Airfix’s Battle of Waterloo Wargame

I finally tracked down a copy for myself.

 It looks pretty much complete. Some damage as expected. The figures are hard styrene plastic, but the familiar Airfix Waterloo figures.

The French. The bases have the names of the divisional or brigade commanders. These are water slide decals provided on a separate sheet.

The Allied side. These guys have more damage and a couple of missing figures. Also both commanders flags have snapped off. The black base has raised areas for the tan bases to fit.

Some of the extras included in this set. Bases and a few figures. Some of the cavalry bases (only the Allied side) are quite small and narrow, but the figures do stand up.

The time/casualty tracker dial. An interesting piece, the indicators are independent. The game is divided into 15 minute moves, and Napoleon has to get a victory before the Prussians arrive.

The movement calipers. These are two piece items that click together. The backside is notched to keep the calipers at the selected distance. They also serve for artillery fire range.

The vinyl battle Matt. This one has been rolled up roughly for some time and has creases and wants to roll up again. But I think some mild heat from a hair dryer or some such might help the vinyl relax and smooth out.

Close up of Hougomont. Note the numbered black rectangles. This is for the placement of units at the start of the game.

La Haye Sainte. 

Mont St. Jean.

Environs of Pappelotte.

Plancenoit. 

Compass Rose.

A second sheet of water slide decals for the bases included in my purchase.

The Rule book.

I won’t post the rules as the blog “Vintage Wargaming” asked Airfix for permission and posted them.

So here’s the link for that:

http://vintagewargaming.blogspot.com/2012/07/airfix-waterloo-wargame.html

Oops!

HERE’s the rules:

http://vintagewargaming.blogspot.com/2012/07/airfix-waterloo-wargame-1975-rules.html

He also has more pages on the game, just advance to “newer post”.

*******

In response to request for more pix of the calipers:

Some box art on the sides:

Back To The English Civil War

I always liked the Movie “Cromwell” with Alec Guiness and Richard Harris. I first saw it on late night tv as a kid. Yeah, once the battles were done I usually fell asleep, but those battles were pretty cool.
I especially liked the “cowboy hats” they wore as I used my Giant cowboys and Airfix Civil War Confederares in pell mell battles on the floor, pretending they were the soldiers on tv. Lacking the internet in those days, I had to rely on black and white reproductions of paintings like “Cromwell at Dunbar” in encyclopedias to get any sense of what these guys looked like for real.

As an ironic twist, now as an old man I find myself using these same figures in conversions of English Civil War armies.

Back to the movie for a moment.
I especially liked the cannons.
They were big, imposing pieces, belching fire on command.
Today, most of the 1/72 cannon available are pretty small by comparison.
It is only with the company Mars that there have been an appearance of big guns.
Here’s a recent purchase from the Ukraine:

You get 4 guns and crew per bag, but the price is getting sharp. Just check eBay.

The crew look good and the gun is beefy:

Here’s some of my cannon:

These next guns are home made, popcycle stick gun carriage and dowel barrel. 

The little ammunition cart is an idea I pinched from the movie.

What follows is a photo shoot of most of the ECW/Thirty Years War soldiers I’ve painted since I last posted. COVID was instrumental in my having sat down long enough to coat them all with Future floor wax.

This next set is cavalry made from those cowboys I bought from a Thai toy dealer a few years back.

So I’ll close out with a couple more shots from “Cromwell”.

Risk Europe

I saw this game a while back.
It said it had 22mm figures.
So I finally bit and bought a copy:

4 colours, with more than 60 miniatures each.
Here’s the meat and potato’s:

Top row has nick knacks, small crown tokens, tiny walled castles and a bag of dice.
The bottom row has the four armies plus a bag of siege weapons.

Here’s the blue army:

Archers have crossbows, men at arms have axes and shields, the cavalry look somewhat Viking-ish with large battle axes.

The green army:

Archers, standard medieval foot soldiers with sword and shield, and barded cavalry.

The purple army:

Definitely a Muslim army look to them. Turbans and scimitars.

Finally the orange army:

These guys look eastern, pole axes and barded cavalry.

The siege weapons:

A catapult, a trebuchet, a giant ballista, and three men with a battering ram.

Now the box says the figures are 22mm tall.
So here are some figure comparisons:

Next to Giant recasts of knights they fit in well.
These Giant figures are available from several toy sellers by the bag. I got mine from ATS toys.
A little pricey.

Archers next to a 1/72 Norman figure. Not a bad match. Btw, there are polish recasts of many Airfix and Revell figures showing up in bags of 100 or so figures.

Another Revell recast shows that he is taller and beefier than the game pieces.

The mounted troops are pretty small.
Here I set them on dominos to be on a level with the other figures.
On the left is a cavalry scout from the game Sid Meier’s Civilization.
On the right is a Revell Saxon.

As for numbers of figures, each army has 35 “footmen” or men at arms.
12 archers
12 cavalry
4 siege engines
1 army banner (a flag on a stick).

So was it worth it?

I really liked the blue siege piece, the three men with a battering ram.
Most of the archers would be useful.
The men at arms would have to be in their own unit or mixed with smallish figures like the giant recasts.

Anyway, the cost was about $50 Canadian, or about $30-$35 US.