Friday, February 6, 2026

A Vital Bridge: The Prequel

If memory serves, I have only played this scenario once before. (See Scenario 10 from 'Playing through Scenarios for All Ages' on the 'Links to Old Stuff" column of the main blog page.  

Having been attracted to the Prince Valiant strips, and the Elastolin figures since my early days, (strips only seen by the young me when visiting my Uncle's farm, and figures only seen in store displays.) I decided to get them out and get a brief break from 'horse and musket' games. 

When this century rolled around, I finally started picking up a few Elastolin figures here and there, mostly from HMGS fleamarket tables, and from Ebay. Some were old factory painted figures, not all broken, and even better yet, unpainted, non-assembled, Elastolin figures and one 'lot' of 100 gold coloured vikings for $20!  All in the same pose, running with an empty hand upraised, just right for conversions to all sorts! 

Eventually, I started to played small, skirmish games, initially using Medieval Mayhem (See Battlegames Issue 6). A few years went by and I happened to get some good deals here and there, and now the barracks are holding close to 200 figures ready to do battle which are a bit many for a solo skirmish game. (To be honest, 1:1 individual figure skirmish games aren't really my 'thing".)

So, to be honest, while adding characters and vague narratives, I just want to play conventional wargame 'battle' scenarios with "units".  Luckily, the figures fit nicely on 4 figure homemade bases that a friend of mine passed to me a few years ago.


After some contemplation, I have decided to continue to use them for conventional wargame scenarios, some small battles, some small actions. Today's battle is done and if all goes well, a Battle report post to follow Saturday evening (Atl time).


14 comments:

  1. Looking forward to it …
    Alan Tradgardland

    ReplyDelete
  2. I must confess to being ignorant of the Prince Valiant comic strip until reading one of your earlier blog posts - well worth a read (https://archive.org/details/prince-valiant-01-1937-1939/page/n3/mode/2up) - I am also looking forward to the battle report.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I confess that last year I splurged and bought set#1 of hardbound reproductions of Prince Valiant episodes from the start. After all, Hal Foster who created them, was born near where I've lived for the last 45 years.

      Delete
  3. Great looking figures, I look forward to the game report!

    ReplyDelete
  4. The figures deserve your spotlight.

    ReplyDelete
  5. The Prince Valiant strips have extraordinary movement to them. The figures seem to capture that as well.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The creators did wonderful figures that reflect the originals.

      Delete
  6. Why can't current figures lool like this???

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They could......actually I have seen a very few modern ranges of figures done as well, but they often seem to be too expensive and too few in a range, and they fade away.

      Delete