Painting Update - Napoleonics and Legion of Everblight

Right, this is only an update, but I thought I'd post as I have at least one example of model preparation and also a view of where the 102 Napoleonic French are.

So, here are the French. As you can see they are coming along. The red on the Grenadiers' epaulettes, etc. is too strong. I shall have to lightly drybrush it, probably with Blood Angels Red or maybe an orange, and then wash with a blue...maybe with a Reaper Blue Liner. This kind of thing defeats the purpose of my wash method, but its my fault for failing to acquire or make a red wash that could do a satifactory job of it. In front are some Legion of Everblight figures I've stared to break things up a bit. Those are Blighted Legionaires. Excellent miniatures.

Here is the modelling tip. These are the mounts for the Blighted Raptors, an Everblight light cavalry unit. These are ungulates, sans antlers at this point, but the point is that there were gaps I had to fill with green stuff. I just used an exacto blade to mimic the tufts of hair. It was a fun bit of work. I'm not even sure if there was a problem with the minis as such. I probably could have filed them into a better fit, but I'd rather just fill gaps afterwards than spend a lot of time trying to mate the halves beforehand.

These are the Legion Warmongers, ogres gone bad, if you like. I firmly consider these to be the top fantasy sculpts at God's scale of the year they were released by Privateer Press. Fantastic. I also have a Warmonger Warchief here (though he missed the snapshot). Basically, I've just brushed GW Tinbitz over a black basecoat on all of the mail and plate on these. As you can see, I still have to ensure the mail is fully painted in black inside the chainmail. I've been using PP armorwash so far but may need to go with the gesso watered down again. The Warmongers' flesh is meant to be/will be painted a light greyish blue. I'll get to that later. I seem to always paint outside in, when I should be going inside out, i.e. paint the flesh first with everything else to follow. As well, this picture shows me again that I have somehow acquired a camera that cannot do the very thing it is made for. The world is full of shoddy goods, I expect. As a public service, let me recommend that readers avoid like the plague the Canon PowerShot A1100IS. Buying it was a notable waste of my money.

Napoleonic French Painting Report

All 102 of the Victrix and Perry French are now modelled, hand-primed and drybrushed white. The plan is to paint them all using washes. Here is a close-up which shows well the ghostly effect reached by drybrushing white over a black basecoat.
Here is a wider picture showing most of the French models. I tend to make my own washes with the paints I have...the strangest paints can provide the best of washes. One notable example off of the top of my head is Delta Ceramcote's Midnight Blue, which is just a beautiful paint to work with. This time, I'm going to try the GW washes, along with seeing if I can make a good wash with either the Derivan French Blue or one of the Foundry French Blues. I'll see what works.


The miniatures will all be based on 40x40mm bases for Black Powder. I think I'm going to cheat a little on this and glue 2 miniatures to opposite corners of each 40mm base and paint them like that, adding the other singles later. I haven't figured out exactly how I'm handling the skirmisher thing yet. I have enough Voltigeurs; I just need to figure out the basing.

Victrix French Fusiliers modelled

Another step forward. Command, voltigeurs and grenadiers to go.

Update - the Perry scrubs have their packs!

The Testors glue is non-toxic and it appears to work. This has left me sober with strong bonding. I had to sand the black primer off of their backs to facilitate the plastic bonding, though. Another small step taken towards Quatre Bras.

New Project Begun - Black Powder Napoleonics

So I was talking to my friend Stu yesterday and we agreed to build and paint two brigades each of French and foes by this September for play using the new Black Powder rules penned by Rick Priestly and Jervis Johnson. So each of us will be building and painting one (Black Powder) brigade of French and one of the allies. Now I'm not buying any miniatures for a year so I've got to do my part with what I have. What I have for the French is a box of Victrix late French foot, a box of Perry French foot, and a box of Perry French Heavy Cavalry. I started the Victrix last night and I have now got all 60 of them cleaned up with heads and backpacks attached/glued on. Here they are in the foreground. You can see the miniatures primed black just to the right and behind? They are the 42 Perry French foot.
So I have 102 foot and 14 cavalry (in the Perry French Heavy Cavalry box). I don't have any artillery, and with only 14 cavalry I can only make one unit of cavalry. The foot will be divided into 4 units of 24. The Victrix box has 8 officers. Given that the Perry box has one already, I only need three from the Victrix box, so I've demoted 5 officers back into the ranks, though they are in the elite Voltigeur and Grenadier companies. ;-)

Because of this arrangement I ended up short 6 backpacks for my Victrix French. So I stole 3 from the Perry box (leaving me with 40 for them) and left my Victrix drummers without backpacks despite the stern requirement stated on the Victrix Instruction Sheet, which I quote:

"Backpacks are to be used on all figures except B13, B14, B15."

Stu is going to regift me a couple of Wargames Foundry French 8 pound cannons with crew that I gave him about 4-5 years ago. As well, he is regifting me a unit pack of 10 Newline Designs French Cuirrassiers. This will give me a bare minimum standard sized brigade of standard sized battalions for the French for Black Powder (using only one gun).

As for my allies, I will probably do a brigade of Prussians from my collection of Calpe Miniatures Prussians. I basically have everything Calpe has produced over the past 8-9 years so that will not be a problem. I was originally going to go British for the brigade of foes as I have a couple of boxes of Victrix British and a box of Perry British. However, I have neither cavalry nor guns for the Brits, so the Prussians it is, Prussians that have waited long enough to see the gaming table in any event.

Otherwise, you can see my Khador jacks on the painting table, namely Drago and two Beserkers, along with another nearly completed EIR Roman Legion and various other odds and ends.

I am really excited about this new venture. The Victrix figures are very fine, with very little and easily removed flash, and while it is a fairly labour intensive business putting the figures together, it is an interesting labour. I've wanted to play 28mm Napoleonics for years and now, with the Black Powder rules - a set which I think to be animated by the true spirit of wargaming - along with the amazing developments in plastic miniature manufacturing, making large armies of quality miniatures available at very reasonable prices, I think there's finally a chance for me to get a few games in after all.

I'll post developments as they occur.