French Artillery

I'm still a bit slow on my updates although I'm busy painting away. I have completed a couple of no frills French artillery batteries.

They were repainted from figures I'd picked up over the years. Pretty much total repaints to be honest.

I used Andrea paints for the blues and they worked really well. I describe them in the wee video I did. I left out a highlight on the guard horse artillery to see how much of a difference it made and in 18mm not much.

I'm glad to get these wee guys out the way. I had them sitting around staring at me from the workbench for a good while.

Just a little flirtation with my French army as I've moved back to Prussians. The Falkirk lads are planning on Waterloo again this year so I'm using the event as motivation. 

Still pretty happy with these wee guys. The braid came out fine and the overall effect on the base looks cool with flowers etc.

I'll try and get another post up soon. I've finished a landwehr battalion and I'm onto a 2nd and final silesian landwehr battalion.

Happy Wargaming!

French Line Battalions : No Frills

Recently I started a little project to get some battalions added to my collection quickly. Over the years while adding to my lead mountain I've picked up a lot of loose part painted figures from friends and fellow gamers who have for whatever reason decided not to continue with their 15mm Naps. Previousl I would trade them away for unpainted lead, however I have now decided to speed paint them up and force them into my own armies. 

1st up are 2 battalions of French in advancing poses. They have been cleaned up with scalpel and files to the best I could manage and have been given a no frills paint job.

I have a few more videos of the process on YouTube if anyone is interested. These 2 were finished in 3 weeks so I'm very happy with them!

As the troops are from different collections they were pretty much repainted so they matched each other and my own collection. I have dropped a few highlights and no buttons were painted but despite the short cuts they have come out pretty nice and on the table who will notice?

I threw a few casualties into the mix to give them a hard fighting look. And plenty of overalls plus ticking material was blocked in.

So not the cleanest looking battalions but I'm chuffed they are ticked off my "to do" list!!!

This may well be my last post of 2016. I hope you are all enjoying our hobby and thanks to everyone who has dropped by to have a look or left a comment!!

Have a great Christmas and all the best for 2017!!!

French in Greatcoat by Gav Booth

Sorry for the lack of posts through March, I haven't got a clue where this month has gone? I've been pretty busy with life however I have still been painting the troops and I received a package in the post from Gavin Booth of "Furphy's Brush with History". Gav like myself is a 15mm/18mm Napoleonic enthusiast and has very recently started commission painting. Anyway long story short Gav had a quiet spell so I thought I'd take the opportunity to get Gav to paint up some French for me.

I've made a wee video in Youtube if your into that kind of thing however if not I have also included pictures below:

So the commission was 3 battalions of French in greatcoat, 1 Gav had purchased himself and 2 of my own, I cleaned up my troops and drilled the flag men and sent them down to Gav. A couple of months later Gav sent them up all painted and lovely!!!

I painted the pompoms, added a little highlight to the musket metal and did a couple of figures to fill the ranks as we decided the lads with the small fanion should go into the grenadier (or voltigeur) company. I finished them off by basing them in my own style so they would fit in well with my own troops.

I have to say I'm really pleased with them, Gav has done a lovely Job using quite a few different colours on the greatcoats and shako covers. I have spread the different colours through the battalions to get a nice campaign look for the battalions. The little company fanions I have painted red and may add detail to them in the near future but for the moment they will do fine.

Gav put a lot of effort into the smaller detail around the backpacks and it's really nice to see.  I'm well chuffed with my commission and I would definitely commission Gav to do more although I cant see him having very many quiet spells again. Top painting Gav!!!

I'll put up a Saxon line battalion I finished recent soon.
Happy Easter and Happy Wargaming!!!

Guard Chasseur a Cheval WIP

Well John will be glad to see these guys making a showing at long last!

A wee while back my good friend John (Von Blucher) over in the USA very generously sold off some of his fine AB Napoleonic collection to help out a family member (or family friend I can't quite remember?). I was lucky enough to pick up his guard chasseur a cheval regiment (as well as some commands that I posted earlier). Unfortunately the postal service decided to put the package through its paces and a lot of the riders were separated from their mounts as well as a few bruised and broken bones.

Anyway I had plans to enlarge the regiment to a 40 strong unit and to make a separate 3 man command base so I set about taking the remaining troopers off their mounts and cleaned plus painted extra troopers and horses. They are not 100% finished yet but I thought it was time to share the . . . 

So this is the 1st 24 of the regiment and the rest will follow soon. I have a flag to reduce and a few little areas to finish off on the remaining WIP figures then they can join the regiment and then there are also the Mamelukes to add in!!! Yes I know it looks as though I will have to many troops! I'm thinking when the Mamelukes are done I may  split them and making a second regiment of 24 for my brother David?

So with my own painted troopers and horses mixed in with John's I really could not tell you who painted what? John did the regiment with bright vibrant colour so I tried my best to match them and I feel it worked well. I changed the faces to my own style so they match my other troops but to be honest not that different from John's own painting. The uniforms are definitely a lot lighter in colour than the chasseur a cheval troopers I have painted for my Napoleon command base and I really like them. I'm just not that brave to go lighter without following someone's lead.

This is the full 40 strong regiment, 16 troopers still to finish and a flag to add. They are really very close to being finished and I'll aim to have them done for the Waterloo anniversary battles we will no doubt have!

And a little dark pic of what else I'm working on at the moment. 6 lieb hussars not quite finished but very, very close plus I have just varnished another 4 Von Lutzow freikorp troops tonight! 12 down, 20 to go and the rest have all been base coated and have a lot of 1st shades and details done.

So that's me for tonight.

Have a good week and happy wargaming!

Regards Paul

Napoleon Completed

Good news, I finally finished the inner circle of Napoleon's command! Well I've had this lot sitting around for far to many year so to finally see them painted up gives me a great lift and also a great feeling of relief!!!

I hope you don't mind that I'm showing them yet again as I know I've posted a couple of WIP posts already. I also uploaded another video so I hope you enjoy it.

Again I've included a few pics just incase the video quality is not so great however my photography isn't so great either funnily enough with most of the pics being over saturated with light! Ah well you can't have everything and I'll work on that for my next post! So here he is the scourge of Europe ready to lead my none existent French army! I seriously need to paint up some French battalions now or he will be forever leading the David's battalions

A close ups of the blue on my Bertheir, definitely a big positive for me in doing this group has been finally finding a blue (2 actually) that I now can use on my future French army. As I said before I had a good deal of clean up on some of the figures however they were a real joy to paint. Another huge plus, the horses are absolutely lovely and I've manage with the inner and outer circle to keep every horse pose different.

My mounted guard chasseur a cheval, again a pretty burnt out picture so almost impossible to see the shading.

Napoleon scanning the horizon as his side kicks look on. Where will he take them next???

This is the other blue I used, on Duroc this time. Not quite as rich as the intense blue however still very, very nice with really good coverage. The very cool BH Russian gun, these are lovely artillery pieces and I think just as nice as the AB guns.

So that's the big cheese, número uno finished, thanks for viewing and hopefully get something else finished for the end of January?

Vive l'Empereur!!!!

New Recruits

If you frequent TMP you may well have seen my good friend John (Von Blucher) post up some of his excellent troops for sale with the proceeds going to help out a family member. I have always admired John's brush skills so when the chance came up I managed to pocket some for myself (If you read my blog regularly you will know that eventually I have designs on putting a French army of my own together so John's French commands are a welcome addition). We had a wee bit of a bother with the post, however this pushed me to re base the troops in my own style. John, I hope you don't mind?
  

1st up Lefebvre Desnouette's command stand chasing down a Prussian reserve infantryman from the 6RIR. Hopefully this matches in historically?). Craig was good enough to point me in the direction of a regiment that was overrun by the retreating french in 1813. Phil this 1 is for you with an allied figure in a bad situation for a change!!!

John originally had converted a trumpeter to go with the main officer figure but unfortunately it was damaged in the post, I have now repaired the trumpeter and he will be included in the main regiment. I like to have 3 figures on my cavalry bases so I pulled 1 of the flag guys from the regiment to make up the numbers. I had to do a wee bit of retouching of the figures after the postman had, had his fun but I think they came out well.
Great figures John!!!
  

The new trumpeter pinched from the regiment.

I have wanted to use this figure for a long while, Run Forest Run!!!

I also received a brigade stand that I re based in my own style.

Again I messed around with the uniforms and faces a wee bit to make them into my own style however the figures were already spot on. 

And a French Marshall command stand. John I'll need to discuss your method for French blue with you again as I can't get it quite right.

The infantry colonel was added in by me as John's Infantry officer was in the earlier uniform. Well it's fair to say I'm very happy with my new troops and . . .

. . . still to come a full regiment of Guard chasseur a cheval!!! John sent me 24 and I took 1 out for the command. I matched up 9 to give me 32 however I will be painting up more to make a full 40 man regiment (they will also be re based on 48mm x 30mm bases as soon as they arrive). John has very kindly sent over some Mamelukes to add into the group as well!

Thanks again John, brilliant figures!!!

French Artillery 9.9.13

As you will know if you've been following my blog lately I have been mostly concentrating on late war allied armies as my brother and nephew are meant to be working on the French. Anyway I burned myself out on Prussians this past couple of months so I have been messing around killing time cleaning up the odd unit while waiting for my painting flow to return. 

    

Well a few years back my wife wasn't working and despite myself working horrible, horrible extra hours I didn't have a huge amount of spare cash to buy unpainted armies from Fighting 15's. So I was always on the look out for a bargain (eBay lots with 'out of focus' pics and the odd low priced 'buy it now' item etc). In the end I picked up quite a few batches of heavily painted AB figures. Some I thought I could save but most that I felt were destined for a swim in the green. 

   

In amongst these lots was a number of French artillery figures poorly based with sand up their legs plus the flash left on and very roughly painted with a gloss dark blue finish. Well last week I took the notion to get stuck into them, I pulled them off the bases then cleaned off the flash and sand and tried my best to take the colours to an even base coat before mounting them on bases (I felt if I could get them on the bases there would be a better chance of me finishing them!).

   

Then I planned on what paints to highlight with and really went to town with them. I had no idea how the uniform highlight would look until I matt varnished them. I was amazed how well they came up but I did spend an awful lot of time on them. I have 2 batteries based up but stopped short of doing the 2nd at the moment as the 1st was a killer!

    

So now I have a new French battery to add to my collection and I'm chuffed how they turned out. The crew men may be out of position around the guns as I haven't looked at this for years, I did have a good search online but couldn't find the info I needed so they will just have to do.
   
Out of all the figures I picked up I have 2 foot batteries as well as a 3 gun guard horse battery (that may need to go swimming in simple green?), as well as 2 guard foot batteries. The guns all worked out across the batteries but I'm not sure if some are from the original battle honours guns. I picked up all the howitzers later from Fighting 15's to complete the batteries.

   

This is how far I got with my Silesian landwehr cavalry before I hit the wall.

I'll get to them at some point . . .

I would like to add I am not being critical of whoever painted the figures originally. Everyone does their troops to the standard they are happy with and what they can manage with their budget and time and that's cool with me. I knew what I was getting and was very happy with what I got for the price they sold them to me at as it was below the unpainted cost of AB figures and I very much appreciate that!

Anyways I'm not sure when my next unit will be finished as I will need to learn to walk again now and hopefully soonwill  be back to work.

Happy wargaming!

1st Battalion 57th Iine

For the past 20 years I have had a huge amount of 25/28mm Naps figures taking space around our family homes and last year I finally decided that I was not going to start them let alone finish them. I posted on this blog with a hope for a swap with any fellow wargamer who was looking to move from 15mm to 28mm Naps. I was lucky that Neil from Napoleonic Wargamer had the same idea as me and was happy to swap his AB and Battle Honours collection for my Elite and Essex collection.
 

I had planned to rush through my French, not painting any buttons or edging, with very little detail work so I would have a force to fight my Prussians and Russians pretty quick but that turned out to be a piece of nonsense as I ended up trying to hit as much detail as I could. Something about spots, leopard and changing comes to mind.

Neil had given me a good start with around 14 of the figures being base coated already plus some flesh and a fair bit of detail was present in some so I managed to put them into my own style pretty easily.

The hardest part was deciding on the shades of grey so the white belts didn't look to harsh or not strong enough. I ended up with my old trust codex grey for the belts with a highlight of a lighter grey before the white on the trousers.

Anyway I am pretty happy how they are turning out. I stupidly messed up the flag. I glued the eagle the wrong way round and had to try and turn it! Total killer!!! Beautiful flags from the 1812 set of Flags for the Lads (I like their French Flags a lot!)

Any mistakes with pom poms or wings for the drummers etc feel free to point them out. I haven't looked at French for a very long time and probably missed a lot of detail. I got a little confused with the command group, I take it the eagle guard is a grenadier figure?

My 1st Young Guard

I bought a load of Old Glory figures in the bring and buy sale at Falkirk Wargame Show (excellent show) a couple of years ago and this is the 1st battalion I finished.

I hadn't seen many Old Glory figures before and had heard mixed reports about them in the past but these guys I really liked.

There were loads of different poses in the pack and the detail looks really good to me and I found them very easy to paint.

I was lucky enough to pick them up in the old larger bags of 100 infantry and 32 cavalry and I am kicking myself that I didn't buy more as the guy selling them had stacks as he was moving from 15mm onto 28mm Napoleonic. I believe the Old Glory figures were sculpted by different people and I guess that is why you get mixed opinions from other wargamers? Price wise these guys were perfect at £10 for 100 figures! Bargain!!