Combat Mission Soldier Play Set 2

What toy soldier or gaming inspiration lies inside this playset? Imported by Kandy Toys 

As well as the Combat Mission playset shown on my previous blog post,

https://poundstoreplasticwarriors.wordpress.com/2019/01/21/combat-mission-military-soldier-play-set/

I also had stored away for my Christmas gifts this useful little second playset of figures and accessories.

The third set in the trio of loveliness in my local seaside gift shop this summer (just gone) – all would be  perfect toys for beach battles or rainy holiday days –  were  just  a bag of 40-54mm mostly Airfix pirate / clone figures. I didn’t buy this figure set, as many of the figures I already had. What unexpected Pound Store plastic restraint!

Tiny 54mm Man of TIN salutes the contents and new recruits.

These figures in scale against Britain’s 54mm lead hollowcast guardsman and my 54mm homecast Man of TIN profile figure / gravatar.

How these figures measure up. A mix of 45 to 48mm? Already planned as space marine figures. 

Some useful and interesting plastic play features that can be adapted at various scales for gaming. Setting this to be photographed, the years just slip away. Playset therapy?

This gun looks interesting, lots of possibilities here. Store crates, sandbags, ammo dumps.

Three useful vehicles – modern Army?  Space tanks?

What this set breaks down to – you can see how these were moulded and made.

Header card artwork for Combat Mission sets. Modern British infantry based?

It was this simply moulded artillery piece that first caught my eye in this set. Worth the £3 the set cost for this artillery alone? Could it be repainted as Victorian?  Steampunk? VSF? Space? WW1 or WW2?

I almost bought several sets on the spot for these useful looking guns.

It fits in with my converted digital radio case mate or gun emplacement.

https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2018/10/14/from-old-digital-radio-to-54mm-houses-and-coastal-gun-emplacement/

Inside the gun emplacement, staffed and sandbagged with other elements of the set. 40 to 54mm plastic and lead hollowcast figures. Simple old notebook spine metal barbed wire.

How does this gun measure or scale up when put with some of my 32mm pound store figure conversions? Laser cannon?

Trying out the different scaled play set elements with different sizes and scales of figures is interesting. What fits and works? What gaming scenario ideas does it suggest?

What could these strange towers be? Guard Posts? Radar towers?

More scaled down ideas from converted smaller 32mm Pound Store figures (not sold in this set)

How these towers  could be adapted for use with simple internal floors. Again more 32mm Pound Store figure conversions (not supplied with this set).

I feel that the playset would have been better scaled with some of these 32mm figures that are / were offered in different bagged sets by the same supplier.

Maybe these 32mm figures in the same Combat Mission brand are a more suitable size to fit most of the accessories? Bought a couple of years ago, 2016/17.

However a strange mismatch of scales is one of the hallmarks of a proper cheap plastic play set.

Several of the elements such as the towers  can be bought separately (often in packs of ten!) directly by post from online suppliers in China.

Already the first of the more space marine looking figures are under coated dark blue and tuppenny based, ready for painting into larger versions of their smaller selves. These completed smaller figures can be seen above, painted as  32mm blue Flash Gordon Style ‘space marine’ figure conversions. They have with their Officer or NCO in the beret a certain Star Ship Trooper/  ‘grunt’ look to them already.

Play set  therapy session over for now …

Blog posted by Mark, Man of TIN on 23 / 24 January 2019.