Waterloo done the Airfix Way with Phil Sabin

Following on from Bob Cordery's example (in his Wargaming Miscellany blog) post, I too have to pay tribute to Phil Sabin's latest completed project (and anybody painting 450 Airfix 20mm [1/72 in old money] old school wargaming figures gets my respect). Waterloo - The Dunnigan way (which to teh man's credit, originally created as a free wargame) with a few new Sabin tweaks added: 

In Phil's own words: 

Coinciding neatly with the release of Ridley Scott’s new blockbuster movie on Napoleon, I have just posted the 450 significantly improved 2^nd edition of my own much-downloaded tweaks for Napoleon at Waterloo, together with a video illustrating and explaining my changes and showing a complete game using my new bespoke 3D playset with 450 painted Airfix figures, each representing around 400 real troops or 50 cannon.  

You may find the tweaks and video at https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/199517/simple-rules-tweaks-greater-realism and https://www.youtube.com/@philipsabin1653 respectively.  

Please share both links as widely as possible on other relevant board and miniatures gaming for a (together with the link to Charles’s book at  https://www.usmcu.edu/Outreach/Marine-Corps-University-Press/Books-by-topic/MCUP-Titles-A-Z/Wargaming-Waterloo/), so that other enthusiasts are made aware.

Our discussions of Charles’s ideas in his article and book provided the main impetus for me to create the 3D playset (using figures I first painted decades ago) and to revisit my original 2020 tweaks.  Although the amendments proposed by Charles and myself coincide in several areas, our approaches are rather different, as is discussed in the thread below on ‘Tweaking Published Games’.  Charles mostly takes the existing game system as read and focuses on more literal modelling of aspects such as the size of the farm garrisons, the tractability of woods and the times at which various contingents became available.  I have used much more of a ‘design for effect’ approach, by playing the game repeatedly and introducing successive tweaks and constraints so that it comes closer to the historical course of events as regards aspects such as the differences among the three combat arms, Wellington’s reliance on  defensive terrain,  the fatal impetuosity of British horse, the long resistance of the farmhouses, the French cavalry charges, the progress of the Prussian advance and the time represented by each turn.  Charles rather surprisingly leaves the original Anglo-Allied forces mostly unchanged, whereas I have shifted and combined a number of Wellington’s units to yield a far better model of his forces.

It is interesting to compare my own tweaks and illustrative refight with those provided by Charles on pp.137-48, 157-58 and 299-300 of his book.  Both offer better simulations than does the original game, but their significant differences show the highly personal and individualistic nature of wargame modelling, which Peter Perla rightly compared to creating a painting of the real phenomenon.  Our respective contributions give us plenty to discuss in this forum if desired.  Besides the thread I mentioned above, newcomers may like to browse the other threads below on ‘Simulation vs. “Glorified Chess”’ and on ‘Esdaile’s Analysis of Waterloo Sims’ to see the extensive discussions we have had already.  I hope that our contributions (including the inspirational sight of my figure version of the game) will encourage some of you to revisit this classic design and to tweak it in your own preferred style.  After waiting patiently in their box files for decades, my bespoke miniatures have already seen extensive action during my many playtests, and I look forward to using them in plenty of future refights, perhaps with Bondarchuk’s 1970 movie playing in the background for added atmosphere!

The final word from this Blog: 

Just those two screenshots make it mouth watering for me, what Phil has done in the rules, explained in the video makes it cool! Respect for completing a nice little project!