Waterloo in plastic

With all the current attention for Waterloo, I couldn't resist bringing out my old plastic 20mm Napoleonics again. Of course, the ubiquitous Airfix set of the La Haye Sainte farm is present as well. These figures are single color spray painted (not my current standards!), and were ones of the first I used for historical wargaming many many years ago.

I took some liberties in interpreting the battlefield, but those who are familiar with the battle, will recognize the main idea ;-)

Overall view

La Haye Sainte farm

The French infantry assault

The French cavalry charge

The British cavalry charge

Another overall view

The British squares

Top view

Another top view

Cataloguing the collection ... (5)

This time, I opened a drawer with various monsters and other biggies. Current total in the up-to-date catalogue now totals 997 figures.

Some highlights from this batch:

Citadel Elementals

Citadel Fimir

Mithril Fangorn figures

BGSelfie

Apparantly, June 18 was not only the anniversary for the battle of Waterloo, but also for Battlegames magazine, which started on June 18, 2006. Battlegames did merge with Miniature Wargames a few years ago.

Henry Hyde therefore asked for selfies (look for the hashtag #bgselfie on twitter) of wargamers holding Battlegames issue #1.

Since I keep hold of complete runs of wargaming magazines I subscribe to in binders, it was not very difficult to locate BG1 in the wargaming room.

My entry for the #bgselfie competition

Napoleon

With all the attention focused on Waterloo these days, here are just a few of Napoleonic objects in my wargaming room. I got them from one of my grandfathers, but further origins unknown. They are not valuable paraphernalia and are actually rather common, but they are meaningful to me, precisely because I do remember these objects ever since I was a child.

A set of cognac glasses with a Napoleon emblem, and a plate depicting the battle of Montereau.

Flat reinforcements

Over the past year or so, I have been picking up flat figures here and there from 2nd hand sites. As always, the joy is in discovery and slowly building a collection.

The long-term purpose is to get a collection together that an be used in a toy soldier game. I explicitly say toy soldier game, since many of these flats are in slightly different scales, and sculpting style can also vary considerably.

Here are the latest reinforcements, picked up for 20 euro.

Cataloguing the collection ... (4)

Another drawer of figures (mostly individual figures for adventuring) added to my database. 926 and counting ... This was a trip down memory lane, since many of these figures (especially the Citadel figuters and villagers) were painted 25 years ago when iw as just starting to collect my first figures.

A few highlights:

Citadel Armoured Knights

Metal Magic Sultan and Belly Dancers

Various Citadel Fighters & Villagers

In Flanders Fields ...

Because of the association of the poppy with world War 1 remembrances, many people seem to think that the poppies are 'blowing' in November.

Not so! I live in Flanders, and the poppies blow in June. These days, you can find them along roadsides and fields, especially in the more rural part of the country.

There are quite a few opposite the road from our house ...

A bunch of poppies opposite our house. This month, you can find them everywhere alongside rural roads and fields.

And since I took the photograph this morning, I also took a few from poppies I could find in my wargaming room:

Portrait of Ann's greatgrandfather. Never returned from the war, and grave only located in the nineties.

A framed version of John McCrae's poem in the wargaming room.

The commercialization of World War 1 ...

One of the many books and booklets I have on World War 1 and what it meant for Belgium. Since Napoleon and Wellington are also hot in the news these days, the decided they wanted some attention as well.

Cataloguing the collection ... (3)

Another drawer of figures photographed and indexed - mostly Bretonnians and medieval types that have appeared earlier on this blog. Now at 826 figures.

A few highlights of the figures added:

Flags - all Citadel except 2nd from the right (Harlequin).

Plastic knights from the Battlemaster game box.

Plastic knights from WFB5th edition box.

Cataloguing the collection ... (2)

In a previous post, I mentioned that I had started cataloguing my collection of 25mm fantasy figures. During the past week, I entered the drawers with Undead and Lizardmen figures. So far, 716 figures have been photographed and entered in the database (take a look!)

Below are a few shots of figures I have entered during this latest batch.

Undead Standard bearers, both Citadel figures. Note the cardboard banners, something that I would do much better these days. Figures painted early to mid-nineties.

Regiment of lizardmen, all Harlequin figures.

Some Dinosaurs

Quickly painted up some dinosaur models from The Honourable Lead Boiler Suit Company. These are old models, and are not listed in their catalogue anymore, but were labeled as D1 Deninonychus Antirrhopus and D3 Gallimimus. Colours are entirely conjectural.

Add D1 Deninonychus Antirrhopus

D3 Gallimimus

Paper model of La Haye Sainte

The latest issue of MWBG (issue 386, the Waterloo special) contains PDF models of La Haie Sainte and Hougoumont (downloadable from the Goodies page).

Both models are cleverly designed - the buildings are not 3D, but only give the impression of being so.

The La Haye Sainte model was the easiest of the two to put together, and the results is shown below. I printed out the pdf sheet as is, and put some 6mm Napoleonic figures next to it for a scale comparison. Quite neat.