THE ORIGINS OF THE WOODSCREW MINIATURE ARMY.

 WHERE DID MY ARMY COME FROM ????


"Many wargamers will know the everyday frustrations of the hobby which invariably would be solved "if only we could scale down".  In the mystical world of smaller scale,  lack of space and time disappear before the tramping feet of quarter inch high figures. But, seemingly such figures do not exist. Well relax, because such figures do exist, they are readily available, cheap, and easily adaptable to any period and theatre of war imaginable."

" The miraculous figures to which I am referring are SCREWS. To be more precise, quarter inch number 3 countersunk woodscrews. "

With these words the original article in the Miniature Warfare magazine  dated August 1969 introduced me to the extraordinary idea of using woodscrews as model soldiers. As outlined in the introduction to my blog, I made some changes to the concept such as using half inch number 6 screws rather than those suggested. In addition I never liked the idea in the article of using three eights inch screws as cavalry. That said the basic concept was a revelation to me and has resulted in an engrossing hobby that over the subsequent 50 years has resulted in me possessing over 65,000 screw soldiers, at the time of writing, together with thousands of guns and assorted vehicles.

Of course since 1969 the availability of wargaming figures has mushroomed and nowadays figures are available in all sorts of scales and in a huge variety of nationalities and historic periods.  Indeed  6mm soldiers are even available in MDF of all things,  and they look great. In fact, if I were starting out now I might well be tempted to go down the 6mm MDF route or something very similar.

That said I can well understand that many of today's  wargamers may see the idea of using screws as wargame figures even more ludicrous than many of their fore-bearers did back in 1969. It has long been clear to me that no one else ever took up this idea in the way I did. Indeed over the years there have been lots of comments on various blogs from older wargamers who, remembering the Miniature Wargame magazine from their youth, almost always include  scornful remarks about the "infamous screw soldiers article". Of course anyone can adopt a "holier than thou" attitude but that does not detract from the essence of the original idea  that use of woodscrews as soldiers was cheap and endlessly adaptable to period and nationality.

That said I guess there really is no longer a place for using screws as wargames figures, they were of a time when commercial offerings were very limited after all. However who does not want to field a wargame army numbered in the thousands rather than in a few dozen ????   In addition there is the fun of building your own vehicles, equipment and guns in what ever numbers you like and all at a very low cost. I admit I have never wargamed in the conventional  sense. However I have carried out,  in my Imagi-Nations, many battles and campaigns with my armies in all sorts of scenarios using the capabilities of my model armies in terms of numbers and equipment. This has often resulted in me deciding to make changes to the organisational structure of my armies and even suggested new equipment or vehicle types. That, and the construction and painting process,  is where I personally get my fun and the use of woodscrews has given me the perfect way of building my army.

I know that many wargamers see the painting of figures to extraordinary degrees of realism as a fundamental requirement of "proper" wargaming. Like everyone else in the modelling/wargaming world I too spent many hours in my youth painting early metal figures to the highest standard I could manage. I especially recall painting a 12 strong regiment of French Napoleonic Cavalry (which I still have now).  They looked great but there were still only 12. Now I have 20 regiments of Cavalry totaling well over 2000 and they look great too. I think the use of very small soldiers, like 6mm, is the modern equivalent of woodscrew soldiers and enables the fielding of large and very impressive armies. In addition of course there is nothing to stop anyone having a small or large collection of highly painted model soldiers whilst also maintaining an economic plethora of more simply painted very small armies to fight wargames. 

My message is that if it is to continue to thrive there must be space for all ideas and concepts in our hobby no matter how "different" they may be to current norms, we denigrate new ideas at our peril.