Sunday, June 21, 2020

2mm Napoleonic Terrain and Units for Waterloo


Hi All!

Last summer I began a 2mm Napoleonic project using 3D designs sourced from Forward March Studios. During that initial burst of productivity I managed to create two decent sized forces, one for the French and another depicting the Anglo/Portuguese of the Peninsula.

As June 18th marked the anniversary of Waterloo I thought it would be fun to revisit this project and add a few more units and terrain specific to that campaign.

After snooping around, I picked up a batch of building sets from Brigade Models which depict several locations that are iconic to that battlefield. So what we have here is the chateau of Hougoumont, the walled farm of La Haie Sainte, the church at Plancenoit and the inn of La Belle Alliance. Everything except La Belle Alliance has been based on 4" MDF squares as I wanted each base to act as a 'sector' for gaming purposes.

For Hougoumont and La Haie Sainte I wanted to include their formal gardens and orchards as they played an important role in the battle. For the garden walls I used thin plastic sheeting and for the hedges I glued down trimmed figure packing foam (the stuff you find in blister packaging) which I thinly coated with Liquitex before painting.

La Haie Sainte with its attached Orchard
La Haie Sainte with French columns and a square nearby.
Hougoumont being attacked by a French battalion in line.
The village of Plancenoit became a critical battle within a battle. I have the first base done depicting the village churchyard. Historically the possession of the churchyard seesawed between the Prussians and French throughout the late afternoon - a real charnel house. I plan to add another two bases to better reflect the entire footprint of the village.


Plancenoit's churchyard mocked up with some extra buildings and plasticard bits.

Plancenoit's churchyard with two French columns approaching.
Finally, the inn La Belle Alliance. Napoleon used the inn as his headquarters the morning before the battle and it was nearby to this location that Blucher, the commander of the Prussian forces, met up with Wellington in the evening of the 18th upon their victory over the French.

La Belle Alliance with a penny to give a sense of scale.
And, dug up from the photo archives, here I am at La Belle Alliance, er, Le Caillou  when we visited the battlefield in 2008.


For La Haie Sainte's formal orchard, and for the odd individual tree here and there, I decided to create my own from bits found around the hobby desk. After a bit of experimenting, I used the same packing foam I used for the hedges and trimmed them into roundish shapes using small topiary scissors. 



I then pierced the foam with 1/2" brad nails dipped in hot glue to serve as the tree trunks. Once they were set up I coated the foam in Liquitex and then painted them up using craft paints. 



There you go, fast and easy microscale trees.




I also added a few more units to my British force, battalions in line, column and square.


Here's a unit of British infantry in column. It's interesting that the Brits had their colour party positioned in the center of their formation as opposed to the French, who had their's leading from the front.


Here is a side-by-side comparison of two differing column formations. See how the French formation is more compact due to the three-rank doctrine? Neat. To me this is one of the highlights of doing this in 2mm as one can convey, basically in 1:1 scale, the wide variety of formations that were used by the various powers. Pretty cool, eh!?


The same goes for the line formations. In this scale we can see the British two-rank doctrine creates a formation that is substantially longer than an equivalent sized French unit in three ranks. You can see that unit discipline and firepower is the focus here.


Here is a British battalion drawn up in square formation.


And finally, you may have noticed the smoke markers that I've used in some of the previous photos. I've discovered that in large games we often need a visual reminder of what units have fired from those who've not, so I had these MDF markers made up by Byron over at Northern Lights Terrain based on some sketches I bodged together. 



The markers are simply three irregular shaped layers of MDF glued together to give the impression of gun smoke. I find that they're easier (and less messy) to use than pillow ticking. 


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There you have it! Thanks for sticking it out to the end. These were a lot of fun to work on and I'm looking forward to using these when we can all get back together to game in-person. 

Remember, be excellent to each other.

Curt

25 comments:

  1. Fabulous stuff, thanks for sharing

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  2. This is just sensational stuff Curt, absolutely beautiful.

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  3. Absolutely beautiful work mate. Inspirational!

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    1. Thank so much Millsy - I'm delighted you like them.

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  4. Fantastic, though to tiny for me, I draw the eyesight line at 6mm.

    Oh btw, I've sent you an email about a week ago for something post ahpc related, could you check it for a second?

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    1. Thanks Tom! I recommend you focus on the formations, not the figures in this scale. Really they are just textured block to give the impression of lines columns and squares.

      I just responded to your email. Sorry for the late reply! I blame the nice weather.

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  5. Absolutely outstanding. This is unique and looks like a real army at the scale. Very inspirational.

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    1. Thanks very much! I really wanted a macro-level look at the battlefield, so I'm happy that my minimalist approach looks good to your eyes.

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  6. Hi Curt! Great looking stuff. I don’t have a 3d printer but for my upcoming birthday I am getting a 3D pen. I will try to make some battalions for the Swedish Russian War of 1808-1809. The How can I figure out the size of the companies in 2mm ground scale? The Swedish Battalions deployed in 2 lines of 4 companies each battalion. I am trying to figure out the size of each company so I can make the battalions in different formations and with different number of companies. In 1808-1809 most of the battles had portions of battalions. Any suggestion would be helpful! Thank you! Mark.

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    1. Thanks Mark! Let me dig up my notes on this project and see if I can come up with a few ideas. Back in a bit.

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  7. Wow that is really cool. It looks great, very well done indeed.

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  8. Brilliant stuff, hope you both are well

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    1. Thanks so much Martin, we hope you are healthy and happy.

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  9. Fantastic and inspirational - thank you!

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  10. Outstanding work Mr. Curt! Seeing your model of Hougoumont reminds me of being there in 2015 with the lads. We still miss our dear friend and comrade Glenn Shott as I know you do as well.

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    1. Thanks Dal! Yes, I often think of Glenn when reading/playing Waterloo. A great heart - he is sorely missed.

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  11. Beautiful work! Just curious, would I happen to be able to commission you to do two sets of armies like this? Feel free to contact me if interested!

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Thanks for your comment! As long as you're not a spam droid I'll have it up on the blog soon. :)