"Wargames & Painting in the 60s" Topic

As an afterthought to this thread TMP link , a question: what was the situation regarding painted armies in the 1960s?

- Were all/most armies painted?

- What was the average painting style like? Were there more very basic / minimalist paint jobs (e.g. WW2 figures with just the skin and equipment painted – do I remember that right from some of the early wargaming books)?

- Did gamers in general have fewer / smaller armies?

- When did the first lead mountains appear? When did they start to become common?

Unless one was lucky enough to live close to a hobby shop that sold metal figures, most used Airfix and Roco Minitanks…you could get those. Mail order was an real "iffy" thing back then for a young teen.

Of course, we would have killed for the "flat" paint selection of today! Same with decent and small brushes. Because of this, of course, our paint jobs were the best we could make them, based upon trial and error. We looked forward to the next issues of Wargamers Digest, Courier (which was a small mimeographed newsletter, and once we found out about them, Jack Scruby and Don featherstone's newsletters.) Scale Modller and Military Modelling magazines became references with Stan Catchpool (and many other's) sharing of how we could better paint our figures and make better looking scenery.

Airfix figures at 50 cents a box or model vehicle, Roco Minitank tanks for 25-49 cents each, we were able to amass impressively sized armies over time. It was a time when we would share sources of supply whenever someone found a new hobby shop (game stores were but a dream back then.) It was a perfect environment to breed excitement with a handful of like-minded friends! (Something many of us seem to have lost sight of in our pursuit of rediscovering that magic missing element in our hobby.)

Armies HAD to be painted….no matter how skillfully applied….it helped control the size of the armies that we played with and served as a great motivator to learn how to mass produce painted items! Of course, this requirement varied from place to place- depending where you lived and the attitude of the gamers in the "club".

First lead mountains appeared when Duke Seifried (Uncle Duke), Jim Getz and the prolific designer Stan Glazner began succeeding in mass marketing metal miniatures under the "Custom Cast" label. (Early 70's now). WOW! WHat great times those were….maybe the first golden age?

I began wargaming about 1960. I never saw unpainted figures here in Dayton, Ohio until the late 70s. I am not saying it did not happen, Just that in my circles it did not. I would not (and still don't) allow unpainted items in any game I run.

Painting was not up to today's standards. There was no shading or highlighting. We did paint the piping and basically all the uniform details. Buildings for wargaming were just starting to come in.

I began playing as a teenager on a 6' x 12' table. We did mostly 30mm Napoleonics. The bigger, the better. At least once a year, guys from Columbus, Ohio (led by Jim Getz), Chicago and from Fort Wayne, Indiana, would come. Everybody brought their figures. One of the games had thousands of figures. I am thinking 10,000, but I may be wrong.

Other periods would be smaller. But they were just diversions. Naps were the real games.

As I was in high school and then undergraduate school, I had plenty of time to play. I had four other schoolmates and we played a lot. The adult group here was led by Duke Seifried. They did not have as many games due to more responsibilities. But Stan Glanzer and I joined them for some of theirs.

Tom

Duke organized the giant games with the out of town guys I mentioned.

Humbrol matt enamels and Airfix figures. Roco minitanks were not that common where I lived in the UK in the mid-late 60's.

I can't remember if we ever played with completely unpainted figures but mostly they were at least a few basic colours carefully (if not always skilfully) applied.

As a teenager I had limited funds and less time as I was working evenings and weekends at various times. I had time for one gaming meet-up a week and so many of the older members already had armies that I decided to do scratch-built ships as my contribution.

I saw a few metal figures before going off to university in 68 but there I saw whole armies of metal Napoleonics but still kept to my ships and odd forces of Ancient, Medieval & WW2 Airfix.

It wasn't so much a poor standard of painting but a style that was closer to the 'toy soldier' look – but with a bit more detail. Few models of the time were up to adding great detail anyway.

Take a look at Gavin Lyall's mid-1970s rulebook 'Operation Warboard'(WWII). The Airfix figures and vehicles used in photographs to illustrate the text aren't painted at all.

They have a certain charm you just couldn't get away with these days.

When I was a kid in the 60's there was an article in the Chicago Tribune Paraded section of gamers playing on a hex table with finely painted 54mm Historex figures. They had the location and address of the individual and they lived only a couple of blocks from my families home. I at that time crudely painted arifix for my play armies at that time and solo gamed with my own home grown rules. So I went to the gentleman's home and caught them in the middle of a game on a Saturday I was invited to watch and learned about the Hobby Chest where they had purchased the figures. I was smitten at that time with the beauty of the painted figures. A few weeks later I went to the Hobby Chest with my older brother and saw my first metal figures by kriegspieler Minatures, and been painting every since,

Sounds very similar to the early 70's when I started.

While I certainly cannot speak for others, my 'lead
mountain' began with figures from Jack Scruby, George
Vanteubergen (Command Post Miniatures), Holgar
Eriksson, Rose Miniatures (UK), 'Willie' (UK) and
other makers generally long gone today but from whom
the companies of the 70's and 80's learned. My 'mountain'
began in the middle 60's and has since shrunk
to my wife's glee.

Painting – mine were (and ARE !) fairly crude simple
paint jobs, no shading, highlighting, etc. Never used
unpainted figures, not even Airfix.

Collection size/game size – well, we started fairly small
with 300-400 figures in the mid to late 60's, but
really grew forces with good 15 mm figures appeared.
As time passed, was able to field about 3,000 30mm
figures (all factions) for game.

Hmm. Garryowen and I probably overlap--enough to have maybe been at the same game some time. Certainly we'd have known a lot of the same gamers.

In my circles, Airfix and Rocco--which I had--were kid stuff. (For one thing, we didn't know how to make the paint stick to soft plastics.) The manly game for manly men was 30mm Napoleonics, and only JAL (Jose Almiral) and, briefly, SAE (South African Engineers, with outworn Holgar Ericson molds) sold painted figures. Everything else you painted, and commercial painters were rare. The normal deal was to round up a kid and offer him a casting of his own for each casting he painted for someone else. (I remember painting dismounted French dragoons for Fred Vietmeyer in return for my rule book, for instance--but there were Prussians for Judge Bloom and Swedes for Virginia Esten, just off hand.)

I knew a number of 30mm Napoleonic armies in the multiple thousands, and one--maybe two--passed the 10,000 mark--but I think mostly into the 1970's. You needed maybe 500-600 castings a side for a decent game. I don't remember the lead mountains, but of course no one had been at this as long. Looking back, the old timers had probably been gaming five or ten years when I started.

Unpainted figures. There was an important distinction at the time between "regular weekend" and "formal" games. (Four formal games a year, by invitation only, planned weeks or months in advance and tied to a particular year of Napoleonic warfare.) I saw unpainted troops on the table in my first game--summer 1969. There just wouldn't have been enough troops otherwise. I didn't, and most of those I played with didn't, but I expect some of it happened--on weekend games. For a formal game, trust me, everyone was painted, though I can still remember Dave Mort frantically painting during the game the 320 Bavarian Landwehr he'd cast just before. (About 4,000 30mm troops on the tables, and none borrowed from the opposition. It was a bit of a stretch for us in 1969.)

Painting style and quality varied, and was often bad. Mine would be among the worst for years. Three things, I think:
(1) a lot of the castings--think Scruby "Economy" figures--wouldn't have justified serious effort.
(2) the usual paints were IR enamels--not inherently bad paints, but the acrylics were a huge step forward for washes and drybrushing.
(3) we were learning. The techniques which give you a good painting in the sense of a landscape or battle scene are not the ones you need for three-dimensional figures. If you kidnapped David from his workshop in 1800 Paris, he'd have a learning curve before he could mass-produce quality 30mm Napoleonics, and none of us were David.

But also remember a lot of people didn't care. The great blessing of box games and computer games is that none of the people who care only for the tactics need to show up with painted miniatures today.

Of course, that's also the curse of the box games and computer games. You pays your money…

I vividly remember painting about 600 1/72 scale soft plastic Airfix WW2 Russians in the early 80's and then watching as the paint slowly but surely flaked off over the next year or so. I didn't paint figures again until I got into 28mm ACW gaming in the late 90's with metal figs.

You guys are old:-). In the 60s I was between 3 and 12. I played with Airfix, Marx and Timpo mostly, a few Britans. Early on buildings were blocks, Lincoln Logs and shoe boxes. Later Model Railroad buildings. Painting if done at all was flesh and the equipment for those figures cast in the semi correct color or for the cream colored Airfix the fleash was left cream and the rest painted. We never got to the point of 100s of figures and a German was a German be he WWII, Afrika Korps or WWI. Sometimes he was British.

Girls became the Hobby in the 70s

I also was introduced to wargames through the Chicago Tribune Sunday supplement VonBlucher mentioned. I still have it somewhere. I don't live anywhere near Chicago, so he was a lucky fellow. I have always painted my figures, but model enamels on Airfix figures were always ultimately futile.

Just for grins I went back to read the scathing review of the Airfix French infantry on PSR. I remember how excited I was when I first saw them. I had gone to the hobby store in the nearest big (really medium sized) town to spend my birthday money on more model train stuff. I got one box each of French infantry, guard, artillery, cavalry and British infantry, highlanders and cavalry which was all they had. It was months before I could go back and get some testors enamel paints and only then the colors in the basic military flats set. I must have re-fought Waterloo 100 times. All solo gaming using pennies instead of dice to roll for outcomes. The units that distinguished themselves got painted first and were considered veteran until they all eventually got painted. Don't know if this answers the OP since this was in 1978 but it was a fun trip down memory lane just the same. BTW I still have those figures!

I started land games when I got Featherstone wargames. Saw painted screws for Napolionic gameing at circa 6mm. Played any times with a mate using WRG Napolionics. Table was the floor and an area of green plastic for the ground. Some figures painted but the old humeral flaked off airfix figs so soon unpainted.

Never painted plastics like Airfix. They tended to chip the paint off.
Painted pewter when I could get them.
Skirmish games even if with a large number.

I had Roco and Airfix figures at 50 cents each from my local hobby shop starting in about 1963 until yesterday when I ordered a box of Airfix WWI Americans. I never painted figures and still don't. I started painting vehicles in the late 1970s and still am.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
link

I guess I creep in for the late 60s.

Airfix and enamels all the way. In the early 70s some of my pals started acquiring Roco but I never had any.

Airfix bendy tanks were regarded as cheating and banned from the school wargames club. They usually got stamped on if anyone produced one. Bendy plastic artillery and transport was OK.

All our stuff was painted. Fairly basic block painting, although I did a couple of 20mm platoons with shading, eyes etc. I still have those, as good as the day I painted them. Don't believe everything you hear about paint chipping off plastic figures.

I was a schoolkid, so didn't have enough money to acquire a 'lead mountain'. First metal figures I acquired were 6mm WW2 and Napoleonics. I've still got those too (including those awful micro tanks with pins for gun barrels).

And I have gone full circle and gone back to the 1/72 plastics – the modern ranges have made everything so much more widely available and, dare I say it, better.

But I still paint Airfix, and they still hold paint. For me, acrylics were my answer – I found enamels never lasted. But others tell me otherwise, so go figure :-)

I was 5 when the 60s ended, so my wargaming started in teh early 70's – definitely was playing with Airfix at junior school (7-10 YO for American readers) as I remember doing school projects on Napoleonics, and Patterson Blick rub-down books being my inspiration. metals would have come around 12 YO or so – Minifigs Napoleonics…