British Line Infantry

At the very beginning of this project I had considerably more British infantry than French. Over the past two years I've added a great deal of infantry to my French army and very little to my British one. In part this was because I found it difficult to lay hands on the particular British infantry set that I've been after (HaT's Peninsular War Infantry). These two battalions actually represent the first real additions I've made to my British infantry forces so far.

The figures themselves are Italeri's British Infantry 1815 (Set 6095). Very good figures, though the uniforms presented are a bit of an odd bunch. Odd that is, in the sense that they are meant to be very particular. Apparently there are three specific regiments from Waterloo represented in the set. But I'm much too lazy to go around trying to match regiments (serious respect to those who do though), so I just painted the facings as I fancied. As for quality the miniatures are very good, modern sculpts with strong detail and good poses.

This will be the last bit of Napoleonic work I do for a little while. My focus these past few days has been shifted over to my 28mm collections, specifically my Middle-Earth models. Hopefully I'll have a few posts about that in the future.

Cheers!

Chasseurs, Cuirassiers and some reordering

Hello everyone, it's been a while hasn't it? Not long after my last post I found that I was distracted and absorbed by other things and other hobbies. Myself and my group of friends did quite a bit of experimenting with 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons in 2019, and since I was the dungeon master for most of our games it took up a lot of my 'hobby time'. 

But, a few weeks ago I swung back around to my Napoleonics. Naturally I laid some plans to order in more models. As luck would have it my shift in interests took place at the beginning of a global pandemic, so I wasn't able to order from my usual supplier in the UK. Thankfully I was able to make an order via an Australian store, even if it wasn't for all the kits I had wanted. In particular I was after Waterloo 1815's Highlanders in Square and HaT's Peninsular War British Infantry.

A lot of my recent order has focused on expanding my French army then, rather than my British. You can see in these images one of my recently completed units: a regiment of Chasseurs a Cheval. The set is Italeri 6080, French Light Cavalry. I had considered getting HaT's set for Chasseurs instead, as the posing of the horses in this set is a little spastic for my tastes. In the end though, the Italeri set is sculpted and posed more dynamically, and the inclusion of command and elite figures adds some nice variety to it. Perhaps in the future I will get HaT's set as well and have a unit of both.

In a previous post I mentioned that I would be painting another three bases of French Cuirassiers. I thought I had made a post about them, but apparently I did not. So here is the completed six-base regiment, now including an officer as well as a bugler.

On a side note, I ran a few numbers and discovered that my original sizing for cavalry units was too small. At the 1:33 ratio I've been using for my infantry, three cavalry bases equates to about 200 men, which is more of a squadron than a regiment. Plus, Over the Hills (the rules system I'm hoping to use) seems to encourage cavalry units of four to six bases. A three base unit can't neatly adopt all the possible formations. I don't mind this size increase as much as I thought I might, but the downside is that several of my cavalry units are now too small to function as full units and at some point I will have to try and expand them.

I had also mentioned in the past that I would be repainting and rebasing my old British infantry. I have done so, and they worked out to four battalions. The first lot are Airfix while the others are Revell. I've owned these figures since I was very young, but it wasn't until recently that they were all properly based and painted as actual British soldiers. Back when I was obsessed with Quatre Bras, a lot of them served different roles. Some of the Airfix acted as Black Brunswickers, while some of the Revell figures had to wear blue as Dutch-Belgians.

 

(I think I have made a small error here by painting the flag as the pre-1801 Union Jack without the cross of St. Patrick.)

I also painted up another officer from the Waterloo 1815 line officers set to act as a brigade commander for the British. Running out of mounted officers is a particular concern of mine, as they can be tricky to find in 1/72nd plastic. For now all is well though, and after seeing Waterloo 1815 release a set dedicated to Prussian commanders I'm hopeful that they may give the British and others a similar treatment.

I mentioned Over the Hills earlier as being the rule set I'm hoping to use. I haven't done much actual wargaming with my Napoleonic collection, aside from sporadic attempts at writing my own rules (they all became over complicated, unclear, boring, messy or a combination thereof). I actually bought the rulebook for Over the Hills back in 2018 and did a brief experiment with it then. Since coming back around to Napoleonics again I have done some more testing, though I still have yet to play a full test game as I simply don't have enough units painted. I'm hopeful that after getting through the current lot of figures I can try playing a game and get to grips with these rules, which seem promising from the tests.

I look forward to making more progress with this project in the coming weeks. Perhaps I'll even have a battle report in there somewhere. Stay safe everyone.

Cheers!

More British Light Dragoons

Yet another regiment of cavalry completed: a second unit of Light Dragoons by Italeri, to match up with the first one I painted several months back. I chose to paint these guys with the same facing colours as the first unit, so that in future I could potentially increase the size of my cavalry units by combining two regiments into one. For the time being the two will just form up into a light cavalry brigade.

And here we have the full brigade, ready to go ride down some frogs! 

I've had rather a dearth of infantry recently, with what I think is four units of cavalry in a row. However, the next post should be concerned with a great multitude of French foot-sloggers, so stay tuned for that (or don't, as you please).

Cheers!

British Heavy Dragoons

I have just recently encountered a problem I never thought I would have: I am painting new units faster than I post about them! Still, having a backlog of posts to make is hardly a terrible weight to bear. For today, I have another unit of heavy cavalry, this time from the British. These figures are by Waterloo 1815, and are in my opinion the best depiction of this unit out there (at least in 1/72nd plastic). My British have been rather short on cavalry for a while now, but with this and the regiment of light dragoons I painted earlier this year that is starting to change.

There should be another post within the week, most likely more cavalry. I'm starting to get to the end of my current stock of unpainted Napoleonics, though once I do I'll still need to go back and repaint some old figures that are very much not up to snuff. I will tentatively say to expect a good deal more stuff through the month of December.

Cheers!

British Light Dragoons

Man, looks like I'm on a bit of a hot streak! Four units painted all in a row, and with blog posts as well? What madness is this?! All kidding aside, I am pretty pleased with how far I've gotten with my latest stint at Napoleonics, even if this last unit was delayed considerably. I think they turned out fairly well, though I didn't pick a specific regiment for them to stand for, as there were several with these colour facings-if I remember aright.
The figures are Italeri's 'British Light Calvary 1815'.

I'll probably be taking a bit of a break from Napoleonics to work on some of my LotR stuff, as that ocean of bare plastic and metal could use thinning out a bit. I've currently got Faramir and variety of different men of Gondor on the painting desk, so hopefully we'll see a post about them sometime in the (relatively) near future.

Cheers!