The Prussian army at Waterloo for AOE (Age of Eagles) rules in 28mm

This one was possible when Warlord and Perry released their Landwehr and Line infantry plastic boxes. Even so you can see plenty of my usual conversions based on the 28mm Hat figures and many metal officers and characters. Still no artillery, that will come from Perry, but some cavalry and all the infantry are here.

AOE (Age Of Eagles rules) British 3rd /Foot Guards and Prussian 11th Hussar in 28mm at Waterloo 1815

 

By adding the Foot Guards and General Cooke miniature the 1st British infantry division is done. The problem is that its only the ninth Brigade sized group of the Allied army to be built and some thirty are still to go ... glups!...

In better shape is my Prussian army with all infantry done - only missing was this stand of Jägers - and a few more cavalry joining the ranks from today.

The Foot Guards are a mix of Victrix and Perry all with Perry heads. The sapper is a metal Perry miniature. 

By mixing Victrix and Perry you can even mix their arms and having a complete set of different figure from each other. 

General George Cooke was made from a Perry metal Colonel and painted with light colored hair as it shows in period paintings. 

The Prussian Hussars are made from horses and torsos from the French Perry Hussars with the addition of Perry Prussian infantry heads. The shabraque´s teeth were smoothed with a hot iron in Prussian style. 

Unfortunatly only one of these Jäger bases is necessary for the entire Blücher´s army as these Perry figures are cleverly built with the same torso but with moving arms and head which changes their movement dramatically. 

Next: a video on the Waterloo Prussian army.

Hastings 1066- The Norman army in 20mm for Impetus rules

 

This Norman army was an old wish of mine since Revell released its box in 1989. While the figures looked great there was the obvious problem of only two horsemen per box and only with rearing horses. Also a number of other armies from the early Middle Ages could be modelled, like Portuguese and Castillan for the Reconquista or Crusaders for the first few rounds of invasion of the Holy land, but the horsemen problem continued and the project kept on being delayed. 

This is how the Norman army would have looked like at Hastings. The centre would be occupied by the Normans themselves with Roger of Montgomery´s French and Flemish on the right and Alan of Brittany´s Bretons on the left. The first line would have been made of archers; the second, of heavy infantry and the third, of heavy or medium cavalry. A total of 15 Impetus stands were made, a match for the Saxon army. They are ready to climb Senlac hill or Caldbec hill if you prefer. 

Now for the Norman host proper, the most numerous of the three groups with maybe around 5000 men. All figures are Revell (with the exception of Bishop Odo of Bayeux with a club, an Italeri figure, leading the army next to William). 

This is the trick I used to produce some 20+ cavalry figures. I used some of the poses of the foot Revell Normans with swords, carved a bit of plastic from the middle of the legs (ouch...) and sat them with the help of an hot glue gun in Airfix or Italeri Medieval horses from several boxes. Also a few of the rearing Revell horses got some heat for them to bend to some more common poses. The Pope's flag was placed in the front rank of this stand. 

The infantry was less problematic as Revell gives a nice assortment of poses. The only  aspect worth mentioning was the usage of glued photocopies of 25mm Norman shields from the web, scaled down and retouched as the brands place those lines to avoid, well, exactly what I did... In fact all Normans and French have this trick both in cavalry and infantry. 

The archers are the same for the three hosts. In the end I regretted not placing the mailed archers only in the Norman stands but frankly I don´t know if this was the case. 

 

Now for the Bretons which may have been some 2000+ at Hastings. Their main visual difference to the Normans characteristic was the lack of mailed armor or maybe its use under the clothes both in cavalry and infantry. 

 

For the Breton (and French/mercenary) cavalry I did not use Normans. Instead I looked in the several sets of early Medieval cavalry from Italeri (Russian, Teutonic and Crusaders) and used the ones with conical helmets or Kettle hats. Their cavalry was mostly discarded as they have the Caparison cover and were replaced by StreletsR horses. These two stands have one less figure than the Norman stands so they can be used as CM or CP as the difference between 7 or 8 horsemen is barely noticeable. 

The shields were enlarged with the glued photocopies. This time, just to make them different from the French, I painted the shield in one color only a practice I saw in a number of Bretons from different sources. 

As you can see here the smaller original shields were dwarfed by the paper ones. In the end if you place a good layer of PVA at the joint between the plastic and the paper shields you will barely see the difference and they become very tough. 

The Italeri figures, used for Breton infantry, had even smaller shields which were enlarged with the same trick. 

The full stand of Breton Infantry made of Italeri figures mostly with kite shields. When the kite shields were small they became bigger with the photocopies trick. 

Lastly, the French and other european mercenaries, maybe some 1500 or 2000 men. 

The cavalry was made pretty much like the Bretons, only with printed and retouched colorful shields. 

The French Infantry was made like the Bretons as I couldn´t find any relevant differences. Eventually they also used plenty of mailed armor like the Normans. The main source for this period, the obvious Bayeux tapestry, was made years after the battle and many details and differences between the fighters are not clear. 

One more stand of French archers, mixing mailed and non-mailed figures. I thought about placing some crossbows but there are already two in the Breton infantry stand so this one became archers-only. 

Odo of Bayeux and William still need the company of the Breton and French leaders which will join the ranks when I find a bit more of information on Alan and Roger. 

Next: a video on Hastings or on the Iraqis of 1991. 

AOE (Age Of Eagles rules) 7th Belgian infantry in 28mm at Waterloo 1815

 

The 7th Belgian infantry line regiment was part of Bylandt famous brigade that fought at Quatre-Bras and also, two days later, bore the brunt of the massive d´Érlon´s attack. Here, using brigade level AOE rules, the 7th Beçgian line represent the entire brigade. The 7th was a veteran unit with many soldiers that previously fought for Napoleon. For a good story of this unit, use this link: 

http://7delinie.be/en/history/

The figures are a mix of parts from Victrix and Perry British plastic boxes. The main changes is the usage of the stovepipe provided in two different Victrix boxes on Perry´s bodies and the erasing of the lace. This last one is particularly time consuming. The officer in a circular stand is a marker for advancing/breakthrough unit (Irregular Miniatures with a shako from Victrix). Next to it is a Perry casualty marker. 

The good thing about mixing brands is that you don´t get two figures alike. 

 If you don´t want to have this trouble you can wait until Warlord releases a number of plastic boxes of Belgian/Dutch infantry and cavalry. They are next on their On the making list and I found them by accident while looking for inspiration for these ones. 

The Command stand. The Flag is warflag and all typical British uniform details - the strips of lace on both cuffs and coat - were erased with a scalpel and  now look more like a French uniform as it should. The "French" cuffs were simply painted on. 

The Grenadier company. 

Centre companies. 

Light company. 

Casualty and breakthrough markers. 

Next: The British Foot Guards at Waterloo

The French army at Waterloo for AOE rules in 28mm size

This is one of the three Waterloo 28mm armies I´ve been slowly building since the cheaper plastics from Victrix, Perry, Warlord and Hat started to arrive. These plastics were coupled with some metal from Perry, Victrix and Irregular Miniatures. Perry Miniatures gave a lot of life to this period with plenty of characters of many of his top brass officers, specially for the French side (and that includes Napoleon, obviously). Many times I refer Warlord as the battalion commanders when in fact many are metal Victrix. As usual you can see many conversions as the engineers in the cover photo made with bodies from Hat, heads from Perry and Milliput trousers.

Rapid Fire! Italeri 1/72nd scale MKI Horsas

 

These three were on the stash for a long time. The original idea was to have three to MKI standards, one per battalion, in order to transport the men of the Glider Regiment of an Airborne division and three other to MKII standards for the transport of heavy material like jeeps and 6 pdr AT guns. Like these the transport for figures is done. In fact, I was tempted to have the Britannia resin shorter versions instead to these much bigger ones. In the end I prefered these as they are more realistic. The models were quickly assembled without seats and cockpit details which makes the assembly pretty straight forward. The absence of the landing gear in two of the three models also helps as finding the right balance for them is probably the most time consuming part of building these Italeri models. 

So, one in pristine landing condition was built and painted ...

Another one so, so ...

And another one in very bad shape...

Plenty of scattered pieces from the landing gear were liberally spread throughout the base. 

Obviously these scattered pieces should be hundred of meters to the beggining place of the (crash) landing but the basing doesn´t allow it :) 

Due to the rush on making a 28mm Perry stand with Napoleon on it, and only when finishing the last Horsa I then realised that all fuselages were glued in the oposite way which makes the wings being placed some 2/3 cm to the front of the glider. 'Experienced modeller', sure... 

Some sprue plastic pieces were glued inside the broken wings for it to look like broken structures. 

Next:  a video on the 28mm French waterloo army or the German figures for Omaha. 

Able Archer/ RFR rules (?) - Russian invasion of Ukraine 2022 in 20mm (part 15) - The Russian Tor M-1/2 AA systems

 

Recently the Chinese brand 4D released the HQ-17 missile systems. Initially I had no idea what the HQ-17 was but it looked somewhat familiar. By reading a bit on the issue I found that the HQ-17 is a direct copy of the Tor Russian system (NATO name SA-15 Gauntlet). So three of them were ordered from Aliexpress.  A quick arrival was followed by  quick but also complete build. Like this, together with three Pantsir, I have six AA short/medium systems for the my six BTG´s of the beggining of the war. 

The differences between the Russian and Chinese variants are minimal. The Chinese version has bigger mudguards and these were cut down until the size of the Russian original version. Of note its important to say that the first batches of Tor had a chassis with 6 wheels while the later ones (M-1/2), including the Chinese,  had 7.  The latest versions of the Tor is still used in the Russian army while the Ukrainian army had to reactivate their own early versions (6 wheels). That is why all the three models went to the Russian side. 

Another difference between the Tor and the HQ-17 is the rear part of the chassis, with a different stowage box arrangement. That was solved with camouflage nets covering that part. 

Next: The Horsa gliders 

The battle of Hastings, 1066 in 20mm size for Impetus Rules

This video shows my aproach in making the two armies on the field, the Saxon and the Norman, using plastic Revell figures. Some Italeri and even some Robin Hood Airfix were used. Of interest there may be the way to make Norman cavalry using Revell foot soldiers and horses from other brands. Also plenty of Saxon infantry got spears instead of swords as these were much more expensive. The shields of the Norman got glued paper photocopies (about 15mm lenght). The Italeri figures had much smaller shields (10mm lenght) and these got the bigger 15mm photocopies on top with the help of super glue and wood glue (used as filler) until the difference between the original shield and the paper one was barely visible.