Funny Little Wars - Waterloo 200 game

Yesterday saw 9 enthusiasts meet in a London park for the long awaited Waterloo 200th Anniversary Celebration Wargame.  The sun shone as 2,000 54mm toy soldiers were unpacked and positioned to refight the battles of  Wavre and Waterloo across two vast windswept fields.  I've always thought the importance of Wavre was rather underrated in the potential importance and significance it had on the outcome of the 100 days campaign, so I was glad to see it included in this event.  The players commanding on the Waterloo field set up their respective troops while the Wavre Battle was played out and therefore didn't know whether it would be Blucher's Prussians or Grouchy's French that would arrive to take part in the main event.

This isn't a battle report (look out for a full report on the Megablitz and More blog, see blog list to the left) just gratuitous pictures of some lovely toy soldiers out in the grass on a sunny day.

French light cavalry and horse artillery approach Mont St. Jean, in the background is the chateau of Hougoumont

A closer look at Hougoumont defended by British and Allied troops on the right flank

The farmhouse of La Haye Sainte viewed from Mont St Jean, beyond it is the sandpit defended by the 95th Rifles.   The flags in the background represent troops which are not yet visible to the enemy, some may be dummy markers.

French infantry and artillery deploy before La Haye Sainte, further back on the road Napoleon and his staff  confer at the Inn of La Belle Alliance

Allied artillery dominate the centre of the field from the heights of Mont St Jean, the much vaunted new fangled Rocket Battery proved devastatingly ineffective!

French cavalry masses on the plain before Mont St Jean

The charge is sounded

The infantry calmly form into square to meet the thundering tide of French cavalry

The squares hold as the horsemen surge around them

The cavalry reform for another attempt

The steady British infantry await the next wave

The Prussians arrive 

The Prussian artillery opens up.....

....in support of the cavalry

The final act on the plains before Mont St Jean, the massed cavalry clash

The melee continues for several rounds 

Until both sides brake off  and retire

The field of battle was so large that you couldn't follow anything that was going on elsewhere, only the the action you were immediately involved with, and that's how it should be.  So this is just a flavour of the biggest game we've played to date and no doubt there will be reports on the many other actions played popping up elsewhere on the blogosphere like here on Wargaming Miscellany.

That's all for now folks!

If only history lessons had been like this......

Every now and then it amuses me to Google the images for the search terms that have directed people to this blog and in the early hours of this fine Friday morning the Devil found such work for idle fingers, leading me to this fun piece of amateur cinematography:

It's the story of the Battle of Waterloo filmed as a stop motion video using 54mm toy soldiers, I thought it was great fun and enjoyed the soundtrack too.  It incorporates just about every Highlander figure you can think of and an impressive collection of Britain's Deetail French cavalry as well, while scanning the ranks to identify the figures used look out for the Lone Star Lone Ranger's horse Silver among the cavalry breaking on the Allied infantry squares.

I know that a lot of time and effort goes into making these films and I would love to have a go one day myself but in the meantime lets raise a Huzzah! to those fine spirits who make such works for our enjoyment.

With the 200th Anniversary of Waterloo fast approaching there is word that the Emperor has returned once more and is marching on a garden in England wherein the carnage will be renewed, albeit in reduced circumstances (54mm).  On that note I must away to dust off some Cuirassiers and Scots Greys.

Seen at the London Toy Soldier Show March 2013

Time seems to be running away from me just lately, a few weeks ago I went to the London Toy Soldier show, trading appeared very slow to me but among the highlights I saw this rather nice little collection of Belgian composition figures on the table of Mercator Trading.

In the centre a mounted King Leopold III of Belgium and his three children by Queen Astrid, Lto R: Prince Baudouin, Prince Albert and Princess Josephine-Charlotte.  They are flanked by Napoleonics: on the left by three French infantry and on the right what I take to be Belgian infantry of the United Provinces (I'm basing this on what I can see of the standard).  Made in Belgium by N.B. (Nazaire Beusaert), I estimate that they were made about 1939 when Josephine-Charlotte would have been aged 12, Baudouin 9 and Albert 5, there is no figure of Queen Astrid as she was killed in a car accident in 1935.  The mounted Leopold is quite common but I'd never seen the children before and they make a charming little group, it saddens me to reflect that within a year of these figures being made Belgium had been overrun and the family's life turned upside down by war.

On the same table was this collection of mid 1930's carved wood "erzgebirge" style SA men (I use the word  guardedly as it's in danger of becoming a generic term for any Germanic folksy type wood carved figure when it more comfortably refers to touristy Christmas tree decorations, which these are surely not).  I've not seen so large a collection as this before, it includes field tent, SA barracks and a staff HQ, the bandsmen in black caps are SS, going by the various sizes and styles of carving these have been pulled together from several makers.  Individually the figures have a simple naivety about them but en masse they evoke the era and regime that produced them, and I find that rather chilling.

Russian clay toy soldiers for wargaming

There seems to be a thing in Russia for making toy soldiers out of modelling clay I don't know if they are soft like Plasticine or they harden like FIMO but I am in awe of the patience and dexterity of the people who make them.  The sort of thing I'm talking about can be seen on this website showing a wargame of the Battle of Wachau 1813 with 45mm figures, or in this magazine article about the collection of Sergey Kiselev who sculpted his 30mm wargame figures over a period of 31 years (the photos belie their size until you see them standing next to a zippo lighter). 

Links to these sites have featured on various blogs and Yahoo Groups before but I don't recall where or when so if I should have given credit to someone else for finding them in the first place my apologies but I can't remember who you were.  Anyway my reason for bringing this subject up is that I came across this video by accident, enjoyed it and felt I should share it with a wider audience.

As I am still a bit of a blog virgin it is also an experiment to see if I can add videos to this site.  Posts here have been sparse lately as I have been on a bit of an end of year creativity bender, doing lots of conversions and painting, when you feel the urge you have to follow it before it all wears off. 

Oh yes........... a Happy New Year to all, now enjoy the film.

All I can say is they must have some awful long hard winters in Russia!

There's going to be a BIG PARTY in London tonight.......

No.......... it's not the opening of the Olympics......................

There'll be lots of Music..............

Lots of Women..............

Lots of Dancing..............

Lots of Eatin' and Drinkin'............

Everybody'll have a good time...........until the drink runs out, then.........

Lots of Fightin'.............

Have a Good Day!!!!!!!!!!

Skirmish Wargame Group - Toussaint L'Ouverture game in 54mm

The Skirmish Wargames Group are well known for picking some unusual scenarios but at the London Toy Soldier Show in June I think they surpassed themselves with a game set around the slave revolt of 1792 in Saint Domingue (Haiti).  A very confused affair in which plantation slaves rose against the French colonists and were armed by the Spanish (who occupied the eastern end of the island) and the British, who mounted an amphibious landing.  They then rallied to the French when the Revolutionaries abolished slavery and, led by the very able freed slave Francois Toussaint L'Ouverture, they ousted the Anglo Spanish garrisons and set up their own government.  Subsequently Toussanit found himself fighting the French again when Napoleon became First Consul and sent an expedition to reclaim the Island and reinstate the slave trade.

An overview of the table, in the centre a plantation building surrounded by bush and cane fields, at the far end the slaves are rousing themselves with voodoo incantations.  The fun thing about the SWG is their inventive use of scenery and accessories, the bushland is made from teddy bear fur while the plantation building has seen service as a Russian dacha for various periods.

The insurgents led by Toussaint L'Ouverture advance through the bush, the great man himself is in the left foreground sporting a bicorne with red and white plume, a band of armed Mulattos move forward on their right flank.  Toussaint and his men are new metal figures made by Beau Geste of Argentina.

Among the troops sent by Napoleon to retake the island in 1802 were these Polish regulars, also made by Beau Geste, and led by an officer from Replicants

When the French expedition arrived Toussaint led his men into the interior and fought a guerrilla campaign, which is the scenario for this game.  Although Toussaint surrendered early on and the country was soon pacified after that, the withdrawal of freedom and equal rights soon led to further insurrection and mutiny against the French, whose biggest enemy was now yellow fever.

I'm not sure where this chap fits in the story but he's a nice character figure and in period costume so why not?

The French colonists, figures from various sources and in sizes from 54mm up to 70mm it just shows that you can get away with mixing scales if you just don't stand the figures too close together!

The free mulattos were given equal rights with white and creole colonists after the storming of the Bastille but this was also revoked by Napoleon when he became First Consul. I think the mulattos above are conversions but I'm not sure from what.

The slaves practising voodoo are made from Marx Daktari set natives and some Hong Kong Tarzan figures.

PZG Napoleonic infantryman

This is the last of the collectable figures I picked up at last week's PW show, not a large haul considering the amount of esoteric stuff there to be had but the truth is that before very long I started to suffer from toy soldier overload and became incapable of rational thought. I had taken a shopping list to the show, mostly items I wanted for conversions to supplement the armies I'm building for the "Funny Little Wars" project but immediately abandoned that and bought us stuff tht was totally off list.

This figure was made in Poland, I presume by PZG (Polski Zwiacek Gluchych), the Polish Union for the Deaf, who ran workhops manufacturing all manner of things to raise money for deaf people. The organisation still exists today but no longer makes toy soldiers, this example is 54mm plastic. Collector Jim Lloyd is probably the leading exponent of PZG figures in Western Europe and has a website well worth looking at here.