Napoleonic 5 7th French dragoons

 Well, it's taken a while to actually finish these chaps( although much faster than the previous dragoon unit) mainly it's been down to work and then spending every weekend looking at university towns for my daughter. I have enjoyed painting them and they've come out pretty well, again black undercoat and a  rapid coat of the various colours. I  attach a work in progress image of my painting tray and paint box with my mix of paints. I've started using sticks to attach my figures to which is  helping to speed up painting ,suggested by various bloggers and I'm glad I took they're collective advice!

As you can see there are more dragoons in the pipeline, both French and Austrian, I seem to be enjoying Napoleonic cavalry at the moment so I'll stick with it, although in the shed various other projects are bubbling along!

I had to do a little conversion work on the trumpeter as he had given up his legs in boots to a cuirassier ( well you would, wouldn't you?!) so spare hussar overall legs were press ganged into use as there are various images of dragoons in overalls. My reference for this lot was these 2 pamphlets which cost me 50p each I think,  I've got the Ospreys but they're bound in a six volume set which while nice and large,isn't very handy for painting on the sofa!

As I've said next is probably more French dragoons, probably!

All the best Iain 

A nice present

 My brother came around the other day to drop off a present, he'd found these books on WW2 and was sure I would like them and I did,printed in 1975 they still have a load of information in them and are great fun to browse. 

There is a nice range from artillery to small arms in exhaustive detail, perfect for scratch building Great patriotic war artillery, I fear another rabbit hole!

Otherwise I continue to paint but seem to have a myriad of half done projects, no doubt my focus has waned following the end of the Analogue painting challenge, plus work is mental for the moment,  but this will pass and I will be back on track!

All the best 

Iain 

Napoleonic 4 a big bunch of cuirassiers

 Here we have 4 x 12 figure units of Napoleonic French cuirassiers, one unit each of red,yellow, orange and  pink facings, all Perry plastic for 1812 to 1815 ( although I will use them for the 1809 Danube campaign, I know heresy,but you've got to catch me before you can burn me!) The flags will have to wait  a while until a printer can help me out, I've taken  Peter's aka Gonzalos advice and gone for flags even if they're not yet evident. 

Lovely iconic figures,I've gone for the reversed colours on the trumpeters as I prefer it to the Imperial livery.  These are made up of 3 boxes plus the 3 additional armoured  torsos added to 3 spare dragoon legs and  horses, plus I swapped out a dragoon trumpeters legs for overalls  and  converted a light horse and purchased an additional command stand. I've really quite enjoyed painting them,48 at one go might be too many but it does improve efficiency, which is what the hobby is all about isn't it? Oh, what no, okay anyway much easier painting uniforms, who knew? I've also gone a bit simpler on the painting in order to get these done and for future Napoleonics, prime black and then used that black as shadow, so no shadow, no highlight no wash,no white dry brushing on the black ,so pretty simple but effective enough I think, I've got to do this or I will literally never finish just the Napoleonics I have, let alone the additional ones I'm bound to purchase!

In addition there are 2 French Napoleonic generals, well  Marshal Lannes and general Lasalle, both Perry metal figures I bought myself for Christmas, well my wife and daughter refused to buy me miniatures, so I got them, wrapped them and put them under the tree,from santa! 

I've always wanted a figure of Lasalle since getting military illustrated 4 or 5 which had an article on him illustrated by Angus McBride, so here he is, Marshal Lannes will probably get someone else added to his command stand but I just wanted to get him done for  now ,of course both these commanders don't make sense with 1812 cuirassiers as they both died in 1809!

What next? Not sure, I've got lots primed but now the Analogue hobbies painting challenge is over a little less pressure to paint them, I might even do some terrain?

All the best Iain 

Italian wars 48 Venetian versus Papal States To the strongest AAR

 A real live battle, half term and I've had a week between jobs, my daughter and I decided we should have a battle, so we dug out the Venetian and Papal armies and went to it once more with To the strongest! I had the Papal force as my daughter prefers the Foundry gendarmes of the Venetian army. The newly painted gendarmes will go towards  French and Imperial armies that I want to try To the strongest with the renaissance notes,maybe after I stumble through it I'll persuade my daughter to have a go?

When I say a battle we had to give up half way through  due to the need to have the table for dinner (I'd moved it inside as it was cold in the shed and I'm a considerate parent,who knew?! You can see the shed we normally play in at the bottom of the garden, beyond the Papal force) we had reached a  point where I had destroyed two skirmisher units but due to the Venetians more aggressive actions I had managed to leave my gendarmes on my left wing split and due to the fall of  cards sitting in charge range, battering and disorder ensued, so we know how this game was going!

Still it was nice to push toy soldiers around against a live opponent, even if we didn't get to a result( probably best for me!)

Toby is,alas, not such a  great live opponent as he is even more aggressive than my daughter but more interested in what he can eat than anything else. Coming up, well there's lots of half painted Napoleonic cavalry, which seems to be taking quite a long time but I'm strangely enjoying!

All the best Iain 

Italian wars 47 Steelfist and plastic pound shop gendarmes

 Twenty four more gendarmes, eight from Steel fist, expensive (£6 each!)but exquisite, they almost painted themselves the detail is so well done ,they're pretty much bang on identical in size with Perry figures which is also helpful. I reverted to my previous technique of prime black,dry brush white to highlight and then paint in washes . They have been finished as French gendarmes as they were the most exuberant in  terms of clothing and accoutrements, my wife and daughter took to referring to all the figures in this  post( I  paint on my lap in the living room while everyone watches TV) as entrants in Rupaul's drag race and I can see their point, they are somewhat over the top, I can see them bursting into " I am what I am" or something similar!

The other sixteen  are based around some boxes of reinforcements for the game Battle Masters that GW did the design for and I think was based in their Old world milieu. I didn't have the game but came across them in a clearance pop up store,some time ago and paid £2 a  box for two boxes of the empire version which contained a mounted general, three knights,  10 archers,five halbardiers, five crossbow men and a cannon with two crew. I  later picked up the chaos box, two mounted chaos knights, two ogres and twenty beastmen for a pound. Luckily, as a bonus, there was an additional sprue of three caparisoned horses in one of the boxes,and there,or in the loft they stayed for 30 years!

 I'd cut the knights lances off to make Scottish Lancers but eventually decided I should try and make something work out of what's left. With the addition of a couple of Essex later medieval knights I picked up with something I actually wanted off of Ebay I was now up to twelve figures and I just needed to scrape together four more figures to  give me two more units for pike and shot, or combined with the Steelfist figures four units for To the strongest!

 I had two Perry plastic knights left over from the last post and then added in a couple of spare warlord pike and shot troopers with headswaps and the addition of trumpets on Perry medieval horses. I also replaced the lost lances with Perry plastic lances. The Battle Masters  figures are a bit smaller than GW warhammer figures, they're more like chunky 28mm which means they mix in pretty well I think,I did have to carve the shields off of them and carve arms ,of course on the chaos warriors, I had to remove the distinctive headgear and add the front face of a  Perry helm and  feathers but I think I've got away with it!

 I have ,because of the preponderance of caparisoned horses ,had to spend a bit more time painting them as they are a bit more toy like I guess and have used Maximilian's triumph prints as reference , strippy lances et all, they've been great fun to paint and they are finished off with a mix of blown up Perry flags or Foundry free download flags,all French.

The plastic figures are on chunkier bases because I had to use some slotta bases,which the horse almost fit, cut down and glued to Perry 45mm x 60mm bases and then fill the gaps with foamboard .

All the best Iain