"Starting Out in Lace Wars" Topic

I made the mistake of watching "Barry Lyndon" and "Amadeus" over the last two days, and am thinking about getting into the Lace Wars. I can't seem to decide between 28mm and 10mm, though.

I had a 15mm SYW collection years ago, and liked it, but don't get much joy out of painting that scale. 6mm is absolutely out – I just don't care for the scale at all. So, I'm down to 28mm or 10mm.

28mm would allow me to have some fun "big battalion" games, but I never seem to finish any project in that scale, so I'm a little leery of starting it, even though the Crusader and Old Glory figures make doing so affordable. 10mm looks appealing, but I can't seem to decide on a manufacturer. Do any of you who have 10mm experience recommend the scale to a newbie?

I'm not even sure if I'd want to take on the Marlburian period, or the WAS. I think the SYW is a little late for me.

Help. And then help my poor, suffering wife.

Pendraken do some lovely SYW and AWI 10mm figures.

Why no joy from 15mm, yet willing to consider 10mm?

Too me, they are one and the same. (ie. Too small!)

You can get the mass effect whilst spending less time painting 10mm though.
As I very slowly paint my Minden (28mm) it has crossed my mind several times that 10mm might have been a more achievavle sort of scale.
Or just borrowing the 15mm down the club for that matter.

I'm not even sure if I'd want to take on the Marlburian period, or the WAS. I think the SYW is a little late for me.

200% personal of course, but for me the WAS saw the peak of 18th C. military elegance: coats were quite bulky in Malburian times (a TMP regular compares them to bathrobes) and began to turn skimpy by the SYW.

No personal experience with 10mmm, but seemingly the bulk of the 'tricorned' infantry can be relatively inexpensive:
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Then, if you are not restricted in your choice of scale by your potential partners, what about 1/72 plastics? Less expensive than 28mm metals, and with a lot of potential:
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lagerburgduchy.blogspot.com
And plastics are so propitious to conversions:
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(fond memories of Bob O'Brien articles, decades ago, describing the conversion of Napoleonic cuirassiers to Roman cavalrymen…)

Decide on game scale first is my advice.

Personally ill never try to do massive armies in 28mm and I dont do skirmish games. If you decide on small scale "actions" type battles (1-5000 men) then go for 28mm.

If you want to massive battles like all the famous ones then do 10mm.

How about 20mm ? In plastic (of course !)

There's some pretty nice figures starting to come out – do the planning now, buy them in a couple of months, then…paint paint paint

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For starters, please do not call the period "The Lace Wars".

Secondly, 28mm games need not be huge extravaganzas (this is like the pot calling the kettle black, in my case). As Brent Oman once said, you can simulate any historical army with only 12 units, in aggregate, of infantry and cavalry plus some artillery.

Go with 28/30mm figures. You won't regret it. The Old Glory Army Card makes those wonderful Crusader figures very affordable.

If you're really into the look of figures, flags, and like painting, then go with 28mm. I've enjoyed painting my growing collection of 28mm FIW/SYW/AWI figures, even though I normally prefer playing or making terrain over painting.

If you're into the look of a sweeping battle, short on time and space, then go smaller.

I'm firmly in the 28mm camp for most genres I game and don't enjoy collecting smaller figures as much, but I have the added benefit of friends with 15mm armies for games they'll host.

I am creating some imagination states and picked up some zveda and strelets plastic 1/72nd great northern war figures as well as zveda prussian grenadier figs.

Some infantry, cavalry and artillery. Just enough to use for some small games with a brigade of infantry (3-12 figure units) 2 cannon per side (maybe each represent a battery) and a regiment of cavalry (about 6-9 figures per)

Thinking of using all the kings men rules.

should be fun!

I have been considering 10mm SYW for next summer. I have to do lots of reading first as I know very little about SYW.

I know the Pendraken 10mm SYW are suppose to be very nice figures. I am curious whether the infantry packs are in multi-pose or single pose?

@ Custer7thcav
"I am creating some imagination states and picked up some zveda and strelets plastic 1/72nd great northern war figures as well as zveda prussian grenadier figs."
Please could you tell us more TMP link ?

For starters, please do not call the period "The Lace Wars".

Indeed could cause some misunderstandings: TMP link …

That's right. The correct term is "AWI".

@ Custer – For a fun game All The King's Men are warmly recommended. Once you get used to them and paint more figures (and with the plastics, you can easily afford those), they also lend themselves to "tweaking". Among other things, in place of points, I give my General ADCs – who can either move around "motivating" troops, or replace fallen officers…

For starters, please do not call the period "The Lace Wars".

That's right. The correct term is "WAS".

do 28mm with Might and Reason, we have a whole world livng that way though we upped the base size so it all looks nicer
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For starters, please do not call the period "The Lace Wars".

it's a bit late now, but someone should have told the Funken's…..

Jagger 2008:

I know the Pendraken 10mm SYW are suppose to be very nice figures. I am curious whether the infantry packs are in multi-pose or single pose?

The packs are single pose, to reflect the ethos of the period of strictly disciplined units all carrying out the same drill manoeuvers.

The only exception to this is the Jagers, which are multi-pose.

Cheers

My SYW stuff is 15mm. Having done FPW in 10mm (doubling the number of figures I'd normally put on a 15mm base) I like the mass effect.

If I was starting SYW now I'd certainly go for 10mm. I have to keep fighting back the temptation to try WSS in that scale.

For FPW I found Pendraken figures superb mouldings. Painting them was easier than I expected – and the quality of detail on the moulding helped. But it's a different mind set when you paint them. It's more Impressionist than Pre-Raphaelite

For starters, please do not call the period "The Lace Wars".

it's a bit late now, but someone should have told the Funken's…..

Indeed the translated edition of the Funcken's introduced 'the Lace Wars' to English, but their title 'la guerre en dentelle' uses a popular French expression dating from the 19th C., referring [positively or negatively] to (an idyllic -or caricatural- vision of?) warfare during the reign of Louis XV. 'Knightly', 'elegant' and with the opposite commanders trying to outdo each other with courtneousness. Closely associated to it is the idiomatic formula 'Tirez les premiers, Messieurs les Anglais' ("Shoot first, English gentlemen"), from the legendary (and disputed) exchange between senior officers of the 1st Foot Guards and the Gardes Françaises at Fontenoy: according to Voltaire Sir Charles Hay said "Gentlemen of the French Guard, fire first!", Count d'Anterroches replied: "Gentlemen, we never fire first, fire yourselves."

Thus the expression is fitting for characterizing the 'civilized', decent, devoid of hatred mid-18th C. warfare as imagined (and, hopefully, practiced) by many wargamers.

Btw 'Dentelle' here doesn't correspond to 'lace' as used for the tape edging the tricorns, or adorning buttonholes , or as in 'livery lace' (such lace translates in French as galon), but instead to 'Dutch lace' as used in filly lingerie: officers were reputed to wear such lace at the collar and cuffs of their shirts.

but instead to 'Dutch lace' as used in filly lingerie

Do you mean frilly, or lingerie for fillys ?

Amounts to much the same thing I suppose ….

Please. No Catherine the Great jokes.

So, am I to assume it was all of you that created the need for an adult filter for the Lace Wars Yahoo group? :)

Dutch Lace for the most part came from Brussels (that other country). But as an article of fashion, this was used to decorate the collars and cuffs; either fastened with string or buttons. Later to save wear and tear on buttonholes, lacing strengthened the opened from tearing.

JCBJCB…reading your experience with 15mm and resistance to try 6mm, why would you think 10mm would prove easier?

Besides, there were plenty 18th century disputes that took place around the world, especially in countries that would not see a stitch of Lace. I have Chinese Imperial and rebels, Africans and Ottomans, and am now building forces for the northern part of South America. My "Llaneros" finally arrived today as did my native Indians.

Cheers,
Robert
18thcenturysojourn.blogspot.com

Timutilank,

of course chronologically you are right; then there is risk of logical ambiguity and misunderstandings when using a reference from the Western calendar for outlandish settings and other civilizations. Hearing 'Renaissance warfare' one thinks first of landsknechts, not of Aztecs and mass human sacrifices. 19th C. colonial warfare, from the retreat from Kabul to Isandlwana, was totally different from the Crimean War or the FPW.
The FIW were contemporary with the WAS and SYW, but had features of their own: not only the massacres and taking of scalps by the 'savages', but also the massacre of prisoners by the 'regulars' (as ordered once by Washington himself), the use of biological weapons (smallpox-infected blankets) against the civilian populations… During a quasi 'Last of the Mohicans' journey along the Mal-engueulee river, a young cadet-gentilhomme could not prevent his Indian allies from, not only raping, but reportedly *eating* two English damsels he was escorting: atrocities totally alien to the 'Lace Wars' as we commonly understand them!
picture

Scale is a matter of choice. I find that the larger figures are too much trouble to paint well these days yet I can put out a 24 figure battalion in 10mm during an evenings painting.

I for one don't mind calling the period Lace Wars as a catchall phrase; blame that on the Funken's :) BUT French and Indian Wars, as the 'Merkins insist on calling the Seven Years War & AWI is very different from the European conflicts. So id does help to say which conflict you are representing.