7th is for Cavalry!

Do they still have a 7th or was it quietly retired after . . . ahem . . . 'the event'?

Someone should have done that; back in the 1400-somethings when standing armies were first being organised, the Pope or someone filling the place of a UN should have dictated that units would be numbered in sequence from 1, within each country, with units suffering more than, say, 65% casualties in a single action or campaign being retired as jinxed or dishonoured or whatever. I mean - how can you have a 501st parachute unit five minutes after the invention of the parachute, or a 633rd squadron less than 40 years after the invention of the Airforce? Equally how can you have BB1 decades after the term battleship has been popularised!

I digress, and am in danger of getting up on my high-horse and riding off on one! I think we've looked at these briefly before, if we haven't they are in the queue (which I am totally losing track of!) and will turn-up at some point, in a lesser form!

Waddington's board game pieces from the battle of The Little Big Horn game. I do have the complete game somewhere and we will look at it as a briefer post when it turns up, but today we're looking purely at the playing-piece figures.

Bluster and his flag, unlike the other figures we're about to look at, there seems to be only two versions/mouldings of this figure, and the fact that some of them are in a white plastic suggests they may have had their own tool, and consequently, enough were manufactured initially to carry through one of the subsequent publishing tranches. But the blue ones are a tad poorer in sculpting and paint.

The flag also has at least two forms, and the difference between them is more marked than the other variations we'll look at! Late shots (below) reveal there probably are three different sculpts of this figure too.

The Adjutant/ADC/2IC . . . 'other officer' type! Here there seem to be three versions; the darker figure (second from the left) being - probably - the Spanish original, a Hong-Kong'y, stab-and-hope painted figure on the far right and two commoner intermediate figures - 1st and third.

Below the main line-up are two comparisons between the commoner one and the thin-based, in-house copy.

The troopers' consist of standing and kneeling firers, with - again - three variations of sculpt for each, and a second, rarer sculpting of the standing figure, leaning into the shot, which seems to have had a shorter existence, being issued 1-to-2 of the standard straight-legs in Spanish-figured sets? Elastolin-Hausser just had six kneeling cowboys in blue styrene, very boring!

The upper line-up shows, from the left; two commoner types in different plastic shades, a probably earlier Spanish one (larger hat, deeper base) and finally; a thin-based copy. Below them to the right are three kneeling firers, the larger one on the right being the - probably - earlier one, the other two being similar to the eye, but which are different.

With the Indians the main difference is that earlier versions have nicer paint, in various schemes, while later sets tend to contain simple painted-figures in the same scheme. On the left here is a sample of mostly earlier figures with a variety of loin-cloth colours, some enhanced with a second colour.

On the right are the three versions I've found so far, with a smooth-based (three-part tool) on the left, a two-part moulding with join-line in the middle and another thin-based, probably late copy, to the right. The third version came in a sample of all plain-red loin-cloths.

A similar situation occurs here with the advancing-menacingly pose - I think they go top four (Spanish originals, chalky plastic, three-part tool [no join-line], good painting), middle eleven (two-part tool [join-line], smaller base, poorer painting) and the bottom one; smaller, overall.

A closer look suggests the forth figure on the top belongs with the lone warrior at the bottom?

There are only two obvious horse types, three-part tool with a smooth base and two-part mould with a clear join-line running across the bottom.

The various shades of sea/azure-blue saddle-blankets only seem to occur with the better (three-part moulding) horses, probably from the earlier sets, with the glossy later (?) sets only having the red-fringed yellow blankets. Spanish-issued sets (see link below) also have red blankets.

The shot bottom left compares the (Spanish?) original on the left with the (right-hand) copy.

The riders are much harder to separate, but there are clues; better paint, fuller sculpts and I have tried to line up the bowmen by type, best at the top, while with the shooter, apart from three obviously better sculpts at the top, the rest are a bit of a free-for-all?

Somewhere I have true Hong Kong copies of the rifleman, unpainted on crappy horses, probably nothing to do with the game; rather, some capsule or Christmas cracker knock-offs?

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2nd photo-session

I have stuck with a plethora of 'probably's above and question-marked the few attributions to Spanish originals because I don't know the answers as to why there are at least three tranches of these, or why there's an extra standing rifleman in the cavalry - sometimes (!), or why the flags and horse only have two apparent types (both white plastic?) or even why there's two Bluster's of the 7th, in different colours?

And while I always post this link as to being the last word on all these sets originating in Spain, from Rojas y Malaret, and licensed to both Hausser (two games) and Waddington's (Little Big Horn) along with the French Capiepa, he doesn't have much on these differences either, probably because he's dealing with Spanish originals and the odd sample of British, German or French versions.

He does however highlight the differences, crediting the third (?) set to Hong Kong, but I don't know where the attribution comes from (they're not marked) and around a third of the Waddington's sets are Spanish-figure equipped anyway. The Spanish figures have Jecsan-like bases, but the horses are more Reamsa-like, but I don't know who supplied Rojas'' - I think Lafredo have been fingered as well? Elastolin used their own figures (shipping the Macedonian elephant over from Spain - a bit like the Hannibal originals!), and Waddington's had the top-ups!

My guess - for what it's worth, is that the set sold so extraordinarily well, so quickly, Waddington's were 'jumped' into finding tons more figures at short notice to supply demand from big and/or powerful clients; mail-order firms or department stores,  probably in the run-up to a Christmas?

Whether Waddington's sourced the copies in the UK or HK is a moot point. And any source trying to state Waddington's only used their own/Hong Kong figures is bullshitting (you know who, over at Vichy!), 'early' Waddington's sets contain Spanish figures; my own (when it turns up) has a set of mint, chalky, orangey-brown, well painted Spanish figures.

Anyone who's been collecting in the UK for any length of time, who's rocked-up at enough shows or who knows the odd dealer will know this set is not rare over here, with some dealers having a 'stock' stack of them, and most shows turning-up at least one, with loose figures seemingly in most rummage trays! And most donators to the collection/Blog have heaved a few this way over the years.

And the obvious thing is; the British boxes are all the same, whatever figures are in them, so while it would seem to go: 1 Spanish - 2 Spanish-like - 3 Honk Kong'y, and common-sense dictates such, there is no empirical evidence for either the order of issue, or the origin, Waddington's may even have had the Spanish tool - for a while?

The conclusion being; it was a very popular set - the year I was born!

They are still going strong!