20th Century
Prohibition Wars
Gangster wars, Prohibition wars, conflict in the early 2oth century. I have build up a large tow using a combination of Old Glory Chicago resin buildings, Sarissa mdf town buildings and a lot of scratch builds. Steve Barber initially produced some lovely figures and a couple of buildings – a Speakeasy and a Bank. Copplestone Castings and some Old West figures make up the rest of my collection. We have used the Legends of the West (LOGW) rule set again as well as the Blood and Swash set by Buck Surdu which are a great go-to for our smaller skirmish games.
Back of Beyond
It was Colin Jack and Dave O’Brien who introduced us to this period many moons ago. If you like skullduggery, never knowing who your friends, enemies or allies are and playing with figures from multiple nations, trains, camels, Buddhist temples and the like then you should give this period a go. Copplestone Castings produce some great figures for this period.
WWII Europe
Bolt Action are the rules of choice for us in 28mm although we do favour Rapid Fire when playing in 20mm.
Kev has an ever expanding collection of British and German figures and vehicles in 20mm and the beautiful 20mm buildings produced by Colin Rumford, Sentry Models and others.
My own collection is in 28mm and covers Russians, Germans, British, French Resistance and of course the Home Guard.
WWII Pacific
I wanted to set my WWII Pacific Theatre gaming around an island. I contacted Tiny Wargames and asked them to create three 8’ x 6’ mats for me from my design which would combine to make a self-contained, 24’ x 6’ island, complete with airstrip, beach and surrounded by water. Buildings were scratch built and made from Sarissa kits and Grand Manner structures. Jungle was mostly from my Vietnam terrain collection, supplemented by a scratch-built rope bridge, and mountains from Dobbies winter village collection. Landing craft and Amtraks were from Warlord Games and Sarissa with 28mm figures mostly from Warlord, The Assault Group (TAG), and Company B. Kev produced a much-photographed vignette of some drowning soldiers encircled by a shark.
We have played this game over a weekend with the League of Gentlemen Wargamers, put it on as a display game at Partizan and Carronade and photos of the game were used on the front cover and to accompany an article in the June 2024 issue of Miniature Wargames.
The island cloths are very versatile, and I am now considering using them for a Mongol invasion of a Japanese island in 1274 , based upon the popular PlayStation game “Ghosts of Tsushima.”
Vietnam
I decided to game this period in 28mm after seeing the wonderful diecast models from Corgi in their Unsung Heroes range. Although some of the models are too large for 28mm , they were the best available at the time and benefitted from being ready painted. Nowadays there are excellent 1/56 scale tanks and vehicles on the market from companies like Rubicon.
Inspired by movies like Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and The Deer Hunter, I set about collecting figures, boats, helicopters and terrain for this period. Grand Manner produced some excellent river craft and for years it was almost impossible to find good PBR models but today the market is much better served in 28mm scale by companies like Empress Miniatures, Gringo40s and others. My own collection is largely The Assault Group’s (TAG) Up Country range. Grand Manner produced most of the buildings for the Firebase and the jungle was scratch built from the usual combination of aquarium plants, Pegasus Models palm trees and anything else that looked appropriate.
A highly recommended resource book for wargaming the period.
