More Ross Perry Wargaming Memories: Inter-period Campaign Wargames

 As a big fan of the First Book of Wargaming and The Second Book of Wargaming, by Frank Perry I am encouraging his son, Ross to share more about those days he would wargame with his dad and dad's friend. The books came out in the 1970s and Ross had started to be included in the wargames from age ten. The articles in 1980s Plastic Warrior magazines also outlined some of the premises of the games.

  Ross and I are in correspondence about this and might even create a joint work in the future.

ROSS PERRY REMEMBERS:

 

ROSS PERRY ABOUT HIS CAMPAIGN GAMES WITH HIS DAD, FRANK PERRY

 

It’s interesting that you mix up troops in history, which was exactly what we did. Often very modern armies came across an Island with say abundant resources that were home to Cowboys and Indians, or say American war of independence figures,

In a game like that, the modern army comprised of Britains Deetail (very durable for HG Wells wargames), Britains Herald have at least 30,000.

To answer your question, our games comprised of large quantities down to small skirmishes.

I still paint and do conversions.

 

My favourite models to paint are Airfix, (fantastic range) but I absolutely love Atlantic 1/32 figures. I say 1/32, in truth I think they are larger.

Some of my favourite games were Greek elephant charges using Britains elephants and Atlantic painted Greeks with their chariots. 

We used to do a lot of horse cavalry charges, but I think we had to create our own rules for elephants, because they are more temperamental than horses.

There used to be so much more things to buy in the seventies to make the scene on the wargaming table. A lot of Timpo buildings, Britain trees, military and civilian vehicles. These days they are harder to come across and of course very expensive on E bay.

 

We made a lot of our own stuff. A simple hedgerow was pinecones, spray painted green and screwed on a wooden base.

Another easy way to build a forest was plastic or foam cylinders, painted green/brown. Each wargaming event, we would cut anything green we could get away with in the garden, and just put in the cones. Voila an instant forest. However, because we played in fortnightly cycles, we had to constantly replace the dead stuff. 

Many of our games had a simple premise:

 

A King of a friendly Country had been kidnapped, and I was hired to put a band of mercenaries together to go and get him back.

Played over 6 meetings, we had to go through various potentially hostile territories to get there . No parachute to the closest venue for us.

A lot of the time course there was no need to do battle if the person in charge was a skilled negotiator or just got lucky.

Invariably, just like Life, one to think on his feet despite the most meticulous planning. One game Lord Ross went into an inn to find a madam, who had a map of where the kidnapped victim was. He had a large budget to pay for the information but
obtained it for free. Unfortunately, he couldn’t tell Lord Hofer and his own men why he still had such a large quantity of cash. It was because the madam in question was an old girlfriend of his.

 

Whilst we didn’t use dice for these types of unexpected events, we did similar to you by using playing cards. 

So, say the Queen of clubs represented the fact she was an old flame, whilst a King of Cards meant that she hated Lord Ross for all he stood for. That meant he had to find another way to accomplish his objectives

 

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The islanders were Detail as well with a lot of Britains Swoppets.

Back in the seventies, we probably had a collection of every maker of Lead and Plastic maybe more than 50,000 figures each.

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I haven't got Ross's pics yet so here are a couple of mine:

One of my battles: Vikings versus Skeleton Warriors

HG Wells at play