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.

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.

New Project-Oldest Minis; Airfix 1/32 WW2 Germans

These are amongst the first miniatures I ever had. Alright, they are toy soldiers. I found them, and a horde of their fellows, after they had been in storage for over 20 years. These are Airfix 1/32 Germans. I bought them in Drogheda, Ireland in 1973. I've got a couple of young boys now, and I thought I'd paint these up for them. I didn't take the mold lines off, and the painting is basic black undercoat, one coat of colour, a coat or two of Future over that, all followed by a coat of brush-on matt varnish. I like them.
These are the entire horde of plastic toy soldiers, including the ones since painted in the picture above (the Germans are blue). You can see a Timpo Crusader footman on the top. There is a Timpo horse, sans barding, visible there as well, and there are many more Timpos below the surface. I purchased those one at a time in London, England in the year 1969. My father used to take me down to a toy-store/newsagent on England's Lane, Camben Town, early every Saturday morning and I'd get one knight and my brother would choose a Beano or some other comic of the time. Fine memories. I had to clean these. The smell of them was appalling, unwashed as they were for near 40 years.

Workbench Update

Right, first the Roman cavalry, two units, the top eight are the Gripping Beast lads, the bottom 10 - when I purchased them from Sean - were Newline Designs EIR cavalry. Sean has since somehow transferred these, with most of the rest of his ancient ranges, to SHQ. (EDIT: I've heard since I first wrote this that it is a license agreement of some kind.) For different reasons I really like both of these references. Obviously, the painting of these miniatures is nowhere near finished.


These are the horses for the Newline Designs Roman cavalry. The harnesses with pendant straps fastened by metal discs (phalerae), and the decorative fringed chest band, or peytral, are seen on various Roman tombstones of cavalry troopers from the period. I'm no expert on saddles from the time. Peter Connolly has posited a construction of leather stretched over a wood frame in the shape of four horns, which you can see the front two of sculpted into the GB troopers above. The basing of these is coming along. The wash of dark umber has been applied. Next comes Citadel Shadow Grey on the rocks, then a dry brush of bone over the entire base, and then flocking.


The Gripping Beast horses. I like these, but I'm not sure they were meant to come with the troopers that Darren gave me at Britcon 2003 (Thanks again!). What's important for me about these are the new techniques in painting the horse hair that I'm trying for the first time.


Thank God the postman always rings twice. I am a Calpe Prussian man through and through, but I just had to get these.