B is for Box Finally Ticked!

I've had a bunch of these playing pieces in a matchbox for the longest time, but never had a clue as to what game or set they belonged to. The suspicion was always that they were from a board game, but it wasn't until I was looking for something else that I finally encountered them about two-and-a-half years ago, and it's our old friends Merit!

 

I know it's considered a bit non-U to name-drop, but sometimes you have to, and I'm pretty sure General Horrocks used to come to the house when we were little, certainly it was a name I heard a lot, and I recognise the little black & white thumbnail of him, above, but I would have been very young, 6-8'ish, or birth to 8'ish maybe, and all sorts of people did come to the house!

 

Mum used to do dinner parties, for which she would often get help from the MOD, or even one of the unit chef's to help prep' up, in the afternoon, as they were official or semi-official dinner parties, given Dad's position, and while I think Sir Horrocks was among them, he could have been a face on the TV, filling the spot more recently filled by Sir de la Billière, who's knee I apparently sat on more than once, so who knows!

 

But . . . if he did come to the house on occasion, and if ten-year-olds can pick up the game and play it with "gusto", why didn't he bring me a copy? Yeah! You See? There's a question for the great man to answer, what happened to my free copy of Merit's 'game of skill' - Combat? I wouldn't have spent all those years wondering where my little matchbox of crude tanks (no aeroplanes) came from!

General rules (in black & white) army-specific rules (which I haven't read, in order to locate the differences?), cards and a dice, all the usual paraphernalia of a board-game with some degree or elements of complication/sophistication . . . which a ten yer-old can play with gusto!

The uncut sheets of topographical, geographical and foliant* elements of the battlefield. They are produced in a kind of smooth, but floppy PVC, which could be adhered to a similarly smooth surface, by the physical properties of friction applied though something called 'Lateral adhesion'.

Relatively common when I was a kid (car showroom price labels were a major application), there was quite a variety of novelty items in this material (including Merit's own Pocket Battleships - see here before at Small Scale World), think Fuzzy Felt without the fluff! And on the right, the gaming board!

*There doesn't seem to be a collective noun for greenery, but rather lots of type-specific ones, so I invented a word which looks and sounds good (after all Agent Orange was a de'foliant?), but it turns out 'foliant' is a type of book (with folded pages - like atlases), borrowed from German or Dutch, so feel free to insert one of the following: Canopy, Carpet, Forest, Landscape, Gleam, Grove, Hedge, Thicket, Verdure!**

**It's 'vegetative elements' isn't it? . . . Doh!

Having not read the rules yet, I have no idea if this set-up is even legal! But I gave the Red forces a decent arrow-punch to split Blue, but gave Blue superior air-assets in theatre, to devastate from above, and come back from the northern flank, rolling red toward the viewer! It's anybodies game, we just need to read the rules . . . or make some up!

 

This is what really interests me! Diesel-punk tanks in two sizes, one (the larger) looking like something the Russian's probably lost in the snows of Finland, the other looking like something the Russians expected their Paratroopers' to protect their heads from! Look to the Skies . . . Oooooffff!

 

Alongside which are aircraft with no visible means of motive power, but which still manage to look like scaled-down versions of those 1950's food premiums from Germany, probably made by Manurba!