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Landships
Spurious Victorian Armored Fighting Vehicles
Breakthroughs in power technology in the late 19th Century made possible large steam-powered fighting vehicles as early as 1880. Upon hearing of German experimental models, the British established the RNLS (Royal Naval Land Service) in 1882, and the French and Americans soon followed suit. The German landship sent to Ouargistan for testing so awed the native chiefs that the other powers had to bring in landships of their own to save face, launching an absurd arms race in the primitive subcontinent. This is the fictional universe for the Landships of Ouargistan games.
In the photo, the HMLS Ogress clatters across the Ouargi plain, gunports open, spar torpedo at the ready. Click for a lovely larger version.
This page features photos of some of the land ironclads built by members of the Ouargistan group, plus technical details, battles, and miscellaneous information.

David had read H.G.Wells' "The Land Ironclads" in his youth, and occasionally mentioned the possibility of adding steam landships to the play, but it was Charles who actually showed up at a game with a "Panzersteemerkampfwagen" of cardboard, soon to be named the Wilhelmina von Holstein.

David became inspired, and went round to craft stores, sewing shops and dollar stores, buying dress-snaps, bobbins, pounce wheels, cheap toy tanks, plastic candy baskets and anything else that was dirt cheap and looked useful for building landships. Then he gave everyone a "kit" of miscellaneous parts and tools plus loose specifications and some pictures xeroxed from T.B. White's Tanks and Other Armored Fighting Vehicles - 1900-1918, set a date for the big battle, and asked everyone to build at least one landship. The result was phenomenal. There were eight handmade landships on the table, plus a smaller truck with a gun and a heavy cargo truck carrying a giant statue of Theodore Roosevelt. Everyone had a great time, and the group played several more landship games, adding a few new designs, before the novelty wore off.

SMGS Wilhelmina von Holstein
"Der Dampferkampfwagen," the first of the Ouargistan landships

Click for closeup views and modeling information.

HMLS Ogress and Ogrette Class
The British progenitor and her descendants.

Click for closeup views and modeling information.

HMLS Sinuous
Articulated design for difficult terrain

Click for closeup views and modeling information.

HMLS Behemoth
The Dreadnaught of the dessicated main

Click for closeup views and modeling information.

The American Landships
USLD Miskatonic,USLS Lexington, and USLS Inquisitrix

Click for closeup views and modeling information.

El-Ahrairah
"The Bronze Bunny of Ouargistan,"
Rajah Rabiid's ill-starred masterpiece of Prussian engineering and native craftsmanship

Click for closeup views and modeling information.

The Velocipede Torpedo
"The Pennyfarthing Morpheus"

Click for closeups and Torpedo models to print out

Miscellaneous and Future Landships
Click to see miscellaneous projects
Landship Battles
"Hissing steam and clattering iron, seaborne thunder brought to land"

Click for battle descriptions and photographs.

 Building a Landship
Includes a color example to download, print out, and construct.

(Maybe)

  Landship Rules
Downloadable rules for landship battles.

 Terrenes
Kipling's (or somebody else's) poem of the men who served aboard the land ironclads.

Strand Magazine Illustration
for H. G. Wells' prophetic
1904 short story
"The Land Ironclads".

Wells became embittered
when the army
rebuffed his offer
to help develop
an actual
armored fighting vehicle.

The
Land
Ironclads

H.G.Wells' 1904 fictional description of
landgoing warships.
Photos from Readers who have used the Major General's techniques to create model landships, ships and buildings.
FIGURES - SCENERY - STRUCTURES - VEHICLES - SHIPS - GROUP - RULES
LANDSHIPS - WAR OF THE WORLDS - BATTLES - LITTLE WARS - BOOKS, FILMS - KIPLING - WHAT'S NEW

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Copyright©1998 David Helber. No commercial distribution of images or text from any page on this site without written permission.