Project Waterloo Update

I was over at Lee's again this weekend doing a little more on the boards for Project Waterloo. It so happened that we could not do a massive amount as some of the stages cross over but it felt good to be ticking off a few more hours and getting closer to having this finished,

The first photo really tells the tale. Total length is sixteen feet and width is six foot. That's a total play area of ninety six square feet! Hougoumont in the foreground is on a A4 (American Legal) sized board. Lee is going over the roads with Sandtext as well as sealing the shaped hills that we had been sanding down. The two hills in the middle have had a PVA/filler treatment just before so will need to wait a few days before they can get the paint applied.

I have moved to the French (my) side of the table and you can see Hougoumont now further in to allow attacks to develop and pass on the left. Once the woods are in place then you will see why it was not attacked on that side.

A view from the British side. Expect plenty of shots of it once we get into the game as it's bound to remain a focal point when we play out the battle. Lots of the lines were for the rough working of the boards before we settled on the positions. 

La Haye Sainte between the two main hills. The sandpit has been carved out as is the sunken road in the middle of the shot. Poor thing looks rather lost on the boards. The finished boards will really help picture the battle and place the actions and locations much better than the books I have read. Well for me at any rate.

I took Frichermont over so we could check it's position to size out. I had not finished the base work at that point, see tomorrows post for an update. This leaves just one more farm to paint up and we have all the buildings done for the game, a great box to be able to tick off. I mentioned we are nearly done to Lee and his response was "Glad you think so". In fairness whilst Lee has a lot of basing to finish off and plenty of flags to get on the units he is very close to having his figures done. The boards can be done fairly fast if we have the time to get at them whilst his flagging and basing is just a few long sessions. My last large job will be making the labels and attaching to the units. Must get that started soon. 

The small blip in the distance is La Haye Sainte from the opposite end of the boards. This end of the table will be least used. It will allow us to be bringing the Prussians into view and slowly trudging down the table to the battle. Of course I could possibly get some French up the table to slow them further, that is IF I can spare any. I am really looking forward to having so many troops on the table and just seeing the spectacle. It's been nearly three years from concept to finished and it took getting the boards on Lee's gaming table to realise just what we took on. Both of us must have been mad to consider it.

Whilst some of the units have been painted by third parties the vast bulk of the work is just Lee and myself. I have been concious that a great part of the blog has been just a constant serving of 6mm French and Prussian Napoleonic's and as such must have been some what same again and again so thanks for sticking with the Vanilla, hopefully we will be in position to reward you with the full monty live from Joy of Six and then the battle played out on the blog through the next couple of months. 

Lee is already planning the next one! fortunately it sounds like we will be sticking with Napoleonic's but setting off for the Peninsular. Good news for me as we have most of the troops we will need and same goes for the buildings. However I would not put any money on it as it's quite possible elephants will be involved.