“But still they come....”
In 1898 H.G Wells wrote a book that was to bring about a plethora of films, books, records and a stage performance all based on his idea, all of which I hasten to add haven’t done it justice. The reason I say this is not because they weren’t any good, they all were good in their own way, but all of them have veered away from the books original idea by introducing things that just aren’t in it. The only film that kept to the story line was Pendragons war of the worlds but this film unfortunately suffered from a lack of budget and hence it was a bit of a B movie. Still, it’s the nearest I know of that’s kept to the story line unlike all of the others who have failed to do this.
Many years later after I’d been
wargaming for some time the idea of recreating War of the Worlds as a wargame
came to mind. I decided that my version
was to be a purists version and as close to the novel as possible. If it wasn’t mentioned in the book or if it
wasn’t in the context of the period it wouldn’t be included in the game and
this included other technologies that Wells wrote about later on such as
“Cavorite” in “The first men in the moon”.
There were to be no force fields around the Tripods and they were to be
as identical as I could get them in appearance as HG Well description in his
book.
To get an idea of the British army at
the turn of the 19th century I brought an excellent book called
“Scarlett to Khaki, the British army on the eve of the Boer war”. Written by Lieutenant Colonel James Moncrieff
Grierson and first published in 1899 it gives an excellent insight as to how the
British army would have fought if a European enemy had landed on British
soil. I also did a fair amount of
research on the Royal Garrison Artillery so that I could get some siege and
fortress artillery involved. With this
in mind I took a trip to Fort Nelson near Portsmouth and after photographing
everything Victorian I brought some of the excellent booklets published by the
Palmerston Forts Society.
The late 1890’s was still a very
colourful period for the British Army where uniforms were concerned. The infantry wore the classic red tunic and
blue trousers known as the Home service dress, with a dark Blue helmet modelled
on the German Pickelhaube known as the Home Service Helmet.
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| Field and Garrison Artillery wore Blue tunic, trousers and helmet whilst Horse artillery wore the Busby |
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| Heavy cavalry or Dragoons wore red tunics with blue breeches |
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| Lancers wore Blue tunics with either blue or red breeches |
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| Hussars wore also Blue tunic with either blue or red breeches. |
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| Volunteers |
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| Yeomanry |
So all in all I had every expectation
that this would be a very colourful period to wargame. However, one thing I didn’t take into account was the human players cowardice. After being soundly beaten by the Martians a couple of times all they wanted to do was to dig in. So on top of all of the figures I’d already painted, most of which were now redundant, I ended up buying a load of WWI Germans in trenches and painting them up as British, so much for the colour!
To allow for large encounter games and a
sense of scale I decided to opt for 6mm figures. Baccus 1870 Prussians did the trick for the
British due to the similarity in uniform.
Trying to find Martian Tripods that matched Wells description of a giant
milking stool with a Hood was much harder!
My salvation came from Ground Zero Games in the form of their 25mm
scouting Tripods, which are remarkably similar to how Wells imagined them.
Artillery
Field Artillery
Field Artillery
The Field Artillery of the late 1890’s
had become very standardised with only 3 inch “De Bange” 15lb Quick Fire guns,
16lb Volunteer RML Artillery and 5.5 inch 50lb Quick Fire Field howitzers. On the other hand there was a plethora of
different types of siege and fortress artillery and it was more a case of
trying to fit the fortress and siege artillery around what models were
available and this is what I came up with.
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| represented by Baccus 1870 Prussian Field Artillery. |
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| Royal Field Artillery 3 inch “De Bange” 15lb |
Royal Garrison Moveable Siege armaments
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| Rifle Muzzle Loading 4.5 inch 40lb |
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| represented by Pendraken 10mm model with Baccus Prussian Crew |
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| represented by Pendraken 10mm model with Baccus Prussian Crew |
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| 6 inch 70lb Siege Howitzer |
The above model can also represent 6.6 inch 100lb and 8 inch 180lb Howitzers depending upon how mean the Umpire feels!
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| 6 inch 120lb breach loader 30cwt Howitzer on Ground platform |
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| and in miniature! |
In the Pipeline are:
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| 25lb siege guns using Baccus Prussian Siege gun |
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| 9.2 inch 380lb railway gun using the Irregular Miniatures model |
I also made up a couple of other toys to thwart the Martians plans for the domination of planet earth, namely HMS Mars and fort Victoria.
HMS Mars was a real ship and was
one of nine ships that made up the 'Majestic'
class, the largest class of Battleships ever built. Designed by Sir William White, they are also
considered by many to be the best-looking battleships ever to take to the
sea. Although 'Mars' and her sisters
never engaged in action with enemy battleships, they were effective designs. In
many ways they were as revolutionary as the 'Dreadnought'
was to be, having excellent sea keeping with high freeboard, 12 inch twin guns
for main armament on the centreline in turrets, a high speed for the time of 17
knots and adequate armour protection. They were the last ships built to counter
the French and would have been an adequate match for any foreign navy.
Launched in 1896 Mars served in the
Channel Fleet and Atlantic Fleet 1897–1907 (becoming the first battleship
converted to burn fuel oil in 1905–1906 and served in the Home Fleet 1907–1914.
She served as a guard ship on the British coast in 1914–1915, then as a mostly
disarmed troopship in the Dardanelles campaign 1915–1916 and as a depot ship in
home waters 1916–1920 before being sold for scrapping in 1921.
Even getting hold of a 1/300th
scale Majestic class battleship was not that easy. Fortunately the Japanese model kit maker
Hasegawa make a model of the Misaka that was built for the Japanese navy by
Great Britain and was based on the Majestic design. Being a slightly later design the only
noticeable difference was the funnel configuration with the Misaka having hers
in line instead of parallel.
by Steve Cast
by Steve Cast
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| After painting her as HMS Mars I have to say she does look the business on the wargames table. |
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| Orignal plans of Fort Gilkicker |
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| ... and in miniature. |
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| The real thing.... |
