One Size Fits All - 10mm Napoleonic's

One Size Fits All was the second record by The Mothers of Invention that I bought some time in 1976 or '77.  How does that fact relate here? I don't know.

I started doing 10mm Wars of the Spanish Succession a couple of years back and thought I might buy some Napoleonic French to see if they are easy paint. I got them prepped them and left them to get dusty. But, now that I'm back to painting and trying to clear things out I decided to try my hand at these tiny guys.

They were certainly quicker to paint than 28mm but not as easy as the WSS / Marlburian figures. Even with a couple of hiccups and a bit of a learning curve, this battalion took about 5 days to complete. I reckon I could do another in about 4 days. They have a little bit of detail in the straps and badges etc, but not too much. I considered doing buttons on their cuffs but I didn't worry about them. The flag is over-sized but I like them that way. I made it myself using Photoshop. In fact I made a whole sheet full of them including the fanions for the 2nd, 3rd and 4th battalions.

They look pretty nice and a few brigades full of these battalions would look very nice on the tabletop. I'm going to do another battalion in a couple of week but first I want to add some more troops to my WSS English (especially some horse). I only have a single brigade at this stage and I need more before I can start gaming with them.

For the sake of comparison here they are next to their 28mm compatriots. I've also added a couple of overhead shots so that you can get an idea of the footprint of the battalion in line and column. Each base is 50mm x 25mm, 2mm MDF.

That's all for this time,

Cheers and thanks for reading.

IanKH

More Prussians ~ Musketeers

This week I've finished the musketeer battalions of the 5th Line Regiment (4th East Prussian). I finished the first battlion a while back and started on the second but put them aside. They they sat around waiting to be finished for about a year or so. Now they're finished.

The figures are the boring Perry plastics. They look okay and they are affordable but they are pretty boring. I'd much prefer an "advance at the port" pose which I think looks better than the marching pose. The flags are from Flags of War. I very rarely purchase flags and prefer to make them myself but this time I bought them (I don't know why). Nice flags though! I bought them some time back.

Now below there's a couple of photo's of the second battalion. I also took a few pics of the first battalion but the light changed in between shots and the pics came out awful. This is a shame because the first battalion is painted better than the 2nd. I once again played with the AI Generative Fill tool on photoshop to add a background to get rid of the window and blinds behind the table.

And that's it for now. I'll get on to the fusilier battalion soon but first up I'm going to try my hand at some 10mm Napoleonic's to see how hard they are to paint, how long they take and how they look as a battalion.

Cheers,

Ian KH

Prussian Jaegers

I've added to my Prussian skirmish line and decided to put all of them out on parade for a photo opportunity. I have quite a decent array of skirmishers (21 bases) with plenty of variety in their uniforms. I also played around with the new AI Generative Fill feature in Photoshop 2024 to block out the wall and window that sits behind my table. Quite an impressive background for a few seconds of work.

I'm currently putting in an effort to finish a Prussian line infantry regiment (the 5th) but I took the time to finish these volunteer jaeger. Like many figures, these troops have been sitting on my painting desk for some time. They were half finished and dusty. They are from Warlords and, in my opinion, they are pretty crappy figures. That's one of the reasons why they gathered dust for so long.

On the other hand here are some more volunteer jaeger in Tyrolean uniform. These figures are Perry and they're very nice. These are from either the Brunswick or Austrian range. When I got them there were no Tyrolean's in the Prussian range so I had to adapt.

Here are some of the other troops in my skirmish line. The guys in black in the centre of the photo below are part of my Lutzow's Freikorps. There are only three bases strong but I can add one or two of the jaeger bases to bring them up to strength. The Freikorps is one of my favourite Prussian formations.

Here's another use of the Photoshop Generative Fill tool. For this one I asked it to generate a background featuring Napoleonic Prussian troops. It came out pretty well.

These two below come from the Perry Prussian infantry boxed set. The top lot are just the basic rifleman figure. All the same pose and pretty boring - But they do the job. The guys below are conversions made from the same rifleman figure. They are Guard Jaeger and they were made by using bits from some Victrix French infantry and the Perry French Dragoon set.

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And last but not least, here's another little chap that has been half painted and gathering dust. He's a Reaper Bones figure that I got a couple of years back. Now he's finished and hanging out with my other fantasy figures. I've named him Otto the Pack Mule.

The Brigadier & The Galactic Patrol

Keeping in the spirit of getting things off my painting desk, I bring you a Prussian general and some space dudes. To be honest, the brigadier is a new purchase but the other figures have been sitting on my desk, collecting dust for over a year (or two) and it's a relief to see them done and ease my guilt. And for that reason they can be first on the bill: 

These figures are Galacteers from Hydra Miniatures. I bought them a long time ago when I was doing a lot of pulp wargaming. I started painting them a long while back but I didn't enjoy it. They look okay now that they're finished, but they were horrible figures to paint in many respects and I don't really like them. Unfortunately I have another squad of five to paint. They've been prepped for a long time so I put them on the desk last night and I'll take my time painting them.

These figures were really difficult to photograph. I think it's becuse the colours I chose are pretty vibrant and the white is very white and it was reflecting into the lens and causing problems. I ended up photographing them in daylight because artificial light made them glare even worse. As a result most of the shading isn't coming through. On the actual figures there is definition and shading on their muscles but it just isn't showing. 

Anyway, that brings us to Herr Brigadier... I needed an extra brigadier for my Lutzow's Freikorp cavalry element. The Freikorps was very difficult to command with only one officer for both the infantry and the cavalry. This figure is from the Perry Prussian Mounted Officer set and I think he really looks the part. As I was adding the final touches to him I thought I should have painted up a hussar officer in the spirit of Von Schill. No worries though. This fine chap will do sterling service, I have no doubts!

And that's this week's update. Not much but even if it's only small steps it means that I'm getting back into painting and slowly getting out of my wargaming funk.

Cheers, and thanks for reading.

Prussian Cavalry ~ 3rd Dragoon Regiment

 Back again but not a soon as I'd hoped. I was hoping to post something sooner but the the troops I chose to paint took longer than expected. I've had a box of Perry Prussian dragoons assembled and and undercoated sitting in my cupboard for months so I decided to paint them. They came out okay and I'm going to do another regiment in the near future. 

As you can see there are 18 of them. That's more that a single box. Prussia had large cavalry regiment so I decided I needed more figures which meant I had to wait for the post to bring them to me. That was the first delay. The second delay happened as I was basing them and I decided that I wanted bases with3 figures. I had 16 figures painted and I needed another two. So I painted two more.

Anyhow, here they are. As I was starting this job I found that I had a set of Flags of War flags for the 3rd and 4th dragoons, hence these guys became the 3rd Regiment and the 4th will follow soon so that I can field them as a heavy brigade. I might make the 4th regiment larger (24 figures)

Getting these photos ready I noticed that I got some of the base colour on the front hoof of the officer's horse. I fixed it up later but it's annoying to have in the photo's.

And that's it for the moment. I've now started work on a Prussian infantry battalion that was also sitting there assembled and undercoated along with the cavalry. These shouldn't take too long. As far as Napoleonic's are concerned; Prussians are on the easy end of the spectrum.

Rowe's Brigade ~ War of Spanish Succession

Greetings folks. Once again it has taken me a while to get back to this blog and make an entry. As mentioned in previous posts I lost my wargaming mojo and couldn't motivate myself to get into the hobby room and do any sort of wargaming related stuff. I tried several times but I just wasn't feeling the love I once had.

However, it seems that my mojo has come back this time and I'm finishing off things that got left half done on the painting table. I'll post some of the other things later some but first off all I want to post this one...

This is Rowe's Brigade. My first 10mm English brigade for the War of Spanish Succession. I actually started and competed all the infantry within a week or two near the start of the year. I was going to post them here and realised I didn't paint a commander (Brig. General Rowe). My intention was to paint him and some guns and then add them to the blog. Unfortunately that's when my funk hit home and they sat there, partly done, for months.

As it is, I painted and finished them all in one night. I got back to painting by doing some French Napoleonic's and just kept going to the painting table every night to finish them. Then I started on these guys.

My choice of Rowe's Brigade for my first English brigade is because it includes The Welch Regiment. My grandfather was in that regiment for 30 odd years, from WWI up until being evacuated from Dunkirk. That's them up above with the blue standard with the red dragon.

I don't have any real idea how to base these figures. These battalions have 7 bases with 5 figures on each. This is to give the effect of a longer, thinner line to represent the English formation for firing by platoons. By comparison, my French battalions have 5 bases each with 6 figures which give a shorter more compact impression to represent their deeper formations.

The guns have limbers which can be placed to represent the guns being limbered or they can be placed behind, and facing the guns, to represent the ammunition train when the guns are deployed. They look good too.

And that's it. All the figures are Pendraken 10mm. I have more to make and I think the next lot will be some horse. The next infantry brigade won't be English but I'm not sure what they'll be at this stage. I'll do what I generally do, which is to find a brigade that looks pretty, with flags that I like and that I can easily reproduce in 10mm. I also have to see which grenadier figures I have available so as to determine what country I can do next. That's not really a consideration when doing French but it is when doing other nations. 

I figure that one more infantry brigade, some horse and some dragoons will be enough to start doing some games. Although I'm still looking for the right set of rules. I found a set of rules in a folder on my

pc. I read them and they sounded like just what I want. Then I realised it was a set of rules I wrote myself a long time ago.

A New Boss and Some Other Boring Figures

I'm still painting bugs and building my xenomorph army. I'm enjoying painting sci-fi stuff at the moment. It's easy and gives pretty good results for minimum effort. This week I wanted to paint up the big 3d print critter that bought. I wasn't really sure what I was doing but it came together okay in the end.

It is a great figure with very nice detail. I wasn't sure if I could do it justice with the minimalist colour scheme that I'm using for my bug host but I think it came out all right. Here is is with the other bugs I currently have. It seems suitably huge to me. It's on an 60mm base... The other regular sized bug on the right is on a 40mm base.

I also put together and painted the second box of Mantic Reapers (at least I think they're called Reapers). Horrible figures to put together but they do look weird and scary. I like them and, as mentioned in my previous post, I'm calling these Xenomorph Hybrids. I now have 20 of them and here they are with the new boss.

And they other thing I made during the past week are some Firefight Enforcers - once again from Mantic. These figures were pretty easy to construct but I think they're a bit boring. They were easy to paint too. I didn't bother doing much detail on them as I found the sculpts to be ill-defined and sort of indefinite. They are not really very crisp and lack something. I don't find them are very inspiring although they do have hard-sci-fi look about them.

Having said that I think they came out okay and it should be an easy task to build and paint up the rest of them.

And that's what I did last week. I also played a Napoleonic game over the weekend. I played General d'Armee 2 for the first time. It was an interesting game but, strangely I found it to be a very "gamey" set of rules and a bit of a departure from the original rules. Maybe I'm wrong - after all is was my first game.

Thanks for reading,

IanKH