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Post by briancarrick on Sept 4, 2016 13:23:41 GMT
I started. Wargaming with school friends using 54mm WW2 plastics and firing cannons, we wrote our own rules for movement and firing in an old exercise book and played on the floor carpet or in the. Garden. The first rules I bought were Discovering Wargames by John Tunstill in 1969 which we used with Airfix 20mm, this was followed by Introduction to Battle Gaming by Terry Wise.
I'd been a big fan of Maj. Henry Harris's books and when I started earning I could afford to buy Britain's and Ericsson figures, about this time I discovered Little Wars and a friend and I used the rules as written with matchstick firing guns for many years. Despite the criticism that they have no provision for small arms or morale I still like them for fast moving tactical games, you need to manoeuvre using all available cover and ground to shelter troops from the enemy guns and achieve local concentration of force to overwhelm your opponent.
In 1982 Stuart Asquiith, who was editor of Battle Magazine at the time, asked me to wrrite an article on 54mm wargaming for an Annual Edition he was putting together, he wanted to cover every aspect of the hobby and at that time I was the only person he knew who did 54mm. The article was titled Big Wars and to be honest it wasn't very good but after it was published ideas contacted via Stuart by F E Perry who had written the 1st and 2nd Books of Wargaming which expanded on Little Wars to include small arms etc and ii used these rules for many years.
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rich
Lance Corporal
Posts: 18
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Post by rich on Sept 4, 2016 23:14:38 GMT
I enjoyed reading these and floor wars many years ago. But never played them.
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Post by manoftinblog on Sept 17, 2016 21:57:00 GMT
I have been chatting with Brian Carrick and several other bloggers about (the lack of write ups of) garden games, they seem fairly invisible in the magazines and in the web / blog world. I remember well at the time the article Brian Carrick wrote for the Battle for Wargames 1983 Wargames Manual, called Big Wars (I get this title now, that it was about 54mm figures and Wells' Little Wars). I particularly liked the pics of his Wargames garden, a scratch built river gunboat on a lake / path bombarding enemy 1:32 Airfix Jungle Outposts on the banks of grass, not just one outpost but a whole village of them! posted by Mark (Mr MIN Man of TIN blog) manoftinblog.wordpress.com poundstoreplasticwarriors.wordpress.com/2016/09/14/garden-wargames-1/k
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Post by wmrussell on Nov 19, 2019 7:42:50 GMT
I was brought up on Wells' rules; my elder cosuins has discovered it in the late 1950s and I had Quantum Reprints around 1966/7 - fortunately everything that fell before the 18 inch howitzers and 4.7 inch guns were all Airfix and crescent 1:32 plastics but we drifted away from it in the mid 1970s looking for something more interesting ... F.E. Perry's excellent two books (such a shame they were wrtten for much younger readers as the rules presented in them are both concise and add much to the Wellsian game) caused a brief flurry of interest again ... but some little A5 booklets from TSR (Called Dungeons and something or other) plus Professor M.A.R. Barker's Empire of the Petal Throne had us all in thrall for about a decade and my 54mm soldier collection was forgotten in the attic. Around the mid 1990s my parents were downsizing and clearing the attic and this stuff was found again - along with my collection of lead soldiers that I'd been collecting from Charity shops since the end of lead production and the whole kit and caboodle shipped up to Sheffield. There they lay for another couple of years until varous blogs started talking about 'old scholl' gaming and after finding a copy of FLW I was hooked again. Since then - apart from skirmishing with a few friends, I've been building up my British Colonial forces and scenery stock. The hope is to join a 54mm game at one of the BMSS shows next year (unfortunately my job as a museum lecturer and curator takes most of my weekends up) and play with some new faces. So Mike Lewis - when are you rolling the first game out ? Regards all Paul
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Post by wmrussell on Nov 19, 2019 7:55:32 GMT
Brian Hmm, no idea what happened to your quote but re:F E Perry rules - I'm glad someone used them as they were really good rules - as I've said elsewhere they sadly weren't enough to pull us back form table top role playing at the time. I can see why they were wrtten in a simpler tone to appeal to a younger age range but do you know if anyone was recruited directly because of them ? I seem to remember a very limited print run and everyone I've mention them to today (still have my copies) has poured nothing but scorn on them which is a real shame as I think a major evaluation is needed on these books - especially for multiperiod players of LW. Regards Paul
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Post by manoftinblog on Nov 19, 2019 21:40:39 GMT
I can claim not to scorn them but to have been inspired by the FE Perry Books - or Book. Very bizarrely I had the chance find as a child in Foyles of the Second Book Of Wargaming by F E Perry but no sign or sight of the First, without which it did not make much rules sense. However I loved the inventiveness and the pictures. They gave me a glimpse of the pre Airfix figure world that has given me an ongoing passion for quirky odd lead and metal 54mm figures.
With only a passing childhood glimpse once in a library at Little Wars in its late 1970s reprint (loved the marginal illustrations), I instead had to scale up the Donald Featherstone War Games 1962 WW2 rules. Brian Carrick's Big Wars article in Stuart Asquiths 1983 Wargames Manual magazine, based on Wells and Perry, also gave me a sense that 54mm garden gaming existed amongst adults.
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Post by wmrussell on Nov 20, 2019 21:02:37 GMT
Fantastic recollections. I passed my spare set over to Andrew Stevenson at Replica Metal Models and Soldiers earlier in the year and he was amazed at the sheer breadth of figures that Mr. Perry had amassed for the photographs. I think the Starlux Sappers with the Wild Western oil lamps inside a washed out drinks can to represent a tunnel under the earth was probably my favourite ever; but the section on gas warfare lead to a lifelong collecting craze for figures in Gas masks Oddly I bought the second book of wargaming for 20p in a WH smith's sale and had to write off to the publishers for volume 1 - took about 6 months but it was sent to me for free - I won't swear to it BUT I think it was Stuart who signed the letter inviting me to get in touch if there was anything else I wanted in regard to wargaming. I never did as we moved away to roleplaying - something I've often regretted.
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Post by Quantrilltoy on Nov 25, 2019 11:20:05 GMT
I have a copy of the Little Wars and Floor Wars. I haven't played exactly the same rules but have played rules derived from them, notably Paul Wright's Funny Little Wars. Frank Perry's First and Second Books of Wargaming are also adaptations with additional rules.
Sometimes I use the matchstick firing guns. The best one I have is a small sliver WW2 Lone Star cannon with other cannons serving as 'dummy' cannons. The modification to Well's rules where instead of knocking down figures a radius is made around where the stick hits. Other times I use alternative dice rolling to hit rules. Again, for actual projectile weapons Nerf guns are effective. In outdoor games especially I have used them to represent larger cannons. Neither matchsticks nor Nerfs have, in my experience, damaged figures.
I think what I like most about Little Wars are the photos and illustrations and the use of 54mm figures. My starting point was not being a 'serious wargamer' with smaller scale figures. I had a brief dalliance with Airfix small scale when I was a teenager. But before that I played with 54mm plastics and a few metal figures. I came back to wargaming (with 54mm figures) when, in my 20s I discovered ACOTS. Australian Collectors of Toy Soldiers which is primarily concerned with collecting and wargaming with 1/32 figures. Featherstone's rules were a big influence there.
James
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Post by zuludon on Oct 14, 2022 18:35:31 GMT
I am going to run a classic Little Wars game next week at my house in anticipation of the 110th anniversary of the book's original publishing in 1913. I have never played the game but I was lucky, in my youth, to have access to a copy from the 1920s that my mother, a university librarian at the time, was able to check out from the UC Berkeley library when the book was out of print. Thanks to Spencer CF for his helpful, simplified interpretations of the rules on this board. I will post an AAR and photos.
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