I thought I'd just write this up as I go, as I'll probably not get round to it at a later date. Here is, with photos, my attempt to sort out the entire Anglo-Allied Waterloo Campaign army with my plastic purchases!
The 'plastic mountain' in it's full horror/glory. The Anglo-Allied army, because of the variety of unit types it seems to have contained, required the most box-buying of plastics. Now I should be in a good situation to completely, or very nearly, model the whole thing!
Manufacturers are a mad combination of whatever I was able to get my hands on. As a rough rule of thumb, the ones for Italieri & Revell seem to be generally best quality, while Airfix are the most variable. Luck of the draw, really! However, there are sites available which you really can't do without.
On a similar note, what do they all look like? Well, there's another site which I have turned to and it has supplied me with ludicrous levels of information. Generally, for each base/brigade, I have looked up the largest or most notable unit contained within it, and used its uniform as representative. Now, to the plan:
These square bits of card are the 6cm x 6cm bases I intend to use. The four broad columns are, left to right, Orange's I Corps, then Hill's II Corps, Uxbridge's Cavalry Corps and Wellington's Reserve Corps. Roughly each base is a brigade, and it's broadly as per the Horse Foot & Guns army-list, but I have tinkered slightly based on reading through my book 'The Waterloo Companion'. You'll see that some bases have had some figures placed on them - these are the ones which I have taken off their sprues, & base-coat sprayed with plastikote as a test-attempt. Now I'm ready to go Industrial-Scale, and do as many of the rest as I can!
One point of interest, however, on plastic figures: I usually mount figures onto wooden ice-lolly sticks, but the smooth base of the plastics is not as rough as lead-cast figures' bases usually are. Figures I tried here to glue to wooden sticks simply snapped off with barely a touch, but strips of cardboard (from a cut-up cereal box) seem to be much more effective! Plus, you can be much more liberal with the glue - if you're fighting to get them off later, card can be cut away simply enough while a little wooden stick would probably be more resistant than your soft-plastic figures were!
More updates as I progress...
Hi there I am keen to see the progression. A fellow wargamer here in Jersey and myself looked at doing something similar. The biggest bugbear I had was with the old sordid models. The paint would peal, even after washing etc. I had to use a gloss varnish followed with a matt coat. Still best of luck to you with this project. I hope to get on with my War of the Roses project next year... Hopefully!
ReplyDeleteWhat an awesome horde!!!
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