20,000 visitors

Wow, I just noticed there's been 20,000 visitors to my Napoleonic blog!!!

A huge thanks to eveyone who has found my blog interesting enough to visit!!!
I never expected 20,000 visitors!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My warmest regards for the new year
best regards
Paul

See you all in 2011!

Merry Christmas!

That's us done with the Christmas rush for another year and my wee men and paints are packed away till after the New Year. Thankfully the weather has been fine (looks Christmasy but not too much snow).
Just wanted to sign off the year by wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!! See you all in 2011.


Best regards
Paul and Mai

Russian Cuirassiers

Of all the AB cavalry I have seen I think these are my favourite. I know the French cuirassiers and dragoons charging look great too but I just love the contrast of the white uniforms and black cuirass and throw in an orange, yellow or pink facing and these guys become my favourite table top cavalry regiment without a doubt.
Again sorry for my murder pictures!

I should have had these guys posted a long while ago but I was trying to get their command base finished before posting them. Anyway I have scrapped the command base for the moment and so instead of waiting until I do another 1 I decided I better get them posted up. I have only completed 24 so I have 6 more to finish off for a full General de Brigade regiment of 30.

It's only been around 2 years since I starting painting Napoleonics again so I am having to learn a lot of stuff again like painting white coats. This is the 2nd trumpeter of this regiment I have done and the 1st I wasn't totally happy with as I left to much contrast with the white on a black undercoat so with this figure I blocked in the coat with Coat d Arms rohan horse colour before doing the white and orange and I feel it worked out much better.

If anyone is interested the orange is from Games Workshop foundation range and it's a cracker, it goes over black great.
I should mention these are the Ekaterinoslav cuirassiers.

The horse and rider in the centre of this little base have to be my favourite. How I wish I could sculpt figures like this. The horse rearing back with the rider going forward is just perfect. I managed to softly reposition some of the heads and arms so that all the figures seem to be in a different pose and I think it works quite well (for me anyway).

Can you spot the mistake? I was talking about this with my buddy Robert on Saturday. I don't know how many times I have looked over my reference material and yet I still managed to miss the number 1 for Alexander the 1st on the saddle covers! Daft and unimportant I know as I am very happy with the figures and I won't be changing it now but for some reason I thought the number was regimental or something? However not to worry as I'll catch it on my dragoons and hussars!

So I think that's me for the year now as I am pretty sure there won't be much time between all the celebrations to pick up a paint brush.

I've really enjoyed doing the blog this year and I am totally surprised that there are 50 people who want to see how my wee armies progress. A huge thanks to everyone who has helped me out with everything and to all the people who have posted comments and have exchanged emails.

I hope that everyone has a great Christmas and a happy New Year!!!!!!

Russian Foot Limber

  

Following on from my Russian horse artillery limber here is their brother foot artillery limber. 1 more post to come after this before Christmas and the New Year.

   

I used exactly the same size of base as the horse artillery limber and the traces were made the same way too so not much different except I used Vallejo's Russian green instead of the Foundry Russian green highlight for the jackets just to make them look a little different.

  

The limber is again from AB and my aim is to have a limber for every battery in my armies.

  

You probably will have guessed by the huge gun sitting at the back of the limber that I am working on another artillery battery, and I am. Not sure if this is any use to anyone? I used Formula P3 skorne red for the shako cords (great colour!!!) and Vallejo vermillion red for the pipping and shoulder straps (another great colour!!!). Both of these reds cover a black undercoat really well.

   

Another 6 gun battery with some massive fire power. The figures are part of the large AB Russian army I bought off Stuart early last year and they had been given the JP machine gun painting treatment so I have cleaned and based them up and have blacked the area's that needed covered up and I am slowly getting them together.

   

I should have had this 1 finished but I jumped over to a 3 gun Bavarian battery thinking it would be easier to get that finished for the New Year. Not so! I bought the artillery figures from ebay and they had a thick layer of paint on them that I thought I could paint over. Well I got a little disappointed with them and into the magic "Simple Green" they went (base and all) and they are now back to a lovely bright silver colour!

Prussian Guard 2

Probably there are quite a few wargamers trawling ebay and wargames shows bring and buy stands for those little bargains and these figures for the most part fit this bill. So when you get them all finished off ready to join your army then they mean a wee bit more to you than the figures you buy brand new. Somehow you feel justified in your bargain hunting?

When I started getting back into Napoleonics again I wasn't sure if I would stick to it so I went for the cheaper option in 15mm Prussians, Old Glory (little did I know that AB figures would be a good investment and their prices would go through the roof! 50p to 83p for a single figure in 2 years!).


So 2 years on and I have managed to maintain my interest with the help of the internet and wargaming friends.

Last year I picked up a good amount of AB figures from the various sources noted above, enough that with a few Old Glory figures thrown in I could fill a full guard regiment plus their jagers. With my main force being OG I decided that the AB figures would form my Prussian guard battalions.

I have been trying to find a blue I am happy with for the rest of my Prussians and I think I have finally found it. I started with a black undercoat then the Foundry Prussian blue light shade and for the highlight I added a little of the Foundry Bavarian blue shade. It gives a really rich and interesting tone of blue that I am very happy with.

Most of the figures had been painted, but thankfully not too heavily so it was no problem to repaint them to my own style. I managed to get the 2nd battalion finished off pretty fast but with the arrival of a mass of Russian figures I put the other battalions to the back of my list.

This guy is my favourite as I picked him up in a seperate lot quite unexpectedly on ebay and he fitted the bill of the 1st battalions mounted commander perfectly. I went a little light on the uniform so maybe it was cut from some captured French cloth?

And here is my jager element for the guard. 1 of the figures is OG but the rest are AB.

You will see that the jagers are wearing Hungarian style blue trousers as I read this somewhere and thought it would be a nice change from all the grey trousers. (I'm not sure how universal this was or at what point they were worn?).

So that's 2 battalions down and just the guard fusilier battalion to go (I recently picked up 3 AB guns so all I need is an AB howitzer and 4 crews and i'll have a guard artillery battery too!).

Bavarian Artillery Limber

Nothing new with this 1 as I have shown it pretty much finished early in the blog but this is it all grassed up. I intend to add silfour grass at some point in the future to my bases but I bought 2 sets of the wrong colour and size and it put me off using it (expensive stuff).

My 1st Bavarian artillery limber converted from an Austrian limber team (thanks Steve!). I am not 100% on the manufacturer? I have a feeling that it is BH as the figures and horses are identical in size to BH horses I own myself and all my AB stuff towers above them but no matter as it fits in fine with my AB Bavarians.

As I mentioned before a Bavarian limber team (and Caisson for that matter) are on the Christmas lists of many wargamers but when it comes down to it you have to fashion 1 yourself. The next problem you face is getting information on the thing. A big thanks to RtL and the guys over on GdB forum who helped me out!

As the figures are so small I struggled to find AB heads to fit but eventually a poor drummer and flag man went under the knife for the glory of the fatherland. I left the Austrian collars in place and pin viced into them and also under the head. I then inserted wire and attached with liquid superglue (it has to be liquid or your figures will end up with a thick neck and I am not sure body building was in fashion back then?).

This was my 1st time out with green stuff and I now have proper tools to apply it but for this guy I used a scalpel. The collar was built up plus the shoulder scales and lapels were added (I chickened out on buttons this time out and used a pin to make holes instead, I know, I know I'm a big woos!)

So all that was left to do was add traces with flattened wire and reshape a water bottle and add an Austrian gun from the AB range and there you have it a Bavarian artillery limber quite rare on the ground. I will hopefully be doing a Bavarian caisson as well at some point.

Russian Horse Limber

Due to my weird way of working through projects this will be me 1st of many posts in the next few weeks as I have managed to get a group of stuff all pretty much finished at the same time. Again thanks to everyone who has taken an interest in my blog and has helped me out with details of uniforms and equipment. Straight out sorry for the quality of the pics as I just don't have a place for photography or proper lights.

This is what my brother and I call our Napoleonic eye candy as it has no real use on the table top but does help make your army look finished. So in case you haven't guessed already this is a 15mm Russian horse artillery limber from AB. The set comes with a six horse team but I have decided to keep all my limbers and caissons to 4 horses for space and lack of bending of the base.
Bases are from Warbases in Dunfermline.

The uniform green is a black base coat with the Foundry Russian green light blocked in. I then mixed Vallejo Russian green through it for a highlight them used the Vallejo Russian green neat for the final highlight on the folds. I have been trying to get more of a contrast with my shading lately as I spent many years modelling WW2 figures and vehicles and keeping the shading as subtle as possible. Now I want to see the different shades from a reasonable distance on the gaming table.

I added little ropes to attach the limber to each harness. I used copper wire (8 strands per rope) and clamped it in a pin vice then twisted till it reasonably resembled rope. Each 1 was then carefully attached by twisting them around the places they should be on the limber and then glued into place on the horses. I drilled little horizontal holes where the end points would be glued to make life a little easier.

The finished battery and limber altogether.

Coming up pretty soon I will be posting my Russian foot artillery limber, Bavarian limber, a Prussian guard battalion plus jagers and my Russians cuirassiers.