Wargaming in the Age of Reason

As many readers of my blog may already know, I am a great user of ebay - both for buying and more especially selling. I have also sold on ebay on behalf of many of my gaming friends and it has been great fun. Recently I disposed of an enormous quantity of material - books, figures, boardgames and rule sets for a friend of mine that was moving house and needed to downsize his collection. It was a fascinating exercise - seeing how tastes and collections have evolved over the years. In return for the not inconsiderable effort involved in listing, photographing and shipping the sold items received for my troubles a number of selected titles from the items he was dispensing with. I was pleased and so was my friend and it just proves that money does not need to change hands for a bargain! I am currently involved with a similar exercise for another friend and the main bulk of the material being disposed of is a large collection of painted 25/28mm 18th century figures - mainly Minifigs, Garrison and Hinchcliffe from the late 70s and early 80s, all painted to a very good standard, typical of the times.

The 18th century is a great period to game in and is almost de rigeur for those that wish to set up fictional armies rather than historical ones. This, one would suppose, is the legacy of Messrs. Grant, Young and Lawford and I have absolutely no problem with this. I have had many truly epic games using Charge! and using these figures (at least the Prussian) when multi player games involving 100s if 1,000s of figures were seemingly the norm. The two that spring to mind were a refight at Minden (where yours truly gained a wholly undeserved reputation for 'borrowing' cavalry reserves......) and also the Siege of Vienna. I was the garrison of Vienna and the action took place in the cellar at The New Model Army shop in Manor Park on an 'L' shaped table about 20 foot long. It was tremendous fun although the now Turkish speaking inhabitants of Vienna may disagree............;-)

I have listed the Prussians on ebay under my userid of drcroguejedi should you wish to take a look and the picture at the top is just one of the units up for grabs.