Full 'toy town' or Not?

Just a quicky...

I had a couple of very interesting comments in response to my post about trees (and general scenery) for my peg soldiers were I to use them in a tabletop game. Joppy and jFidz, many thanks...

The upshot is - concerning a general style that would compliment my wooden toy soldiers - do I go 'full toy town' or not???

What I mean by that is; rather than model scenery in the traditional war-gaming fashion - i.e. semi-realistic - do I commit to adopting a completely wooden toy theme and add traditional wooden building blocks as scenery items? Blocks like these...

Now, there are pros and cons to this style. The major con might be - although my peg soldiers are simplified are they still too detailed caricatures to be considered to match the minimalist toy block style?

On the other hand, adopting the toy blocks as scenery is really flexible, I could make almost any piece of scenery really quickly and cheaply using these blocks. The above pictured set is 100 pieces for just £13! I reckon I'd get a small town or castle out of that and still have some 'scatter' scenery left over. 😊

Too simple???

Making 'Toy Soldier' Scenery

Now I've started making peg soldiers again - and so rekindled the idea of doing FLW games using them - my mind turned to scenery and accessories for the 'battlefield.

Obviously, I want things to have the same 'toy town' look soldiers and this reminded me that I had seen some thing like this done before. All the way back in 2013, Tom Gow invited me over to Sheffield to the Tripples war gaming convention and one of the tables that really caught my eye was by a club who had done a wonderful little 'toy town' themed display...

Now, the soldiers on this table (and I apologise, I have forgotten the name of the club that put this on) were commercially available models and although I quite liked the shaggy little trees that they had used I remember thinking at the time that they weren't quite right. (In my opinion.)

What I had in mind was a simpler design that complimented the caricatured 'naive' style of my toy soldiers. Something more like these designs...

So, I was discussing this idea with my brother and he informed me that he had a lathe and that such designs might be easy enough to turn in wood! Score! :)

...BUT, we would have to work out a suitable size for the toy trees that was in proportion with my peg soldiers (he, by the way, is working on a similar project but based on little people for his granddaughter to play with). So I got to doodling a few outlines in various sizes on paper and eventually developed my sketches down to this design...

As you can see, what I have gone is a sort of cartoon proportion not much bigger than my figure itself (whereas, in reality, these trees should be something like double the height). This is based on what I think might look 'correct' on a tabletop, and taller trees might be in danger of overwhelming the look of the whole thing! (I know what I mean, I'm just not very good at explaining what I mean!)

So, I've sent this diagram up to my brother to see what he thinks and for him to maybe try turning a prototype on his lathe. Then we can actually set the toy tree next to a few peg soldiers to see if it looks right. Fingers crossed.

And What About...?
That sorted, it then begs the question - what about other accessories and scenery? What about houses or vehicles, etc, etc...

Er, well, the short answer is that I haven't thought that far ahead yet. Well, other than my 'peg planes' which I have deliberately created in a reduced scale as a matching scale to my 50mm soldiers would mean that the aircraft would be quite huge! 😀

I'll take each new idea on as it comes along. Let's get the trees and maybe some bushes done first.

The Resistance! Molatero Free Air Force

Light bomber and reconnaissance machine of the revolutionary coalition.

Backstory: "After the upheaval of The Great War many sections of ordinary Molaterian society
were in ferment due to their dissatisfaction with the ruling elite and their military support for the Northern Alliance. The cost of that affiliation for the ordinary populous was great, particularly on the agrarian working classes who were relied upon to fill the ranks of the army during the war.

Liberal dissatisfaction with minimal representation in a parliament that was still overwhelmingly dominated by the aristocracy was bolstered by a growing proletariat movement. What started as a demand for political reform quickly became an actively militant anti-monarchist and anti-government sedition.

With outside support, an armed resistance movement was formed to counter what was an increasingly draconian suppression by the Royalist Army. Rural areas quickly fell to various anti-government militias and regional regiments - who were largely made up of conscripts - and in 1920 descent turned into full-blown revolution.

This plane represents one of the handful of aircraft the revolutionary coalition managed to put into the air in support of its military campaign. What aircraft the rebels had were largely obsolete models left over from the Great War and were no match for the more up-to-date machines of the Royalist Air Force."

Model information: This is the second of my 'peg' aircraft models. In this case, the peg - or part of the peg - forms the main fuselage, with the other wooden parts made up from cocktail sticks, lolly sticks (popsicle sticks for our colonial cousins), wooden beads and tongue depressors (of all things)!

Small Update - Map of Molatero

I'm (very) slowly working on my Molatero backstory and maps in the background, but I have made some progress and am happy that I have the basic geographic shapes finalised...

I'm also please with the graphics style, even if it does look a little Lord of the Rings meets Pirates of the Caribbean! 😂

Now I have the base outline I can start work on making a pictorial history of Molatero using maps which trace it's formation and development. I'll use these to pin-point important periods in the county's history so that I can give my story some character.

As I say - this is a small update but I'm enjoying creating the maps.

Peg Bomber Flies Again!

The little problems I left behind me when I had my break from modelling have now come home to roost. I had forgotten that I had decided to change the way I would display my little peg planes, moving from my thrown together cocktail stick stand to a proper commercial plastic one.

I had bought a set of square acrylic flight stands - made tabletop game aircraft and space vehicles - because I think they look a lot better than a 'stick'. Actually, I think they look better because they are less noticeable than my cocktail stick contrivance...

The problem with this change in direction was that I had already nearly completed my peg model, so I've had to go back and make a suitable hole into which I could fit the new stand's socket. All I could think of doing was to re-drill the smaller hole I had made for my stick-stand so that I could fit the larger diameter plastic socket into the underside of my plane.

It was a wee bit tricky as I had to use a relatively large drill bit and I was quite worried in case I damaged my model during the handling. I took things slowly and carefully and eventually had a hole into which the plastic stand slid.

What I intend to do next is superglue the socket part of the stand into the hole, that way I can take the plane off the stand if I want. I was a little worried that the small diameter of the square base might not support my plane, but it does (at least it does at this height - 4cm - though if I want to increase the 'altitude' for a game, say, I would have to get a wider base). 👍

Well, job done - and with all the touching up of the model complete all I have to do now is a apply a couple of coats of glass varnish and the job's a good 'un.  That's next.

A Slow (Re-) Start...

I've been finding that getting back into a hobby that I have neglected for so long isn't quite as straight-forward as I imagined and it's just not a case of re-finding my enthusiasm.

One of the main hurdles I have had to overcome is simply finding all the modelling gear and paints I had - lots of stuff has either been 'borrowed' or stored (in the infamous 'safe place') or just plain lost! And my work area in my 'man cave' had become a dumping ground for all the household brick-a-brack... I had to excavate my desks from under a small mountain of boxes of junk and Christmas decorations!

So, this re-start has been slower than I would have liked...BUT...I seem to be getting somewhere now.

My first job was to find the selection of paints I had been using for one of my
last projects. Eventually - and much to my relief - I managed it!

One of the greatest worried after neglecting this hobby for so long was the state of my paints collection AND exactly what paints I was using for the several half-finished projects I had.

The good news is that acrylic paints seem to fair quite well after a period of hibernation. Being a old-time modeller I had terrible visions from my long past experiences with 'old school' enamel paints and what they were like if they had been opened and then neglected.

The next issue was a good news and bad news situation. First of all, I managed to locate some of the sets of paints that I was using for a couple of my projects - Huzzah! - BUT then I realised that a another project was one for which I was mixing a specific colour, oh dear!

In the case of the colour mix, I may have made some notes of my colour recipe in a past bog post, but I haven't found that yet. This has made me determined to record my project's progress in even more detail in future so that I can recreate creative modelling techniques again more easily. In fact, it has meant that I have had to reassess my project documentation method and I am considering a fundamental change from mainly photographs to video.

Anyway... Onwards!

So, having found the paints I was using for my little peg light bomber I got my handy portable work tray up and running (as I still haven't cleared enough junk off my attic desk for it to be usable) and I tentatively began to process of working out what needed to be done to the model...

The model was actually very near completion and this makes it a nice 'ice breaker' with which to restart my hobby again. There was some touching up to do and some small jobs - like the above pic of my completing the undercarriage - and, amusingly, I had to begin by giving the model a good dust! 😂

Another tiny chore was to give my aircrew some goggle. Some simple silver coloured 'lenses' would suffice but even this proved a little tricky as my painting confidence has suffered, my hands seem to be a lot shakier AND my eye-sight appears to have deteriorated. Getting older is a pain in the ass.

And, finally (at least for this stage), I had some thinking to do regarding mounting the model. It seems -from what I can remember from two years ago - that I was thinking about adding transparent acrylic stands to my little wooden planes. I had already bought a pack to test and this model was to be a 'proof of concept'.

Unlike my original 'cocktail stick stand' idea - which was a wee bit wobbly and didn't look very good - these purpose built plastic stands are intended for little tabletop aircraft games and really look the part. The only slight issue is that I will have to work out how to attach the connecting socket part...

...Much drilling and super-gluing ensued! 😕😡😉

Well, that's not a bad (re-) start. Next I have to gloss the model in keeping with the rest of my peg models as I like the traditional toy soldier look. Also, it's got me thinking about what I would like to make next, as I love these little cartoon looking aeroplanes. It put's me in mind of a show that I really used to enjoy as a kid...

The History of Molatero (in Progress)

As I made the mistake of not making any notes for my Molatero backstory I now cannot remember where I was going with the project! So, I'm sorta having to start from scratch...

Now, I realise that not everyone needs a backstory for their Funny Little Wars faction - in fact you can opt for a 'off the peg' army using the pre-generated ones, such as 'Army Red' or 'Army Blue' which are loosely based on historical national armies - but I, personally, enjoy making up 'stuff'! 😄

Anyhoo, so back to the drawing board. Now, I am a visual sorta guy - I prefer to doodle than write - so it's easier for me to construct a backstory using pictures. My starting point, then, is to sketch a map of 'Molatero' - where it is in it's fictional, alternative version of our world and what kind of cultural it would therefore have...

To my mind 'Molatero' is a fictional equivalent to Bulgaria (and/or Roumania), occupying a south-eastern position beside an inland sea which mirrors the Black Sea. Though I have borrowed Molatero's cultural flavour from a few different Balkan states, you get the idea.

Having sketched out my map and got a feeling for it's place in 'my world' in relation to the real world I filled in - tentatively - it's neighbours. These would be the protagonists in my make believe war-gaming arena with Turania being the principal 'baddies'! 😉

Situating Molatro's 'culture' gives me a jump off point by which I can then start fleshing out the rest of it's history - political, military and social. And as my interest was in creating a small army for war-gaming a Funny Little Wars campaign chronologically I was particularly interested in a period that equated to the late 19th century (I actually had in mind a date of around 1890).

Romanian soldiers c. 1913 - some historic reference material on which
I based my idea on what Molatarian uniforms might look like.

And that's as far as I got when I originally started this blog - though I had already started getting a little side tracked when I started making little 'peg aircraft' and was already looking at Molatero's later history (1919-1921). But that's a by-product of my fertile (some would say over-active) imagination! 😄

Return to Molatero!

I'm back... It took a pandemic to get me blogging again, but hey ho!

Unfortunately, having left off all things Molatarian for a good long while I'm afraid I have completely forgotten what I had in mind for this blog. Never mind though, even if I have to kind of start from scratch what else do I have to do at the moment? ;)

So, to kick off my return here's a little video I quickly put together to sort of get me going again. Hope you enjoy it...