Airfix Waterloo Farm House - Part Two

The next time that we see the farm house from Airfix came in 1975 when it appeared in the “Waterloo Assault set”.

I can remember how impressed I was with this set as not only did it have the farm building again in a grey plastic but it now came with eight boxes of figures including two civilian wagons and accessories.

The figures came from all that they had produced for the Waterloo Battle to date. There was one box of each of the following the French had Foot Artillery, Line Infantry, and Imperial Guard which was their new set that year and one set of cavalry the Cuirassiers. The British had Line Infantry, Highlanders, Royal Horse Artillery and Hussars. No Prussians figures were in this set as they had not been made then. The wagons were new from Airfix and unique as they were not produced in their own set. The Accessories included barricades and supplied for the two wagons with two civilian wagon drivers, as they would have been employed by the British army at that time to move supplies around for them.

I can remember this set being out for a long time before it disappeared and then in 2008, they brought it out again but this time called “The Battle of Waterloo” set.

This set had now grown into one hell of a set to collect. Everything you needed for your Waterloo Battle. Not only did it have the farm house and all of the 8 sets of figures from the previous assault set and the two civilian wagons with accessories, but now it came with a plastic base for the farm house, paint brushes and paints. This set also included a box of the Prussian Infantry, which was Airfix last Waterloo set ever to be produced by them. No doubt that this set will make another appearance very soon as the 200th Anniversary is coming up in a couple of years’ time. Now would that be great if it had contained a new set? Roll on 2015.

 Back of Box

Chance Cards Part Two

I intended to make a total of thirteen different cards with a variety of instructions printed on them some more than others. The right balance has to be made, but I will not know this until I start using the cards. But here is how I have made the set up at the moment with a grand total of 40 cards in a set.
There are for ADVANCE x2, AMMUNITION x4, EAGER x2, HALT x4, LUCKY x3, NO RESTRICTIONS x5, NO TARGET x3, OFFICERS KILLED x2, RESUPPLY x4, RETREAT x2, STEADY x4, TEST FOR MORAL x3 and UNLUCKY x2. 

Now that I have sorted that out, I can now get down to making my cards up. Okay I have the front of the card which is a picture of the Battle of Waterloo map and on the reverse side a picture of the old guard at Waterloo with the written instructions printed on top of the picture.

I was first going to cut up stiff card to the correct size before gluing on the pictures and the instructions on both sides of the card. First the thickness of the card came into play and then they are going to get dirty very quickly and bent when in use over time. Lamination was the answer but card being too thin could still bend and too thick will not leave me much room for the lamination pouch to contain the card.

So after finding a shop with laminating pouches in credit card size, I brought a box of 50. This should give me enough even if I muck a few up as I have never done laminating before. Lucky for me my daughter had a laminating machine, so that part was solved.

Then out of the blue I had an idea, to use the well-known Lottery cards that you can fine at many shopping outlets in the UK that play the game. These are made out of credit size plastic card and they are very strong. These will be ideal for my chance cards. Once I had collected a few and printed out the front and backs to the cards, the assembling of the cards took place. Sticking the front and reverse side to the plastic card by a bit of sick glue just to place for positional guide, once dry I then inserted the card into the lamination pouch and here you can see the results and I think that they look very professional if I do say. Now I have to find time to play a game and to try out my new cards.

 

 

5000 Hits!

Today we celebrate the 5000th page view that this blog has now reached at last.It has taken a bit of time to get there but we are now there. I would like to thank you all for taking time to look at this blog which has been growing very slowly over the last five years. I hope that you have taken something away from this blog to help you in your hobby.

 

I still have plenty of things to do on this blog and once we get a bit of sunshine and time, I hope to but more pictures up of the figures that I have painted to date.

Progress has been very slow over the winter months and I have yet to pick up the paint brush and finish off the two units that I am painting up. But I have made the set of chance cards and doing more fine tuning of my house rules. So keep looking, more to come soon. Take care out there and thanks again.

Airfix Waterloo Farm House - Part One

The Battle of Waterloo had many buildings and villages that were fought over in the three days of Waterloo in June 1815 but three were made very famous by the battle. These were the farms of Hougoumont, Le Haye Sainte and Paperotte.

Le Haye Sainte was in the centre of Wellington’s battle line and it was defended by the 1st & 2nd Light Battalions of the Kings German Legion a regiment of Nassau Light infantry and the 5th Line battalion of the KGL while defending outside on the eastern side of the farm there were two companies of the 95th.

 

This complex of farm buildings became the hospital for the Allies and was fought over all day by the French with d ‘Erlon Corps with the 54th and 55th Ligne. The farm changed hands several times during the battle were at one stage the KGL ran out of ammunition and had to retreat out of the farm. Unable to move the Allies casualties, they were bayoneted to death by the French when they first over ran the farmyard and by the end of the day it was back in Allied hands. 

Airfix brought out the famous farm house in 1970 after they started to bring out the Waterloo figures for the battle. The 1/76 model was made in a grey plastic and has made a few appearances how and then by Airfix through the years. Once off the spur it took just minutes to assemble the farm and I still have mine although it needs urgent attention, another project for me to do to rebuild and base the farm house one day.

Although the model is not historical correct as some of the windows to the rooms in the roof of the main house are missing the farm was also much bigger than the model, but space would be a problem for most gamers. I have seen this model painted up on other people’s blogs and what a good job they have made of it. I must admit that I liked my Airfix model back then and still do today but wouldn’t it be nice for Airfix to bring out Hougoumont and Paperotte for the 200th Anniversary of the battle as I know they will do with the farm house once more.

 

The farm House today

 

How it all started for me - Part Five

In the late 70’s a brought myself my first war gaming table. It was 8ft x 5ft and it was made of 1/2 inch chip wood board. The only place that I could set this up was in the master bedroom which gave us plenty of space to move around. This was archived by moving the double bed into the centre of the room and taking the headboard off to lay the table flat on the base of the bed. This is where the club members of the CWA would come along to my house on a Sunday to play our campaigns and other battles.

I painted one side of the board grass green for summer and the other side white for winter. We could set up over 1,000 figures on the table with still plenty of room for them to move around. Unfortunately the board has long gone as I had no room for it in the house that I moved into and live in now. 

We had to wait for another five years before any new Napoleonic figures appeared in the hobby/toy shops. In 1984 an Italian company called Esci made two new sets. The first was the French Imperial Guard and in the same year British Infantry mixed with highlanders. Then in 1985 they brought out two more sets the Scots Greys and the Polish Lancers. In the following year six more were added. A mixed box of Prussian/Austrians, French Line Infantry, British Hussars and Horse Artillery with no limbers and French Foot Guard Artillery again without any limbers and Russian Infantry.

 

 

All these sets brought new life to the club and many of the above sets gave the club members a wider choice of figures to collect. This is when I really started to paint up my figures and I would also help the club members to paint theirs on club nights. During the club years, we were able to purchase cheap figures from a toy shop in Welling, Southeast London, where we could buy boxes of figures from a company called “A-Toys” for a pound each. These were actually Esci figures in the box and they were very popular with the club members at the time. The last Napoleonic set for Esci to bring out was the French Cuirassiers in 1987.

So we now had figures available to us from two plastic companies A-Toys/Esci and Airfix, but in 1988 I had to pack up the club that I had been running for ten years as my work was taking over my personal life with working late on press night which was in fact our club night.

So I then became a solo wargamer and in 1992 Revell moved into Napoleonic’s and made two new Napoleonic sets. These were 02570 French Grenadier Guards in greatcoats and 02571 British Infantry. Now these sets were very more detailed than the old Airfix figures and better made than the Esci thin ones. So the 80’s was a really good year for our hobby but the 90’s was going to be even better.