Hougoumont model leads to big project

My friend Kevin East has big ideas, and the artistic talent to match, but modestly doesn't shout about his achievements much. Little did I realise when he came back into my life last year that I would be sucked into a wargaming project that brings me right back to the start of my wargaming life nearly 50 years ago.

Something to aspire to - a beautiful model of
The Chateau of Hougoumont

1965 was the 150th anniversary of Waterloo and to mark the occasion the recently departed great Don Featherstone put on a public display in London using the 20mm troops and sculpted terrain of Peter Gilder. Other notables of the day such as Neville Dickenson and Tony Bath refought the famous battle with, I suppose, about 2000 model soldiers on what was for those days a huge table.  I went with my friend Chris Beaumont and we 13 year olds were quite overcome by the occasion. I put that event down as the time I became a proper wargamer because we saw the real chaps in action and realised how a wargame was fought in practice rather than trying to puzzle it out from Don's book.
Tony Bath as Napoleon in 1965
Close up of the 1965 style Waterloo terrain in 1970
 I bought my first bags of Spencer Smith 30mm plastic Napoleonic figures....and the rest is history.

I later converted to doing Napoleonics in 20mm, and about 6 or 7 years after that, when they were "state of the art", collected 15mm armies.  About 15 years or so after that, inpired by a lecture by sculptor Anthony Barton, I made a passable collection of my own design of 15mm French and Spanish Peninsular figures. Many other periods and scales have been and gone and I eventually off loaded my 15mm Napoleonic armies about 3 years ago but have never lost my "love" and awe for the Napoleonic period for wargaming.

In 2010 at a 28mm Napoloeonic game he'd put on for our group my friend Paul casually said "You know, I've never refought the Battle of Waterloo", and I replied, "Well. despite all my involvement in the period, neither have I ". Paul added, "I'd really like to do it in 2015, for the 200th anniversary". There were murmurs of approval round the table but misgivings that we didn't have a venue big enough to do it justice. My response was "anyway, I'd love to do the terrain", and we left it at that........

....Until 2013.....

At this stage if you haven't seen them already have a digression to look at the three Kevin East Guest Pages in my right hand side bar.   Kevin has been building up specific Waterloo units in 28mm at a scale of 1 figure = 20 men and they are staggeringly beautifully done, but he says he is primarily a collector, with wargaming a secondary interest, and had no pre-conceived ideas about what games he would  do with them. Thus he'd quietly painted for about 5 years until coming back in contact with the Cheltenham Greatfield Group via me.

Now Paul has been the mainstay of our Napoleonic grand-tactical-scale gaming for more years than I care to remember, first in 6mm, then 15mm, and latterly in 28mm as his eyesight succombed to the inevitable ageing process. He has developed a very workable set of Napoleonic rules for multi-corps battles at one figure = 100 men. So the whole of Waterloo would need about 2000 figures.

Action hots up in Paul's recent refight of the second day of the
Battle of Eckmuhl 1809 (yes I know we are not very tidy!)

So it seemed sensible to put Paul and Kevin together to pool resources for Waterloo and we had our first meeting to discuss this project in August, knowing that we'd still need a long time to get it right.

By late Spring 2014 I expect to move into my own wargames room-cum-art studio because the builders start work on our new house in about a month or so. By 2015 we should have knocked this into shape for regular gaming and I hope to have enough room for a specially designed Waterloo set up 13 feet long by 6 feet wide, and with another 12 square feet added on to give extra depth. So that's the first madness - I've volunteered to make 90 square feet of customised terrain at a scale of 1 inch = 50 yard!  Kevin and Paul seem confident they can provide all the troops for this at 1:100.

But it gets madder....and that brings me to Hougoumont.

Kevin had acquired the neally nice Chateau and also La Haye Sainte models made by Hovels in a scale for 25/28mm figures, but as I've said, had no real idea of gaming with them until Paul and I saw them and exclaimed how could we resist not using them!  But a model as big as Hougoumont needs a skirmish level wargaming scale, and after a lot of thinking we settled on one figure = 3 real men and 1 inch = 3 metres on a 12 foot x 6 foot table with a couple of add-on pieces.   And before I knew it I was into a second mad decision - to make two more base boards for the Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte (LHS) scenarios, and rules to match.

But more madness was to follow..........

I hadn't thought this through properly.  In the excitement of the meeting I volunteered to organise and umpire the LHS scenario, thinking the other guys would take care of the figures within their already scoped games. It was only in the cold light of dawn, after my euphoria-addled head came up for air out of Mark Adkin's "Waterloo Companion", that I realised the LHS area was fought over by several battalions of green-clad King's German Legion Light Infantry and Hanoverians, and we had very few of those!  So, if I didn't do them we'd have no game. Just for added fun we'd have to recreate the various escapades up onto Mont St. Jean of French Cuirassiers and Dragoons, the 2nd Life Guards, the RHA Rocket Troop and the KGL Light Dragoons across this area of the famous field and through various times of the day. Also we'd need the French 13th Legere trying to take LHS itself. Each battalion will be between 140 and 200 figures.

And so it was that I found I'd volunteered to paint nearly 1000 28mm figures in the next 21 months! That's nearly 50 a month, or 1.5 a day. Sounds easy when  you put it like that but I do have a life, and work, and a family, and a house to renovate, and the terrain to make, and other wargame periods I had hoped to pursue (did you read my Stalingrad posts?).

It look like we will be scheduling  four weekends during our "Waterloo Summer 2015". Two different variations of the whole battle, a weekend of LHS scenarios, and a weekend of Hougoumont scenarios. Although many of the figures will be re-used I think we will be getting through about 4000 figures in those weekends, so it is no small undertaking for a tiny group like ours (yes we do have a couple more volunteers so far - thanks - you know who you are).

But, the good thing is that I've just received medical advice that I'm over the worst hurdle on my recovery from cancer.......I can expect to stay well enough to see this through. But if I'd had a "bucket list" who could imagine a Napoleonic wargamer not having Waterloo at the top? And if I do die in the attempt, what a glorious way to go......

I'm sure you will hear more about this, but for now I hand over to Kevin East. Please see the new Kevin East Hougoumont Guest page in the right hand side bar where he explains all about his lovely model and how he painted it, and there is an example of a 216 figure battalion too, of which we expect to have six or seven in play on each of our 1:3 scale weekends!

In the interests of Colonial authenticity............

I've been commissioned by the notorious author of the "Tales of the Golden Head" adventures to paint a couple of big battle scenes in oil based on some of the drawings that appeared in the Classic Wargamers Journal in 2011. (Sadly there is no longer a link to Phil's CWJ page... best consign it to history I suppose). One of the paintings calls for a number of 1920s British colonial soldiers in East Africa to be posed at unusual angles. From my previous attempts I knew what a devil it is to get the elongated elipses of those sun helmets right so I bought a reproduction of an "India pattern" sun helmet for my photo shoot.

Looking suitably tropical against the Duchess' potted fruit trees!

It was a warm day today and the lawns needed mowing so I thought I'd protect my thinning scalp and I'd give the pith helmet a try out.  It certainly protected me from the sun but eventually I felt something hit my nose and thought it was a fly until there were more hits and I realised I had a minor waterfall of sweat pouring down my face. Taking off the helmet to examine it I realised the head band is just leather and totally non-absorbant. This was completely different from my beloved 30 year old "Hang Ten" floppy hat bought in Melbourne market and which has been to five continents with me since then, and from my more recent soft baseball cap featured in many Facebook photos. They both do a good job with the sweat.

I had to be my own char wallah unfortunately but that young sparrow in the
background had me for his water carrier.

Here he is, enjoying the fruits of my labour

So the question I have for you colonial experts who've stuck with me is:

"How did our forbears, who had to wear these things in hot climates, stop the sweat getting in their eyes so they could shoot the dastardly fuzzy wuzzies?"

The reason I ask is not just so wargamers can model fetchingly coloured sweat bands, but so I will know what props to use to render my 1920s heroes of Umpopoland in a realistic way in the painting. Your views very welcome please.

Writing the above made me realise that many readers of this blog might have missed the delights of my illustrations for CWJ so I have put them as a download in my side bar under "Miscellaneous", or you can see them via this link. 

CWJ Drawings

Please respect the copyright, and a few of the originals are still for sale  - if anyone is interested just email me.

Making a start on Stalingrad ruins

Those of  you who have read my previous post first-pics-of-new-project. will have seen  photos of some of the buildings and figures I've done recently for my Stalingrad project in 1:144 scale. I concentrated on the figures in that and now I'll turn to the buildings.
First I must give credit to a new book which seems to be what I've been looking for ever since I read Antony Beevor's Stalingrad about 13 years ago. This is Armageddon in Stalingrad by David M. Glantz and Jonathan M. House.

It's a weighty tome at nearly 900 pages and 3 inches thick so will take me ages to get through. But it does contain a lot of detail and a great many maps. There are also a lot of useful contemporary photographs. It's a bit academic compared to Beevor's which is very good for the nature of the conflict rather than operational level detail.  I've only got to page 150 so far and have been searching for suitable wargame scenarios on the scale I described in the previous post.  There are an awful lot to choose from but I've just read about the first real penetrations into the city proper, from 14th to 17th September 1942, and have found a setup that will keep me busy for the foreseeable future (not forgetting more work on my SYW Imagi-Nation and my AWI armies of course!!).  I started out with the figures and ruins without any real goal other than the inspiration over many years from sundry books and movies, so please forgive the lack of exactitude. Now I do have an aim inspired by maps and text in the aforementioned book. Here's a sample map, and there are some more detailed than this too on other parts of the conflict.

By using four variations of this map and the orders of battle provided in the book I think I can refight the advance by two Kampfgruppen of 24th Panzer Division over 4 days. The main thrust followed the line of the Elshanka River and the parallel railway line, and then moved Northwards to attack Stalingrad Station Nr 2 and on to the bridge over the Tsaritsa River. At the "Rapid Fire!" scale of 1 figure represents 15 men, and one vehicle represents 5, I'll probably need 600-800 figures overall. However vehicles are a bit easier as, by this stage both German and Russian tank formations were down to very small numbers of operational vehicles. 

The top brass of 24th Panzer Division use a hasty meeting
 at the bombed out brick factory entrance to plan their attack along the Elshanka ravine 

My plan is to halve all the Rapid Fire! distances so direct fire for AT, for example, will be 24 inches. If that represents 800-1000 metres then a six feet square table could accommodate about a 3 kilometre square battle area. I expect my table to be expandable beyond that if and when I get the resources to do bigger games. This also seems about right for the amount of  table space taken up by a 40 figure battalion. Each Kampfgruppe in this scenario is loosely what I'd call "brigade strength".

Now on to those buildings. Don't know about you but I generally need something to galvanise my ideas into action. If several favourable factors come together it gets me going. The figures had been sitting in their packets since Spring while I spent day after day painting 2D pictures for the art exhibition which usually punctuates my Summer. I always promise myself some time off when that is over. Purely by coincidence, the weekend it finished Scott presented his eccentric father-in-law with a blast from his childhood in the form of  two sets of Linka moulds. Here's a useful website for those not familiar with it linkaworld

And here is a photo of some of the moulds

I experimented with a plaster/filler mix but found it rather brittle and difficult to get out without cracking, so I also tried some air hardening clay made by Humbrol and this proved more durable but liable to shrink and dry slightly curved. Sort of fortuitously for this project I didn't mind dilapidated walls, brick shaped ends or cracks, and I ended up with lots of small pieces which came in handy for brick profiled rubble.

I'm not sure how folks make good looking actual buildings with this stuff (!) but I just got stuck in and fitted it together to make pleasing shaped ruins without any real plan and all the while contemplating how little groups of 12mm figures might fit in. It seemed no good trying to model typical Stalingrad buildings as the Linka shapes are restrictive and I didn't have many window openings. I've got plenty of time to make high rise ruined apartments from foam core board later. So here are a selection of photos, starting off with  some primary coats of black, grey and cream spray paints

The recent warm weather provided ideal conditions for making  and painting
 building models outdoors

I then used  acrylic colours to provide basic ground work and "weathered" all the walls with various tones of dry-brushing.

Also shown is my "stay-wet" palette for acrylic painting.
Pretty essential in those temperatures.

All the Linka units are mounted on old 3.5 inch square computer disks, of which I have a lot redundant. I thought this would allow me plenty of variations that would fit a pattern of housing blocks or streets.

Here I made a coherent attempt at uniformity by making 3 disk/bases to try to represent a factory with rubble covered machinery and a few girders remaining from the collapsed roof.

Much to the Duchess' dismay I still collect any old thing that might be useful in
miniature building - some old plumbing bits and bolts
came in handy for this "machinery" - steel rolling mill perhaps?

Here is a closer view of the Linka brickwork. I think it's menat to be OO/HO railway
scale but it seems fine to me for larger bricks or blocks in 1:144 scale

I tried to make some resemble houses

And then there were some bases just of low wall and rubble.

The rubble piles generally started off with a small load of excess stones brushed from the tarmac on my drive. Then I added broken bits of Linka detail, that was all applied with a mixture of paint, filler and PVA glue.  I had put the stones through an old plastic kitchen sieve which I use specially for modelling, that produced a fine grey grit and it proved really good to sprinkle on the PVA-saturated rubble mixture. When completely dry shake of the excess and it's ready for the spray paints. After that the rough surface is a dream to dry brush to represent a coating of dust and small stones over the upper surfaces. 

While I had my bits boxes open it seemed a pity to just stick with Linka, so I looked for some suitably shaped objects to make some industrial looking buildings. Here is a general view at the grey spray stage.

Above and below is some kind of equipment assembly hall, maybe including administrative offices on upper levels. The core of it is a 1:72 scale ruin from a Matchbox vehicle kit and at each end the plastic casing from a defunct calculator - excellent office windows at 1:144 scale! A taller extra chimney makes it seem to soar above the little people. At the left hand end that crane-like object is a plastic strap hook from an old bag. I do like my recycling......cover it with rubble and who'd know?

I then made some foundry-like buildings with thicker chimneys and very solid structure. You can see part of one on the left above and here is the other side of it below, together with a smaller one. Both are, as is my habit, made with all sorts of bits of wood and plastic moulding from the bits box. I'll admit the left hand one might be at home on a futuristic Warthammer 40K battlefield but I'd been looking for an excuse to use those plastic curved 90 degree corner plates for years! It was certainly fun making the simulated metal and concrete and liberally applying the rubble and rusting girder effects.

I'll finish this post with some overall views of what I've done so far. I guess I'll need at least 5 times this area of ruins to make  a game feel right.

A word on the overall base. This is just part of a collection of brown terrain tiles I made for a WW2 desert game last year, so no roads modeled in it. However, I think it's good enough to get me started and in the longer term (when I have space again!) I'll model more tiles with the required Stalingrad ravines, trenches, bomb craters etc. 

Comments welcome.