Exciting New Peter Laing Find

      I recently purchased some Peter Laing and Heritage figures. I almost passed on this lot; it would have been a big mistake!  One part of this lot might be a game changer for me.

     I am adding a new feature to my blog: BORE WAR-NING. I have recently been trying to keep my rambling to a minimum, letting the photographs do most of the talking. I have decided to do a small introduction to the photographs, and if I want to write more about the subject, issue a BORE WAR-NING.  That way one can choose to skip the more boring parts and get to the meat of the posting.

   BORE WAR-NING! I started thinking of doing an ECW period narrative campaign, using one of the counties of Massachusetts as the battleground.  I chose Essex County, as it doesn't have any long straight borders with neighboring counties.  After printing a map of Essex County, I decided to check Ebay for 15mm ECW figures. While I have been searching online for more SAE figures, generally I haven't done any serious searching for Peter Laing figures. As I was thinking that this campaign could be based on the King Phillip War, my main goal was to find 1st generation ECW Minifigs, as I gave away most of those figures I had. One lot had a good selection of Peter Laing ECW and early 18th century figures, along with some PL wagons and Heritage Napoleonic British infantry.  I actually passed by quickly, as they weren't what I was looking for. After finishing my search, I went back to the Peter Laing sale. There was no mention of Peter Laing in the ad; obviously the seller, being American, had no knowledge of Peter Laing. The lot itself had a nice assortment of figures, and had a reasonable "Buy it now"price. What's more, there was something I hadn't seen before. Among the wagons there was a boat and a wagon to carry the boat on. A pontoon boat and wagon!  I have always wanted to work bridging into my wargames, after, as a kid, having some Bandai 1/48 model German Sappers and a wooden bridge that I would have them build across trenches I dug in my back yard.
 
       I received the lot yesterday. Besides the pontoon bridge, I found a Marlburian Lowlander musketeer firing (F1010) and a mounted trumpeter that I didn't have before, so in all it was a great purchase.

   This latest purchase has me rethinking my wargaming. I have a large collection of Peter Laing wagons, which never get used. My goal is to work the wagons into my games, maybe using the Little War rules on supplying units. I have started writing down some new ideas for an expanded wargame, one that might take a couple of days to play out.

The Peter Laing ECW figures that includes a mounted trumpeter and Lowlander musketeer.

Peter Laing Marborough figures (mainly grenadiers) and Heritage British Napoleonic infantry.

The main reason of the purchase: the pontoon wagon! I put it together for the photograph. Also two nice wagons.

The pontoon boat. The bottom of the pontoon is rounded, so it might be hard to use as is for  wargames. If I use this in games, I might make balsa pontoon boats for games.