck with a hot glue-gun. Perhaps I've lived a sheltered life but I've never used a glue-gun before. It was great fun until I accidentally glued a strip of foam to my fingers. That's when you find out just how hot the glue is and how well it sticks.

WoFun: storage logic 2

Thank you, Simon Jones, for putting me on to self-adhesive foam insulation tape. Attached to board, it's ideal for my WoFun storage trays. Arranging the foam with slots between was just the right approach, but my extravagant use of the tape makes this disproportionately expensive. 

If I get some sheets of hobby foam and cut and stick them myself, I may be able to achieve an adequate result more economically.

WoFun: storage logic

My WoFun collection(s) will ultimately fit into robust, stackable and conveniently sized plastic boxes, ie 4L or 9L RUBs according to the fundamental principle of wargame figure storage.

In the absence of magnetic sheeting, there has to be another way to stop the stands from rattling around or ending up in a  heap when being transported to the wargames club.

18mm shot, horse and pike stands are all different heights, but share two common dimensions: they are all about 30mm wide and about 20mm deep, front to back. 

Logic dictates that the most flexible and efficient way to store them (and to identify and deploy them) is to lie them down in trays. 

My prototype solutions featured homemade card trays, but I will probably switch to sponge with slots to catch the bases. The ultimate solution may look very different, but I think I've found the right form factor.

WoFun standees: first impressions

A Bluecoat regiment

Modellers, painters and figure collectors should look away now! These aren't for you!

I received my first WoFun standees order - 18mm English Civil War Royalist and Parliamentary forces. The good people at WoFun also threw in a complimentary sprue of Scottish cavalry. Cunning!

On first sight the figures were very vibrant (in a good way) if a little smaller than I had imagined. I rocked the first set of figures backwards and forwards to remove it. This was a mistake as I did a tiny bit of damage. It's better just to push the cut-outs forward. Once I got used to it, it was simple and fast to remove the figures and push them into the supplied MDF stands.

Other than playing with counters or blocks, this is the first time I’ll be able to put armies on the table without condemning myself to months or even years of painting and the common prospect of losing interest in a project long before it’s completed. At my age and with little time for painting, this has become a pressing consideration. Reducing the hobby to a pure wargaming experience is liberating. Of course, I will still be doing little bits of modelling and painting for fun, but it won't be the treadmill on which most previous gaming has been dependent.

Personally, I wouldn't choose WoFun flats for a skirmish game, and I don’t think 2D tanks would be very convincing, but for linear warfare with the players generally facing the front or back of the playing pieces, I think they will be quite convincing.

WoFun armies raise a few questions: duplication, storage and whether to 'pimp' them.

The 18mm sprues typically contain two sets of the featured product which is OK for line infantry but may not be appropriate for rarer units. Unwanted duplicates need to be swapped or sold. 28mm sprues provide a single set of figures so are not affected by this.

I normally base figures on steel so they can be stored and transported safely in plastic boxes lined with magnetic sheet. I'm not sure what to do with these figures. I've yet to find out how brittle/resilient they are, and whether they need to be glued into the stands. They are extremely light - virtually weightless - so it will be quite easy to carry a large number of them and a pity to change this. If I utilise some bubble wrap and am careful, it should be possible to keep them as they are.

It's common to run a black marker around the rim of the figures, though this may reduce the vibrancy. Flocking the bases is also popular. The most extreme thing is to paint the edges to match the faces. I'm not currently planning to do any of these things myself. The last two steps do transform the look fantastically, but they contradict the whole 'ready out of the box' concept.

I'm happy with having chosen 18mm for this particular project, but I'm not entirely convinced this is the best choice in every respect. Although the detail is there when viewed close to and at eye-level, once on the table they tend to look like dark blocks. This is even more characteristic of the 10mm ranges. 

Smaller is darker because a smaller surface reflects less light and is more difficult to see. When painting smaller figures, you compensate by using brighter paint. In this case, I guess Peter Dennis's ink and wash illustrations have simply been digitally reduced which appears to give more emphasis to the ink, and less to the wash.

This does not seem to bother other gamers. 18mm is apparently a lot more popular than 28 mm, and there is huge enthusiasm for 10mm Napoleonics.

Even in full, natural, daylight the stands seem
to present with a lot of 'black ink'.

For my War of Spanish Succession project I'm now inclining towards 28mm. The aesthetic appeal of the Baroque period is an important aspect for me, and the larger scale will show Peter Dennis's brilliant artwork to better advantage.

The 28mm sprues contain half the figures which means that armies will cost twice as much, but the increase in footprint is minimal. A 4-figure 28mm base is about 40mm wide as opposed to about 30mm for the 18s. If playing the envisaged grid game (Simon Miller's Lust for Glory!) this will mean using 6" rather than 4" squares. For Sam Mustafa's Maurice, which I play already, I don't think it will make much difference.

For the WoSS there are two areas where I might intervene, albeit minimally. One is repainting facings and stockings where required to produce specific regiments and to utilise any spare stands. The other is adding 3D paper flags. I'll explain more if/when the time comes.

Whatever the downsides or challenges, I won't have to paint hundreds of figures or risk a further increase in the lead mountain.

Eisenhower: markers and terrain

 

 

Picking up paper markers without long finger-nails is extremely awkward so I printed the designs from the SHAEF document onto self-adhesive labels and stuck them to MDF bases. The objective markers are flipable between Allied and Axis and the unit status markers between Worn and Exhausted.

 

 

For Prepared positions I created some 3D markers using 10mm resin sandbag emplacements from ScaleFiend. I need to get more of these. I'll be using them as markers for 10mm, 6mm and 3mm armies, though they are obviously only in scale with the largest of these.

 

Finally, I made some 4" square Bocage markers using strips of pan scourer. This one is a prototype and a bit messy. It's not quite finished but basically there. I don't intend to paint them. As with the low-relief BUAs and woods I made for Blucher, they're symbolic rather than realistic and the units will be sitting on top rather than 'within' the features. They will look best with 3mm models but will do as markers for 6mm and 10mm. As based, 3mm, 6mm and 10mm models will all fit within 4" squares which gives a nicely compact table, but 6" squares definitely look better aesthetically. Keeping these markers to 4" means I can use them with both sizes of grid.

3mm 1940 for Eisenhower

It was in 2013 that I first mentioned my interest in doing 3mm French and German armies for the Battle of Hannut in May 1940. This developed into the Rommel project before being abandoned, but I've recently been mining the lead mountain and am now processing a fraction of the accumulated Oddzial Osmy 3mm kit for use with Eisenhower. 

The photo shows the entire armies for Hannut: two German and two French armoured divisions. Although historically the largest tank battle then fought, it's small for a game in which there is normally a minimum of three formations (divisions) a side. Each base represents a battalion of tanks or motorised infantry. The German tank battalions were of mixed type. Although the obsolete Panzer Is and IIs predominated, I’ve modelled them as Panzer IVs (the cutting edge) as this makes them more useful for later campaigns.

Lust for Glory! and WoFun

I saw two things at Salute that lodged in my brain and have been festering ever since. One was Simon Miller's forthcoming horse and musket variation on To The Strongest! provisionally entitled Lust for Glory! The other were the WoFun plexiglass flats.

After some intense soul searching over the last few days I've fully resolved to invest in the WoFun  War of Spanish Succession and English Civil War standees. Both of these will be used primarily for Simon's grid games - LfG! and For King & Parliament!

Although intrigued by WoFun, I wasn't initially convinced, but the more I thought about it, the more I was attracted to the style of the 'figures' and the straightforwardness of the pre-printed approach. They will be ready-to-play after a couple of hours' assembly and light to carry.

It has also helped me to come to terms with the obvious: I will never complete more than a tiny fraction of my accumulated lead mountain and might as well start disposing of it. 

An initial ECW order is in and a WoSS order will follow. The disposal side will take longer and be more difficult. This is undoubtedly the most revolutionary development in the history of my adult wargaming career.

It took some time to decide on the scale. The beauty of the artwork shows best with the larger figures,  especially 28mm, but the ECW rules require some flexibility in unit representation (e.g. small, large, pike-heavy, shot-heavy etc) and this was best offered by the 18mm stands. I'm not attracted to the 10mm flats as it's quick and easy to paint 3D figures in that scale, but my attitude may change if I decide to invest in Napoleonics. And maybe I'll also look at the '45, another period I've always wanted to do.