Saturday 22 November 2014

But still they come...


“But still they come....”
Steve’s take on HG Wells War of the Worlds
More Photos Here

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.

I first came across War of the Worlds whilst at school at the age of 13 after enduring yet another dire English lesson discussing the “merits” of “Cider with Rosy” by sticking needles in my eyes.  Then near the end of the lesson our English teacher allowed us to choose a book from the book or should I say store cupboard which we later found out that we had to read and review.  Like piranhas stripping the flesh from an unfortunate victim everyone bundled into the cupboard and fought tooth and nail to get to the most interesting books before they all disappeared.  Being a rather sluggish piranha having had my fill of “Cider with Rosy” I ended up at the back of the queue.  By the time I got to book cupboard the shelves had been stripped clean much like the bleached carcass of one of those long horned steers that you see in all the best westerns.  I picked my way through the debris lifting dog-eared novels that no hip 1970’s kid would be seen dead with such as “The L shaped room”.  Things were becoming desperate, I couldn’t leave the cupboard empty handed but wait, what was this, H.G Wells, never heard of the bloke.  However, it did have a rather interesting title, “War of the Worlds” and to cap it all the cover had some strange machines making their way through a desolate landscape, this would have to do and it wasn’t long before I found myself captivated by this Mr HG Wells bloke.

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.

Field and Garrison Artillery wore Blue tunic, trousers and helmet whilst Horse artillery wore the Busby
               
Heavy cavalry or Dragoons
wore red tunics with blue breeches
Lancers wore Blue tunics with
either blue or red breeches







Hussars wore also Blue tunic with
either blue or red breeches.
Then of course there were the Volunteers and Yeomanry.  Where uniform was concerned by this time the infantry had been brought into line with the Regulars with the majority of them wearing red, but some hangers on still wore the original Grey of the 1850’s.
Volunteers
The Yeomanry tried to emulate their professional cousins by wearing uniforms similar to the cavalry they represented, if not more extravagant.

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
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.
 represented by Baccus 1870
Prussian Field Artillery
.
Royal Field Artillery 3 inch
“De Bange” 15lb







Royal Garrison Moveable Siege armaments

Rifle Muzzle Loading 4.5 inch 40lb 
represented by Pendraken 10mm model
with Baccus Prussian Crew







represented by Pendraken 10mm
model with Baccus Prussian Crew
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!



6 inch 120lb breach loader 30cwt
Howitzer on Ground platform

and in miniature!





In the Pipeline are:
25lb siege guns using
Baccus Prussian Siege gun

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

H.G Wells “Thunderchild” was a torpedo ram based on HMS Polyphemus.  Getting hold of a 1/300 scale Torpedo Ram was nigh on impossible so I opted for something with a little more punch, a Majestic class battleship.

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

After painting her as HMS Mars I have to say she does
look the business on the wargames table.

Fort Victoria
Orignal plans of Fort Gilkicker
... and in miniature.

The real thing....