Thursday 19 May 2022

A trip to Foy’s (off topic #33)

Yesterday I made a trip to Tony’s to play a game with his amazing War of the Spanish Succession armies. His figures, as I’m sure most of you know, are mainly from the old Les Higgins 20mm range and they have a wonderful slender style quite unlike anything else in this scale. As you would expect, Tony has painted or renovated or commissioned and based these in his house style but with a nod to the more ‘toy soldier’ look they have been finished in gloss varnish.

I’ve seen some of the figures before via Tony’s blog and by Zoom but there is no substitute for seeing the massed ranks arrayed on the table in person. We had a most enjoyable game that I think ran for 10 turns as a playtest of Tony’s Prinz Eugen rules. I took some photos, but I’ll keep the narrative brief as I don’t want to reveal any spoilers before the full battle report appears on Prometheus in Aspic.

The armies arrayed for battle - Austro-British on the left and Franco-Bavarians on the right. I didn't count but there must have been around 700 figures on the table.
This is what I call a 'proper' British army with everyone in red even the gunners - wall to wall stiff upper lips.
Interesting to see a French army that's not in blue. Wonderful paintwork and presentation. Wellington's tree is doing service as the Elector's tree in this battle.
The Austro-British (me) begin to advance against the enemy held ridge.
The same view from the Franco-Bavarian lines.
This photo looks like something out of a Charles Grant book!
The British have a foothold on the ridge - to see how this plays out you will have to check out Tony's blog.

In other news… I finally got around to fixing the roof covering on the Hinton Hut following the various winter storms.


Hopefully the roof will stay intact at least until Christmas.