Blemmyes: An Early Dollar Store Army

 I started these guys in the early 90’s.

I saw the listing in the WRG book “Armies and Enemies of Rome” and it listed Blemyes as having elephants and cataphtact cavalry. Most of their forces were skirmishing archers.

I saw other lists for them, Irregular Miniatures offered an army in their 25mm lists (now rebranded as 28mm to stay relevant with the trend to larger figures) with elephants, archers, cavalry and camels.

So I was hooked.

Modern spellings have changed to “Blemmyes” or “Blemmae”

As for their battles, the Wikipedia entry is enticing:

“ The cultural and military power of the Blemmyes started to grow to such a level that in 193, Pescennius Niger asked a Blemmye king of Thebesto help him in the battle against the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus.^{[citation needed]} In 250, the Roman Emperor Decius put in much effort to defeat an invading army of Blemmyes.^[13] A few years later, in 253, they attacked Upper Egypt (Thebaid) again but were quickly defeated. In 265, they were defeated again by the Roman Prefect Firmus, who later in 273 would rebel against the Empire and the Queen of the Palmyrene Empire, Zenobia, with the help of the Blemmyes themselves. The Blemmyes were said to have joined forces with the Palmyrans against the Romans in the battle of Palmyra in 273^[13]

The Roman general Marcus Aurelius Probus took some time to defeat the usurpers with his allies but could not prevent the occupation of Thebais by the Blemmyes. That meant another war and almost an entire destruction of the Blemmyes army (279-280).^[13][14][15]

During the reign of Diocletian, the province of Upper Aegyptus, Thebaid, was again occupied by the Blemmyes. In 298, Diocletian made peace with the Nobatae and Blemmyes tribes, agreeing that Rome would move its borders north to Philae (South Egypt, south of Aswan) and pay the two tribes an annual gold stipend.^[16][13]”

^{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blemmyes}

I decided to use the dollar store generic WW2 toys that were in abundance and add in toy elephants, camels and use Giant Indians for cavalry.

My first lot of soldiers were the “follow me” GI.

The problem was the bow.

Shields were easy, hole punch rounds, and the quivers were clipped round toothpicks.

But the bows were tough.

Metal didn’t bond well with plastic and fell off if bumped or picked up.

So I tried using dried pine needles of an appropriate size.

They were also slightly curved. But they eventually snapped off leaving me in the same fix.

So I ditched them and went with a running figure, rifle painted as a spear.

The cavalry turned out really nice, I think anyway.

The cataphracts have plasticine armour and a slung spear, no kontos were used.

I recently added a few armoured officers, from the Zvezda Alexander Nevsky box.

A Dollar Store Too Far

Last year was the 75th anniversary of Operation Market Garden, and I started reading up on the battle.
I did the Cornelius Ryan book and watched the movie, listened to some podcasts, caught some interviews with Antony Beevor and watched a YouTube interview he did:

WWII and Lessons from the Past - 'Arnhem: The Battle of the Bridges'

27,472 views

Pretty fascinating.

He concluded that the plan never had a chance, and it was Monty's folly.

Sadly it cost over 10,000 lives.

I also picked up several DVD's about this period of the war.

So I decided to start up making a 1/72nd Airborne force and started with the British first.

But on the cheap.

Model jeeps, whether plastic, resin or metal are pretty dear.

So I scrounged in my pile of toys and painted up a small force.

I also did the "toy soldier" look, given that my figures were a mish mash of makers.

(And try finding any piats)

Cherry red berets in place of the maroon, and high gloss finishes.
Definitely TOY soldiers....

So here we go...

Dollar Store Jeeps (of a kind) with torsos of soldiers added.

The heavies, dropped by glider to be sure. Atlantic anti tank gun, mortars and heavy Mg's. A mix of figures. The pack 75 is nice but a terrible kit to assemble.

Commanders trying to get the radio working. Local help from a pensioner.

The soldiers. A real mix of makers.

A bit of a close up. I have to admit, I had fun painting this lot up, but like everything else, "it's a work in progress".

Helen of Toy Wargames: Comic Book Toy Soldiers

This is going to be, I hope, an ongoing post as I add more items.
We've all seen those old comic book ads offering wargames to kids for a couple dollars.
I'll start with a couple incomplete sets that I have.
Helen of Toy Fighting Ships + Convoy Terror

These are basically the same sets under different names.
Here are the ads, some of which varied over time.

The basic game had 132 pieces. I don't have them all. What I do have is here:

Two identical fleets of 64 items:
2 Aircraft Carriers
2 Battleships
12 Heavy Cruisers
2 Light Cruisers
2 Destroyer Frigates
4 Destroyers
8 Destroyers
4 Destroyer escorts
6 Destroyer leaders
20 Cargo Ships
8 Mine layers
2 Mine sweepers
12 Submarines
10 PT Boats
30 Planes
8 Mines
Now if you read the rules, many of the ships are designated by markings underneath the hull.
For example, the Cargo Ships are also the Mine Layers and Mine Sweepers.
The destroyers are differentiated with numbers under the hull.
In my photo you can see I have an incomplete set. I have never yet been able to track down the tiny planes for the game, or the little mines. You can see them though, at Thor's Trains website, where they have an article about this and other Helen of Toy Games:

http://www.thortrains.net/milihistriot/comictoys/comicbookwargamesFightingShips.html
http://www.thortrains.net/milihistriot/comictoys/comicbooktoysoldierswargames.html

Here are the rules from the set I have:

Of note is the stamp on the front page:

This set was a replacement for another on that was ordered, but was out of stock.
This is how I ended up with Supreme Command.

The ships are all about an inch to 1 1/2 inch long, except the carriers that are 5 inches long.
What I'll do in the future is flesh out this set and create a new map board to game the rules.
BTW a quick look at the rules show them to be a mix of Stratego and games like Dover Patrol. There is some level of the unknown and combat is resolved by pieces with the higher number winning and removing the loser.
It is quite possible to redo this game or one like it by using some available game pieces from the Axis and Allies games:
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/41863/axis-allies-1942
There are a large number of these games available now. There is the original set, then other WW2 campaign sets, and a WW1 set. They  have 300-400 minis inside so they are a real source of new ships.
There is also a company called Historical Board Gaming that makes very reasonably priced models to go with the Axis and Allies games:

http://www.historicalboardgaming.com/

I've ordered from them a couple times. They are fast and the minis are very nice. The ships will have their class name under the hull. They even make tiny tanks like Sexton APC's and Canadian Ram Kangaroos. Aircraft are many and varied, including Rata I-16 and Sturmovoks and RAF Barracudas.


The other game I'm looking at is the residue of my old game, Supreme Command.

THis was an air/land/sea game with cardboard counters for infantry. The game had three kinds of ships, Carriers, Battleships and a Cruiser. Land units are two piece tanks, simple artillery markers, headquarters huts, and small landing craft to carry the troops. The planes are delta wing Mirage look alikes.
Here's the Thor's Trains article:

http://www.thortrains.net/milihistriot/comictoys/comicbookwargamesSupremeCommand.html

The interesting thing about these games is the "board" which is a small vinyl plastic sheet. You use a damp cloth to wipe a smooth table, lay the map board on the damp surface and push out the air bubbles, just like wallpaper. The sheet sits tight until you are done and peel it off..

Instead of dice, both games had a spinner with numbers 1 to 6. Supreme Command had combat resolution using a cardboard and metal spinner you flicked (IIRC). The spinner also acted as a six sided dice. The numbers were printed around the card.

These games would make great pieces for a home made wargame.
As for rules, I really like this book:

There is a simple set of rules inside that covers air combat, torpedos, supply and gunfire. I've played them before, on a square gridded board, and they are fun. The author espouses 1/1200 models, but these tiny ships work really well.

A few other titles I have are Donald Featherstone's book, Paul Hague's book and a Peter Dunn title.

Featherstone's book is not very helpful. Very simplistic and general, it isn't much help. Also the focus is on earlier historical periods.
The PSL book by Paul Hague is noted for the miniatures sea game with triremes.
The Peter Dunn book is quite detailed and fascinating, but largely focusing on steam ironclads.

Another source for aircraft are the 1/700 sets of planes from Japanese companies like Fujimi:

30 - 40 planes for under $10. They make Japanese, American, British and some German planes.

Well that's it for today, I will keep adding to this page as I go along. I occasionally pick up a few pieces of these games in bags of toy soldiers. A complete set of Fighting Ships usually fetches $75 and up. Unfortunately the interest in these old nostalgic toys has fueled the greed of accumulators looking to make a quick buck, instead of the spirit of play the games intended.