A Day With Wargaming Lergends

I recently had the privilege of spending a day in Brighton with Henry Hyde, playing an Imaginations wargame in the famous Loftwaffe. The game itself was memorable, but what made the day particularly special was the opportunity to play with some genuine pieces of wargaming history. You can watch the full story in the accompanying video, but there is plenty here to explore if you’re interested in the history of our hobby, vintage miniatures and the way old school wargaming continues to influence what we do today.

I’ve known Henry for several years, mainly through encounters at shows such as Salute and Partizan, along with an appearance on his Battlechat podcast. This visit gave us considerably more time to talk about the hobby, alongside a game using Henry’s own Shot, Steel & Stone rules. The rules were originally introduced in The Wargaming Compendium before being developed into a standalone system. Designed for the horse and musket period, they are deliberately flexible regarding miniature scale and basing, while placing considerable emphasis on command, control and battlefield friction.

For me, the real highlight was the miniatures themselves. Henry has a remarkable collection of figures and books, including miniatures that once belonged to influential pioneers of the hobby. Among them are Spencer Smith 30mm plastic eighteenth century figures, including the famous Ostergotland Regiment associated with Charles Grant. What makes these figures particularly fascinating is their history. They date from the early decades of modern miniature wargaming with the Ostergotland Regiment appearing in Charles Grant’s seminal 1971 book, The War Game.

Spencer Smith figures were designed to be simple, elegant and easy to mass on the tabletop. Their proportions give large regiments a wonderfully old school appearance. Henry's collection is partly painted by him, and partly origional regiments that belonged to hobby Legends like Grant and Asquith. Rather than being preserved as museum pieces, Henry has restored these older miniatures and continues to use them in games. And for me there was something genuinely special about seeing figures with that kind of history being used for their original purpose. They weren’t simply objects from the past. They were still wargaming.

The game formed part of Henry’s long-running Imaginations campaign. I commanded the Grenouisse army, pursuing the retreating forces of Borgenmark after the Bataille des Deux Fermes. My task wasn’t to destroy the enemy outright but to harass the retreating column and delay its progress towards the defensive positions around Vustœr. My light cavalry proved effective at disrupting the Borg advance, forcing enemy units to halt and face the threat.

There was, however, a price to pay. Light cavalry are not particularly well suited to taking on disciplined eighteenth century infantry, and several of my cavalry regiments were forced to withdraw. Fortunately, my Casseurs de Pied and their supporting light gun performed extremely well, helping to destroy two Borg cavalry regiments. Whether I had delayed the enemy sufficiently for the main Grenouissian army to catch up remains to be seen.

That, of course, is the beauty of a campaign like this. The story continues beyond a single game, with the consequences of one battle influencing the next. For me, though, the real victory was simply being there. Playing a wargame with miniatures that have survived for decades and formed part of the history of our hobby was a privilege I won’t forget in a hurry.