Painting My Way To 1815

The Anglo-Allied infantry, in full, sitting in its storage box.  The only way to paint  20-odd brigades in one go!

The deliveries for the French 1815 army are complete, so it seems only sensible to turn attention back to the progress to date on the initial force: the Anglo-Allied army!  Last time it was shown, I had just gone through all the infantry and painted all the coats the correct colour.  Since then, I have done the trousers.  (Bizarre fact: virtually all of the units have grey trousers, which was something I hadn't picked up on before.  Well, I certainly have noticed it now!)  

To keep myself engaged in a dull moment, I even worked it all out for the number of trousers needed - 300 pairs!  Six-bloody-hundred-legs!  Of that, 200 are now done - all the infantry, leaving only  cavalry and gun crews.  

Next, I have gone onto black paint - which is actually an annoying one.  Coats can be knocked in easily (effectively a base-coat, as you don't need to stay outside straps & cross-belts, as these are best painted over the coat later.)  Trousers, similarly, aren't too bad as long as you don't get a figure with an awkward stance, because they are all one area on the figure - one brush will do for all!  Black is more awkward, mainly because it is for different areas.  Specifically, shoes; packs; cartridge-boxes; bayonets; heads & shakos.  

Instead of doing each set of figures through all these steps to completion in one go (which proved to be very fiddly and slow-moving, thus discouraging) I decided to do all of the various bits one by one.  So, I did all the heads, then all the feet, then all the cartridge-boxes etc.  This might sound like a pretty minor distinction, but I've actually found it very helpful.  I seem to do better at painting when it's just mindless, repetitive stuff you can 'switch off' while you're doing it, or let your thoughts wander to other things.  Having to check over strips of figures to make sure you've not missed a bit, like the end of a cartridge-box visible only from the side, is a bit too demanding of attention. The detailing to pick this up can be done at the very end, when the figures are 'reviewed' just prior to varnishing.

As such I've repeatedly gone through the infantry stack but without it really feeling like a drag.  This is a curious quirk, and also probably explains a lot of why I always struggle most with non-uniform painting jobs where that repetitive style doesn't really fit (this from a man with Confederate infantry and Medieval troops among his collection...)  

After this 'black' process is done, I've moved on through the flesh-coloured paint to do the faces and hands of them all.  At present I'm roughly halfway through painting all the muskets brown.  This actually takes me most of the way through the painting process, as the remaining steps are generally less elaborate and more about local areas - the figures have definitely made their big graduation from 'undercoated figures with a few patches of colour' through to 'painted figures that merely lack a few bits of detailing.'

And for the future, this is the current state of the French army - Still on its sprues, heaped up  on the sink following a dip in some soapy water, to remove any releasing oil from the casting-moulds.

Miniature Review

After a week of rather prompt deliveries from across the UK, the various Amazon/eBay shops have come good.  The full bunch of boxes are here, so I thought that I'd give an example shot of each.

Below is the French Infantry by Italeri (Box 6066.) Italeri actually do two diverging types - the other is 6002 - for French Infantry.  This set is a kind of very realistic 'campaign dress' which is actually at odds with their own box-front artwork.  All the figures, for example, wear trousers as opposed to the gaiters available on the other 6002 set, and thus have less of a 'picturebook' quality to them in exchange for greater realism.

This one is from the Italeri 6016 Imperial General Staff box - I actually got this as a whim, but I'm glad I did.  Featuring Napoleon himself (in Imperial finery, but before he started piling on the pounds in the later years) and an appropriately massive gaggle of hangers-on.  The total is 13 mounted figures and 7 foot generals, so this could furnish you with all the command figures for your own army.

Another Italeri set here, for the cavalry - Dragoons set 6015.  Nicely detailed, and also very dynamic for these troops - the horsetails on the Grecian helmets are all swishing around, about as much as the sword-arms.

Next are the Italeri 6039 set - Polish Lancers: Noooo!!!  I remember these from my childhood when Esci did them.  Seriously, these couldn't have done with an update?  Fair enough if you can't cast the lances on and need them separate, but we could've at least put the bases on the horses, no?  This one promises to be extremely fiddly.

The Zvezda ones are very nice and 'tactile' feeling - by which I mean that there is lots of detail on them, and it's expressed by quite good differentiation over the surface - lots of raised and lowered areas which promise that these should be good ones to paint, especially if you favour inks and washes.  Here is a bit of box 8028, the French Artillery set.  Each box gives three guns, and a very large quantity of limbering teams.  A nice change from the usual, which is to give only guns and crew.

Last, the Zvezda Cuirassiers (box 8037.)  These are given the dramatic 'charging hard at everything' look which most players will want for these elite troops.  One extra observation about Zvezda plastics - they seem to use a more 'rigid' material which feels stronger and more brittle than the plastic usually selected by the likes of Italeri, Revell, Airfix, etc.  I suppose this will be far better for holding paintwork and resisting the odd bump, but with correspondingly higher chances for the odd outstretched arm getting snapped off, should you accidentally catch it on something.

French Army 1815

T'was back in the ancient mists of time (well, July 2011) when I bought the Airfix Waterloo boxed set, and expanded my rediscovery of 1/72 plastics into a brand-new monster-sized project to recreate the campaign of 1815.  Since then I have managed to achieve a fair amount of progress over the last year and a bit.

I have managed to collect all the figures necessary to put and entire Anglo-Allied army on the field, and also a fair proportion of the Prussian army.  I have also managed to launch painting of the entire Anglo-Allied force, with about a dozen bases already completed in prototype form.  
With this progressing so nicely, and the bi-centennial on the way, it's high time to get the opponents sorted out!  

Well, after much planning and searching I've done it.  Napoleon might've needed to escape from Elba, stage a one-man coup to take over France, then run an Imperial bureaucracy to pull together an army for his ambitions, but I find that raising the plastic equivalent requires a far more agreeable afternoon surfing EBay and Amazon for much the same result.  If only he'd known!   

So, to the haul:  my "recruiting efforts" have focused on my favoured Italeri figures, plus some of the excellent-looking sets from Zvezda, which also seem to get high praise online.  The end result, from various sources:

6 boxes of Italeri French Line Infantry
4 boxes of Zvezda French Line Artillery
2 boxes of Italeri French Dragoons
2 boxes of Zvezda French Cuirassiers
1 box of Italeri French Lancers
1 box of Italeri Napoleon's General Staff

This isn't the final, definitive purchase - corps commander miniatures are still needed, plus a few odds and ends of 'specialist' troops of note such as the Imperial Guard, some voltigeur light infantry, and so on.  Nonetheless, the list above breaks the back of the French army collection.  It provides me with a mass of line infantry, plus a weighty spearhead of heavy Cavalry, and also a powerful artillery park which should certainly make Old Boney a ferocious prospect on the tabletop.  

With painting efforts continuing on the Anglo-Allied force, and shortly to commence on the French arrivals, I should be able to start putting on a few small-scale Napoleonic games before very long - before building towards the ultimate objectives of re-enacting the Waterloo campaign as a whole, and also the classic historical battle itself.  

En Avant!

Perry Plastic Knights

Just a quick photo update of the figures I bought at Claymore 2012 - or some of them, at any rate.  These are the two boxes of Perry Plastic 'Mounted Men at Arms' - and very fine they look too!  I've gone for about two-thirds with lances (although there are enough parts for you to do them all that way, if you choose) and a third with hand-weapons like swords, axes, hammers, etc.  That's Twenty-four figures in total, which is enough for anything from about 6 bases in something like Impetus or two units in Hail Caesar or the like, without it looking at all unrealistic.  

I've decided I'm going to spray the horses down with a brown aerosol (the riders aren't yet glued on) and the knights can then get painted/sprayed metal along with a few bits of barding (horse-armour, basically) and glued into place before the final touching-up.  I'm making an effort to adopt more of an 'army-painter' method throughout, as I always tell myself I'll just do it by hand and then come to regret it halfway through!

Buying Boxed Sets

I was recently consumed with  angst about the state of my painting kit, and was pondering buying a big set - 'Bluebear Jeff' and 'Ubique Matt' were kind enough to give some thoughts (thanks guys!) and as they rather confirmed some things I'd thought myself, I've restricted action to a rather more restrained purchase of some individual paints and a couple of good brushes.

On the subject of big 'boxed sets' however, I have also found myself pondering my next gaming move now that things are finally settling down.  Current ones are easy, as the outstanding purchases are the 1/72 boxes necessary for the 1815 French army at Waterloo, and finally to complete the Prussian one further down the line.  I've been progressing the painting on the Anglo-Allied army, and as finished units begin to appear it makes sense to run their enemies in tandem, so at least a few little scraps can be played.

Besides that, the other obvious one is the 1/72 Union Army of the Potomac, which will be needed to go on the table against the (nearly completed!) Confederate force.  After that however, what next?  I change my mind on future projects roughly every week, but you've got to start somewhere and see if the same idea keeps bobbing up in your mind over the weeks and months.

One future project I want to do is more WW2 stuff.  I've also been torn over time between doing high-level strategic stuff in Pendraken 10mm, or doing 28mm tactical games.  Things have been complicated recently by Warlord Games releasing the 'Bolt Action' tactical-level rules, in the same style as Black Powder & Hail Caesar, to compliment lines of figures they do.  Also, it's part-written by Rick Priestley, who was the games guru that created most of the Games Workshop things that first introduced me to wargaming.  From reading reviews of the mechanics online it also appears to be a kind of descendant from the old WH40k Epic games, which I absolutely loved back in the early 1990s.  So, there's that to ponder.

Bolt Action has also got Warlord offering big 'army deals' for the armies as starter sets, which is pretty tempting.  But, in a strange twist of fate, this has also happened elsewhere.  Perry miniatures are now doing their Wars of the Roses figures in 'army deals' which they used to only do for ACW and Napoleonic ranges (or maybe they've been doing it for ages - I only noticed it had been added recently.)  I know that more WOTR figures might possibly be completely mad, given how many I already have done and painted.  Then again, the 'Bloody Barons' rules have proved to be a lot of fun on a few try-outs, and let's be honest: how many wargamers have you ever heard complain that their armies are too big?

Anyone got some advice about paints?

A little request for help from other wargamers out there: can anybody recommend a good range of paints for modelling miniatures, and specifically a good starter set?  

This has come about from me trying to get back into a regular painting habit after months of house-moving upsetting the system, but now I've made a terrible discovery - most of my paints have settled and separated, or are nearly depleted!  Obviously after the months away I've come back with a fresh pair of eyes, and can see that the paint collection I've used before now (mostly Games Workshop paints, simply because a nearby Hobbycraft stocked them and I could get them easily) is actually greatly diminished, being very old and run-down.  In short, barring a few odd paints here and there as 'refugees' I need to buy myself a starter kit to get up and running.  

Also, sad to report that my brushes are in dire nick - I'll need to get a new range of good modelling brushes at the same time, making the overhaul complete!  So, what do other people out there use?  Is there something you'd recommend, or a 'starter' set you know of that's available somewhere?  Any and all suggestions are most welcome!

Desert War Pictures

It has now been about a month since moving house and I posted a back-to-normal message, which turned out to be massively over-optimistic!  In the last four weeks, getting the house up and running has proved to be quite a big task, and playing a game has proved to be quite beyond me.  I have managed to set up about three or four games but not played anything more than a few turns before having to pack up again because it was taking up time and space which is currently needed elsewhere.  

Still, things shall improve with time, non doubt.  For the benefit of posting anything other than this brief message, I've dug out some pictures of an old WW2 Western Desert game I played ages ago and never got round to posting - a bit of easy eye-candy, and hopefully a sign that I can get the big campaign going again before long.  

Dug-in Brits

An Italian division in prepared positions

British and Italian Armour clash in the open

Close-range tank battles

A German Panzer Division

Brit infantry attack out of their fortified lines, as Italian tanks attempt to flank them

German and British mobile forces play hide-and-seek through the rocky outcroppings