Moving on from the Stylish blog nominations I have been working through some more Russians. These have been great fun if not a little tricky to do. I wasn't expecting to have anything done for a good while as I agreed to help out a friend with some figures, however he is away on holiday and I will be going soon too so we've put it on hold till June. (any burglars who stumble onto my blog the house will be occupied the whole time we are away ;-)
The post is a little picture heavy so sorry about that. The Jagers are all from AB and as I mentioned earlier were a little tricky as with the black belts against the green uniform you really don't get to see how they will finish up until you get the final grey highlight on and varnish them.
My regular setup with the elite base split so they can either be placed at the head of the column or placed at either side of the centre companies.
These guys are the 2nd battalion of 11th jager regiment from 7th division in 1812. I have 3 more battalions to do.
I added a hornist into the front rank of my main command stand to try and give them a more light infantry feel. Also my jagers (as with my Prussian fusiliers and Bavarian/Saxon lights) are all in skirmish order either firing, loading or advancing, my line are all in march attack. It's just my way of differentiating between my light and line.
I picked up some AB casualty figures in a swap with Neil of the Napoleonic Wargamer blog (thanks Neil) and will be adding some into all my jager battalions.
When I plan my battalions I try to add at least 1 character figure into each full company, either a musician, officer, NCO or casualty just to give a little extra interest.
I'm not sure if this will be of any help to anyone but since this little tip was passed to me for doing my WW2 bases years ago I have found it really handy. I put my static grass into old washed out and dried plastic fairy bottles (doesn't have to be fairy ;-) and after I have added PVA to my base I shoot the grass onto the areas (over an old take-away container). I find this helps the static grass stay standing up and afterwards you just pour the excess grass back into the bottle.
Also I have been working on some cossacks I picked up a couple of years ago from Stuart at our club. JP had hammered through them so I debased and demounted them, cleaned them up with files and mounted them on new bases. I blacked the areas JP had missed and have started repainting them. As with the rest of my OG Russians I am not going to spending as much time on them as with my AB's.
They still have to have their metal work cleaned up and the horses need finished but they are coming together well. I have 15 OG and 30 of a Polish manufacturer as well as a hand full of BH and AB's.
I've also managed to get another OG Russian grenadier battalion based and varnished. All they need now is their flags and grassed to finish them off.
I'll be heading off to Falkirk for their annual show this Saturday. I'll be just off night shift so will be half dead but if you see someone wandering around with a rucksack full of goodies who looks like the guy in this photo it is most probably me (i'm the 1 with the red hair!). By all means say hello as it would be cool to put some faces to names.This will definitely be my last post for a good while so Happy painting!
Cheers Paul
