TIRED...

[Micheal Wittman]

I had faith all along,

this is going to be good!!

It's great that public input by interested parties

can be heard to.

Good Work Hubert!

[Archibald]

Originally posted by Desert Dave:

To answer yer questions,

Archibald, 1, 2, 3, lickety split:

The figures are original works of Art

By a guy I only know as Fernando,

Who is very patient, what

With all the endless requests & suggestions,

And also very good. :cool:

When I first saw the screenshots of SCII those figures looked naggingly familiar. Anyone who grew up during the seventies in the UK will probably remember them when prompted.

There's the commander figure from the HQ unit on the far right:

He comes from the Airfix Afrika Korps set, which was available in both 1:72 and 1:32 versions and were REALLY COOL! Here he is doing his funky thang on the 1/32 box cover.

I'm on nostalgia overload at this end.

The three figures used for corps and army units come from the German Infantry set, likewise available in 1:72 and 1:32.

They are the second and third figures here:

And the first figure here:

Here's the 1/32 box cover:

I presume that the model figures were used as the basis for the graphics in much the same way as model armour was used for the graphics in CM:BB. I think they look pretty damn good.

[AZGungHo]

Oh MAN!

I loved those kits - they were available in America too - I had several of them, now sadly gone!

[With Clusters]

I had plastic "army men" when I was a kid too!

[With Clusters]

Of course, I hated it when I got a buch of dudes waving shovels or mine sweapers, as opposed to waving guns. They were always the first to suffer casualties from TNT (aka a firecracker squeazed between the legs) or flame throwers (aka matches)!

[AZGungHo]

I liked to soak some dirt with gas, put the useless or messed up guys on it, then drop a match - BOOM, naplam!!

I wonder if these figures are still for sale?

Uh Oh, second childhood rearing it's ugly head!

[AZGungHo]

Okay - you've made me lose my mind! You can get them at Airfix.com!!

Good Lord - there's tons of them!

[Kuniworth]

Ive had some of that stuff. But now even better bought the boardgameaxis & allies europe so I got accurate ww2 tanks, fighters, infantry, battleships etc. They are really cool.

[SeaMonkey]

This reminds me of my first wargame. I guess you could say it was in the NA Desert,....actually the sandbox.

We set up our plastic army men in various stages of entrenchments and with a distance limitation, went after each others forces with BB guns, alternating shots.

I was almost always a winner,.... still am a deadly shot.

[JerseyJohn]

SeaMonkey,

Sounds like fun, we used to do things like that by lining up soda, milk & juice bottles at staggered intervals, moving away and tossing small rocks at them -- at those oncoming glass tanks.

I think toy soldiers evolved three steps in my own childhood (the fifties).

The first ones I had were made of lead and very similar to the machinegunner photo below. Tanks and trucks, at least the ones I had, were made of wood. In the Early fifties ard and heavy plastic figures began coming out and I had a realistic howitzer toy made that way with some metal parts and a spring. It fired plastic pellets and I'm sure it would be considered unsafe today.

During the mid-fifties soft light plastic figures displaced the earlier hard models. Things like GI Joe were around a decade off. I think plastic model kits began coming out around '55, up till then they were usually made of balsa wood with heavy paper for an outer covering. They were much harder to make, of course.

[SeaMonkey]

Ha Ha !!!, those were the days JJ, that decade of innocence, the fifties. Wonder we're not dead already, what with all that lead we consumed, well at least we got an excuse for being idiots.

I mean we used to blow up our plastic models with cherry bombs, class A explosives, then proceed to reassemble the pieces. My Dad used to hand me one and light it and say "Son throw that thing into that ditch over there"......KA! BLAM!!, like a bolt of lightning in the sky. It was most awesome at night.

Sure am glad all the lawyers and politicians are protecting us from all that fun, we were....are ...just so stupid, we never knew(know) what's good for us.

I sure enjoy all this complication they have instilled into our lives, hope they all feel secure now......now that they have led us down the path of righteousness.

[Retributar]

My experiences are not much different, i think this is something you are born with...since not everyone i knew had that interest.

A passion for strategy...and to try to do the difficult and the impossible...to try change history.

[JerseyJohn]

SeaMonkey

In light of your being a chemist you'd know more about this than I do, but I think the only danger any of us ever had from those lead toys was in eating one.

Yes, the good old days of destroying your old models with cherry bombs! I remember doing it to a great yellow Zero I'd built and light blue Messerschmidt 109. Patriotic ferver saved my American planes.

Those toys back then were fantastic and made to last.

I received a hard plastic shield, sword, breastplate and helmet, Prince Valiant, for my eighth birthday. A few days later an older kid tried stealing them. I did exactly what they did in the movies, protected myself with the shield while stabbing and slashing him with that great heavy plastic sword. It was early July and everyone was wearing light clothes so he had no protection. He was rushed to the emergency room. That night I was sent to live with relatives in Florida because my parents were afraid I'd be sent to reform school. Bet Prince Valiant never got in trouble for defending himself.

Ah, the good old days. I remember those toys firing hard plastic pellets that moved pretty fast and toy bows with suction cup arrows that flew through the air pretty realistically. But mainly we made wooden swords and clobbered eath other with them.

I guess a lot of kids were hurt by those things, and the firecrackers, but I didn't know any, other than the one I had that swordfight with.

At twelve, my friends and I spent the month of June, 1961, taking the gun powder out of various odd items in order to fill a small section of pipe we'd sealed on one end, inserting a fuse in the other before sealing that up as well. We planted in a friend's yard and set it off on July 4th. The back of my friends house was smeared with dead tomatoes and so was his dad. Needless to say that episode didn't have a pleasant ending for any of us.

Kids today don't seem to have adventures like that. Even their toys seem to come with scripts telling them what games they should play. Yeah, sure, kids definitely need adults to instruct them on how to play.

[JerseyJohn]

Retributar

I agree. There are a certain percentage of boys who see a heavy snowfall as only one thing: the chance to build some great snow fortress so they can have a snowball fight with the kids across the street, who have built their own great snow fort.

[Des]

Jersey John

I geuss you just don't seem to catch us. With all the laws and safety-crazed parents running around, its not exactly easy to mess around openly. Boy Scouts seems to be an odd exception to it. I mean we aren't supposed to do that, but the leaders that are there don't seem to mind.

[jon_j_rambo]

Ah, those snowball fights in Michigan!

[JerseyJohn]

Des

Welcome to our little niche of the wargame world.

I see some local kids here in Central NJ who do remind me of the way things were done ages ago, I'm always glad to see that, I think a lot of these rules and laws and all need to be taken with a large of grain of salt. I try not to use my car in daylight when there's snow on the streets because I always end up letting the kids bumper ride the back and if anything happened I'd feel pretty bad -- also, I could get a stiff fine for pulling them.

The funny part is, when I was a kid jumping the backs of busses never seemed particularly dangerous and it was a great way to get around. Looking back I think that was a pretty crazy thing to do. Then again, at 56 sliding into second base also seems pretty screwy!

Glad to hear you're enjoying life before all the fun gets outlawed.

[JerseyJohn]

Originally posted by jon_j_rambo:

Ah, those snowball fights in Michigan!

Excellent.

[jon_j_rambo]

I remember those days like they were yesterday! I was a pitcher, so packing & throwing a good snowball only required the right temperature conditions. Get the snow underneath the ice layer, where it's warmer

@Sir Jersey --- I play softball now, I really like. Playing 1st base.

[JerseyJohn]

Brother Rambo,

I'm planning on getting into that next year. I've just had a grand-nephew born and the first day of his being brought home I gave him a 31" aluminum bat with a blue ribbon, "Baby's First Baseball Bat." I'm looking forward to teaching him how to play -- I'll be in my sixties as he grows up.

Last night I was watching a ladies fast pitch softball game. They weren't bad. I think my eyes are still good enough to hit that kind of pitch. Yeah, the distance is close and the ball comes in quickly, but as far as I can see that's all there is, no breaking balls or changeups, just those fast hard pitches. Shouldn't be too hard to time them.

I don't know if I could take that high arch stuff. Still, it would be better than not playing anything, which is what I've had for the past ten years except for occasional pickup games where some local kids ask me to even up the sides as a left fielder. My fielding is pretty bad thise days but surprisingly, I can still hit! Naturally a good highschool pitcher would probably have me swinging at air, but against the usual 'just throw a strike' pitching I'm okay and occasionally still send one for a good ride.

I'm sure you're taller than I am and first base is a good spot, I'm only 5'7" so I guess I'd spend a lot of time jumping for things and looking comical when they passed an inch over my glove. Not that I can really jump anymore, it would be a sort of desperate stretch.

Glad to hear you're playing, sounds like fun.

-- I'm sure you were a terror in a snowball fight with that fine throwing arm. My specialty was getting in close, throwing a few and running behind something to pack a few more for the next raid. If I reemerged too soon I'd get plastered and would end up looking like a snowman.

[jon_j_rambo]

@Sir Jersey --- When I was younger & playing competitve baseball (high school & summer leagues during college), I always thought softball sucked. But the game is really good! The key is having a good field to play on, guess that's true for baseball too. The dimensions & all that works. In city league slow pitch softball, the high arch is interesting. The average player bats ~.350, good players ~.480. Double plays, the crack of the bat, smack talk, sun flower seed spitting, it's all good. Softball is actually better, because it goes fast, not all the b.s. of baseball. We can play a full 7-inning game in about 1 to 1.5 hours.

[SeaMonkey]

Hey now you guys need to try some paintball antics.

I'm telling you with a bunch of players on each side with lots of foliage and fortifications makes for great fun.

Them damn things are pretty accurate too, and I won't tell you about getting hit, especially at close range, you can examine those welts yourself.

[JerseyJohn]

SeaMonkey,

I'd love to play paintball, I'm sure it would kill me at this point but at least I can die playing my favorite game as a kid, and probably everyone elses! The local kids still play it the same way, they clutch their chests and fall down and after a few minutes of watching the others they scream "New Man!" and get back into the battle.

But, did you say -- welts? Maybe I'll just get a toy gun and play with the local kids, it sounds a lot safer.

[JerseyJohn]

Brother Rambo,

I played slow pitch softball a few times. I remember the way pitchers would back up out of self-defense after their delivery!

A couple of times, back when I was a pretty good baseball player, I played games with guys who were good softball players (this is in the late sixties) and was surprised to find that in some ways it was harder than baseball. For example, playing thirdbase against a team of really good hitters. You can't play too deep or, with those short basepaths, you'll never throw anyone out even if you field the ball cleanly. And if you play at the edge of the grass as you would on a normal baseball field, you'll see a lot of hard grounders getting past you.

I doubt I'd be able to play it decently among a bunch of young guys who are good players. I'd need to play in a league of older guys, say 50 and older. I'm going to look for something like that over the winter; I'm sure it's too late to play in it this year.

You wouldn't believe it but when I was a kid there was very little of that time wasting BS in baseball. Games were played very quickly. In fact, if you didn't hurry the other players would start heckling you!

The major league games seemed slow at the time, but nowhere near as slow as they are now.

~.350 to .480 -- Whew!

[John C]

Having played COS a bit for the past couple of days, I came back and saw the screen shots above and couldn't help but notice the similarity. Having messed around with a few titles recently, I can't help but notice how similar the scale is between these games and I really do think this is the right scale for this type of game. It allows a lot more of the fluidity that was WWII as compared to GGWaW or even HOI/HOI2. The unit placements in the two games are very similar, though some minor differences in unit strength and positioning along the border are visible as one might expect. More striking is the difference in georgraphy and what was deemed to be a river of strategic impact. Anyway, here the two are for comparison.