Waterloo

 These photographs show my old wargems group's refight of "Waterloo" sometime in the early 1970s (1971 I suspect). The group went out and bought every box of Airfix Napoleonic French Artillery that could be found, specifically for the eight marching French Infantry! The figure were mostly mine, 20mm Airfix with a sprinling of metals, HInton Hunt and a very few Minifigs. The photograph on the right shows the Allies setting up on our 12' x 6' table with La haye sainte in the centre. All the builidngs were underscaled for the figures and scratchbuilt in cardboard by myself.
Here's the rest of the photographs:

The French centre with the 'Grand Battery' in the foreground

Reille's corps about to asssault Hougomont (hidden by treees)

The French bringing up yet more troops.

Huge numbers of French attacking Hougomont

D'Erlon's Corps moving to attack with Cavalry support

General view of the battle in full swing

The French attack around La Haye Saint

Another view of the above

The view of the centre from the British side

The French are repulsed (for now)

The French renew  their assault - successfully this time !

The French Old and Middle guard arrive.

The French had taken La Haye Saint in the centre, Reilled had destoryed his corps assaulting Hougomont, which the British had heavily reinforced, weakening their centre and the battle was over.

The game was played over three day's during the Xmas holidays and whilst I thik their are other photographs lost to time, I hope you get some idea of the battle and  yes, it was very enjoyable at the time.

Having not done anything hobby-wise over the last four weeks or so, nexrt week will probably see me posting old photographs of other armies I no longer have.

That's it then, once more for another week, thanks for taking the time to visit and as always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.

"War games on the kitchen table"

 I dug this newpaper cutting out of one of my boxes of old gaming memorabilia, spurred on by my dear wife's discovery of a pack of my photographs from the early 1970's.
That's 19 year old me on the right, not the mature 20  year old that the article implies.

The article is quite long and I'm unable to check whether or not it can be read in the clips below.

Many apologies if you can't read it !

Photoshopped version of a much younger me - not much different to my current profile pic?

The top picture is a photograph of the clipping and shows its real colour, whilst the remainder are photoshopped scans of the original, hence the unexplainable pink hue to them all. The author James Dolan borrowed my compy of HG Wells' "Little Wars", that was never returned - a small price to pay for imortality ? Also, we weren't slouched over a kitchen table !

 

As I'm currently not doing anything (other than this blog) that is hobby related, I'll be showing futher scans of the photogrpahs that my wife found in future posts (sorry). I'm also going to be doing a lot of catching up commenting on all the blogs I missed over the last few days. 

That's it then for this week, thanks, as ever, for taking the time to visit and of course your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.

Happy New Year

Normally I'd review the previous year's progress but as I finished so little in the last year it hardly seemed worthwhile! The fifty or so figures I have painted up this year have all been 54mms, which is just about all I'm capable of atm. 

My Christmas haul,  in hobby terms, as is usual, was very small, just a single book (as shown). It's a book about the campaigns of the British and Egyptian forces in the Sudan (just in case you're not familiar with the illustration on the cover). I'm looking forward to reading this at a leisurely pace, having only had a quick scan of its contents so far.

My hobby intentions for this year are limited to tidying up my wargames table and painting area, whilst trying to make some progress on my storage issues. If I can find things to post about, then I'll keep posting, but playing games doesn't seem very likely atm.

Christmas went a bit pear-shaped when we cancelled dinner at #2 son's house, due to Covid (of course) and consequently there was four less than the usual ten around our table !

I trust though that this year will be better for all of us, it can;t be any worse can it ?

 

So here's wishing a HAPPY NEW YEAR to all reading this and stay safe !

Merry Mithrasmas !

 Once more we go into the festival of the winter soltice, whether it be under the guise of celebrating Mithras, Yule, Saturnalia or Christmas, plus no doubt many others.

As I've been emptying my various drawers and boxes to present my old 7YW collection (which I've roughly calculated at over 2000 foot, about 1000 horse and 30 artillery pieces) I thought another photograph or two of my Prussian Pioneers around a snowy fir tree would fit the bill (and pad this post out a bit -Ed,).

Whilst reminising of my battles past I've also dug out my copy of Savoury's "His Britannic Majesty's Army in the Seven Years War", which although highly scholarly is also a damn good easy read. It still amazes me how the armies managed to manouevre, considering the conditions they served under, night marches in the poring rain and infantry havng to push and pull artillery through mud on almosy non-existent 'roads' .

My new 18th c. rules (more blattant padding -Ed)

I've also bought myself a copy of rules that weren't available when I did most of my 7YW games. I thought of it as an earlier Xmas present to myself. I used "Principles of War" for many years, using 6mm armies. The game is designed around division level actions but we used them for corps level games culminating in a huge action of five Prussina corps against three French ones in the Franco-Prussian war. The French corps are about twice the size of a Prussian on, but the Prussians still won ! It was played over a 24 foot by 6 foot tabe using rolling terrain and ocassionally having to move the tables too ! To the best of my knowledge, like our Minden game, no photographs of this battle remain.

I have though, found some very old photographs (from the early 70's) of my Napoleonics (now all gone) and other things I did then. These photos will be presented at some future time when they are scanned and photshopped !  

For my 7YW games I'd ammended the PoW  rules to fit the 7YW and my version is very close to the one shown.

 

Let me thank everyone who has visited this blog and an especial thank you to those that have commented on my efforts over the years I've been blogging.  

Here's hoping you have a very enjoyable break over the holiday period in these very trying times and stay safe and well.

Merry Chrstimas from all on the western front in the 18th century too!

  Thanks for taking the time to visit,  your comments, as always, are both welcomed and truly appreciated.

Merry Christmas !

7YW Artillery and more (FA#18)

This weeks sees the last two drawers of my painted 7YW collection (the eighth drawer contains my Vietnam collection of helicopters !), though there is another drawer of unpainted figures and other stuff. 

The first drawer contained all my artillery, for Prussia, Hanover/Britain, and Austria, though there may be some French in there too!

The photograph at the top  is of three Hanoverian guns, from left to right, a light gun, a howitzer and a field gun, the three different barrels then supplied from Spencer Smith. The gunners in this instance are all metal Hinchcliffe figures iirc. 

Here's the rest of the photographs:

The mixed contents of the artillery drawer

Left-hand view of the top three guns

Bonus right hand view of Austrian guns, metal and plastic figures

Bonus rear view of the Austrians

All the guns are virtually identical for each nation are quite identical and I think pretty pointless in showing row upon row of them imho. There's alost certainly more than two dozen pieces .

Of far more interst, to me at least, was the final drawer:

The hotpotch of the final drawer

So here's what was present in the drawer:

Yet more Prussain combined grenadiers (probably casualties from the final game)

British Cavalry with French Cavalry (probably) in their rear

French or British Cavlry in front with Hanoverian Horse Grenadiers behind

Nearly a whole Cavalry brigade, probably stored in the wrong place !

My homemade limbers (- probably Prussian)

Prussian pioneers/engineers, all conversions, probably for some specific scenario

Commanders, all probably Austrian, plus of course Charles Stuart on the right !

Prussain and allied Generals, Zeiten left, Marlborough (?- yep I know), a generic Hanoverian General, my converted Frederick II and of course Oliver Cormwell,. Note:We were very short of officers!

Bonus rear view of the above, Zeiten's cloak was plasticine !

From other Drawers :

British and Hanoverian generals

A Hanoverian general and a coupe of Austrian generals (probably)

The general officers were a mixture of Hinchliffe and Minifig, plus a few converted plastics, the metal gunners were all Hinchcliffe iirc.

That's it then for this week, the next two posts almost take care of themselves, Xmas/holidy greetings, and hopes for the comig year, plus maybe the Xmas haul - mine will be a single book !

In the New Year, I have some old photographs to show, mostly from the 1970s ! My wife came across them whilst 'sorting' whilst I came across a yellowed Newspaper clipping of myself  and a friend posing with some Napoleonic figures (the latter long since gone).

Thanks for taking the time to visit, hopefully there was something of interest and I will be returning to my 7YW in the coming month, for no other reason than I can't think of anything else to write about !

 

As always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated  - so comment whilst you still can ! 

The Cavalry (7YW FA#17)

 So I got the drawer of Cavalry out for this week's post and immediately spotted it was full of Austrians - only Austrians ! After some deep thought as to where the Prussian, British, Hanoverian and French cavalry were to be located I finally found them in yet another drawer (not from the same set as all the others !).The photgraph on thr right shows an Austrian heavy cavalry regiment -curassiers (Ansbach iirc). All the Austrians were not painted by myself as far as I recall but were painted at the same time as my Prussians, more than forty years ago.

All the figures were dusty, of course, having not been used for some twenty years plus, some were minus heads and finding an intact unit was tricky.

I think everything had been quickly packed away after our refight of Minden.

Today's photographs were  taken with the added disabilty of having shaky hands, so apologies for the somewhat dire photographs, Nevertheless here they are:

 

The first drawer, all Austrians - aaarghhh !

The second, larger drawer - everything else ?

Ansbach cuirassiers with two replacement figures,

Austrian and Prussian cuirassiers looked very similar

Rear view, note no backplate (and the substitutes!)

Austrian Dragoons

Austrian Hussars - no idea which regiment

Another view of the Hussars, with Asbach behind

A mixed selection of figures

The Prussian Garde du Coprs, with Vexillum style standard

Metal Austrian Horse Grenadiers (Hinchcliffe iirc)

Royal North British Dragoons - The Scots Greys (obligatory blurry pic)

Prussian Cuirassier regiment, missing three bases

Hanoverian Horse Grenadiers

These really need dusting, their horses are black !

Prussian Cuirassier standard

French Cuirassier regiment, with shiny back and breast-plates !

This is the complete regiment, just two squadrons strong !

Rear view, for those that like this sort of thing

Prussian hussars

Hussars with colbacks trimmed to mirlitons,

Many of the figures here had their heads replaced with grenadier heads (remember I have a huge surplus of these and some were re-fitted with drummers heads (also in the surplus category). Some hussars had their furry colback headgear cut down to represent mirlitons and had very thin paper 'streamers; added, the latter being lost many years ago. 

I still have two more drawers of figures from my 7YW collection (sorry t bore you all still)  to post about, cannon and ancillary stuff - probably some more cavalry too ! I've also comeacross very few generals, though I  thought I had about twenty Hinchliffe ones - they'll be somewhere no doubt!

Thanks for taking the time to visit and as always your comments are always welcomed and truly appreciated!