The Weekly Sitrep....Number 5

Quite a big Sitrep this week - mainly due to the pictures content - but there is sufficient material for a few other posts in due course so think of this as being a taster of what is to come!

The magazine and both of the sprues - one S Boat and one Vosper

Last Friday saw the arrival of the December edition of Wargames Illustrated which featured an introduction to Warlord Games Cruel Seas - the table top game of coastal naval battles set in WW2. On the cover was a sprue of either the German S Boat or the British Vosper. In each case there was two models  - an early and a late war version. These are scaled at 1:300th which personally I do not have an issue with but then again I do not have huge collection of 1:600th scale models that seems to be the preferred scale for this type of action. The plastic models look rather nice and there are a number of weapon options that can be explored. At first viewing my only reservation concerns the masts for the Vosper as they seem very thick. Of the six copies that my local WH Smith had only one was a Vosper with the remaining five being S Boats. The packaging was not kind to the Germans as I managed to get the only copy that was unscathed. I am looking forward to seeing the game - more of which in a later post.

In all their glory - the entire block collection. There are eleven boxes in total and each compartment holds 6 blocks. I also have roughly the same amount again so going ‘super sized’ would not really be a problem....

The blue and the grey. ‘Heavy’ types are on the left (with the black band) and ‘Light’ are on the right.

Red and Brown or simply put, the changing colours of the British army

Green and Khaki drill

The top box contains my tribal types with the predominantly brown blocks being used for Zulus, Masai or similar. The blocks with the white top quadrant I tend to use for Arabs, Afghans, Mahdists or similar. The blocks with blue and red are, believe it or not, Janissaries. There is some artillery in evidence. The bottom box shows the transport, armour, anti tank guns, machine guns and mortars. For the grey, brown and khaki sets there is a box full of these types as they are for 20th century armies whereas the others are traditional horse and musket types.

The block armies have been dominating my time this week and as a result of email exchanges with Andy Callan I have made a number of decisions about my collection and how it can be taken forward to the next level so to speak. Again, there will be more about this in a later post but for the present I thought it might be a nice idea to show you just what the collection looks like.

I have also had some contact with Bill Knowles in respect of the sorting out of Eric’s collection. Bill was bombarding me with a lot of pictures of various parts of the painted 18th century collection (actually more 1680 to 1740 if truth be told) that was gradually being sorted out. The main bulk of it appears to be Les Higgins although there are certainly some Minifigs in evidence. Eric was fond of the whole ‘supporting cast’ for his armies so baggage wagons, sappers and miners and the inevitable siege train usually featured. This is very much the tip of the tip of the proverbial iceberg so I shall look forward to posting further pictures as and when they are available. I have also asked Bill to take some army shots for each force once they have been reunited from their boxes.

Bill also has ten 32 litre storage boxes filled with unpainted 28mm metal figures for the 1680 to 1740 period organised into units and armies which I will be helping him to sort out and dispose of in due course. Then there is the WW2 material, not to mention the 1:1200th ships and a fairly extensive library. As I have said before, this will be a massive task and as Bill rightly pointed out, there is a lot of memories in this collection. He uncovered all the terrain that was used for Eric’s epic refight of the siege of Vienna in 1683 - which Neil Fox, Chris Hardman and myself took part in. I will try and get some pictures of this from Bill in due course.

The following are a selection of pictures of part of the collection of Eric Knowles. Many thanks to his son, Bill for taking these and allowing me to share them.

Bill pointed out that some of these figures are probably older than he is!