The Nine are Abroad

I've always been a fan of GW's 'character wraiths', where each of the nine Nazgûl are modeled as a distinct character. I've also been frustrated many times at only having five Ringwraiths (the ones that came with the old Weathertop set). I could never justify purchasing the set of nine, only to get rid of five of them. On top of that I would still lack mounted versions, as generic black riders are no longer sold and are a great frustration to track down second-hand.

 

It seemed sensible enough then, that I should acquire the foot and mounted sets for the character wraiths, which are available to buy new. I was reticent for a while, since six out of the eighteen models were finecast (shudders), but in the end I found myself possessed by a whim and grabbed 'em. And while the finecast resin was a massive pain to work with, I did have a lot of fun painting up these models. It was really fun working to give each wraith a unique look, although I think I have had more than enough of painting black for the foreseeable future.

The Witch King of Angmar

As one of the dreaded finecast models, I was rather worried when it came to this guy. Thankfully he seems to have turned out pretty well outside of his sword, which is a little bendy (somehow I didn't notice until after he'd been painted!).

The Dwimmerlaik

The Tainted

I ended up leaving this guy till last because I thought the glowing effect on the robes would be hard to do. As it turned out all it took was some careful dry-brushing and high-lighting. I'd probably say that he was one of my favourites to paint.

The Dark Marshal

The Shadow Lord

The Undying

Khamûl the Easterling

Sadly, this is probably the worst victim of finecast among the set. His sword might look crooked now, but it's not even half as bad as it was before! I did the best I could, but it's such a thin and fragile piece that I was scared to apply too much pressure for fear of breaking it. What an infernal material to make models out of!

I decided against painting his armour golden/brazen, as I felt this separated him a bit too much from the other Ringwraiths for my liking.

The Knight of Umbar

The Betrayer

Overall, I'm quite happy with how they turned out, though I wish they had all been metal. I certainly intend to try and avoid buying any more finecast models in future, but given that some rather iconic/important models have been done in that material (uruk-hai berserkers, guards of the fountain court, minas tirith commanders, etc.) I may not have much choice in the long run.

Having enjoyed the Ringwraith project so much, I've ordered a number of Rohirrim to round out that part of my collection (short of a couple of characters who were all out of stock on the Australian webstore. Really loving that international sales policy GW...). Outside that and the Ringwraiths, I've painted/finished painting a number of other more miscellaneous Middle-Earth models, so I'll have to get together another post on them in the next few days. See you all then.

Cheers!

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!

French Infanterie de Ligne Regiments

When I first started on this project I'm not sure I fully understood just how much infantry would actually be needed. Once I sat down and read up on the structure of brigades through to divisions through to corps and armies it came home to me pretty quickly though. A Napoleonic army (even when fighting at a smaller scale like that of a division) has a lot of men in it. I suppose this is why some people don't like working in the period or else use very abstracted formations that cut down on the number of figures used, particularly in the big scales. It is a lot of cross belts to paint after all.

 

But, I want to play 'in the grand manner', as they say. This means I need lots and lots of battalions if I want to play at the level of one or more divisions per side. Today I have some more of those much needed battalions for my French army.

The fusiliers for this first regiment come from HaT's French Line Fusiliers (Set 8041). This set is a decent enough one, but is a bit on the old side and I think it shows. Some of the detailing is warped and there was more flash than I would have liked. These were still very serviceable figures though, so that overall I would say that I'm happy with them.

I mentioned in the post on French Chasseurs that I had set aside the rest of the Zvezda figures for line battalions. Well, here they are. As I mentioned in that post the figures are excellent. Although, there may have been some miscalculation on my part, as they seem a little tall compared to the fusiliers I matched them to. A bit awkward given that the voltigeurs were supposed to be chosen from the smaller men, but oh well.

The second regiment have their fusiliers drawn from Italeri's older French Infantry set (Set 6002). An issue for some with this set is that I gather it is not very historically accurate, mixing together parts of uniforms that don't belong to the same period. This results in models that don't technically belong to any period of the Napoleonic Wars. This is actually fine for me, since I'm not strictly committed to any one period, other than 'beyond 1806', and aside from that issue these are very good models.

The grenadiers are also Hat, but much more recent (Set 8166). Very solid figures, and since the set comes with command figures I'm planning on doing a battalion of combined grenadiers sometime in the nebulous future. They also have a noticeably different sculpting style from the fusiliers in these regiments, but in this case I think it works well, as it makes them seem large and imposing, as grenadiers should.

Lastly we have this fellow. He'll be acting as the commander for the brigade these two regiments will form together. The figure is by Waterloo 1815 from their Mounted Line Officers set (Set 028).

With this added to my previous French infantry I have two brigades, each one containing six battalions. That's certainly a solid start, and I must confess to being just a little bit pleased with myself. It hasn't been quick, but this most recent phase of the Napoleonic project is finally winding down. There'll be a bit more, then after that I'll probably be taking a break to work on some 28mm stuff.

Cheers!

French Line Lancers

Line lancers or light horse lancers are, a bit like the horse chasseurs, a type of cavalry that was a major element Napoleon's armies that remains criminally underrepresented. Since they don't seem to be as iconic as the cuirassiers or hussars, they sadly have much less coverage in sets. I can hardly think why, as I find them both iconic and interesting.

Thankfully, Waterloo 1815 produce an excellent set for them, which is what I've used here (Set 054). I was very happy with Waterloo's British Heavy Dragoons, and I would say this set matched the high expectations the first one gave me. The models are well sculpted and the poses are dynamic, interesting and natural.

I do have one criticism of the set, and it is that command figures make up half of all the models, with only six troopers in total. Given that I'm wanting to field them in a unit of twelve this becomes a little awkward, as I have to have two buglers, two officers and two standard bearers in one unit. I think my longer-term solution to this will be to pick up HaT's French Lancers, where all the figures are troopers, and combine them with these figures to get two units. For now though, I think the quality of the miniatures themselves makes up for the overabundance of command figures.

Cheers!

French Chasseurs in Open Order

Skirmishers seem to be one of those tricky things in Napoleonic gaming. I've seen them represented as separate units, attachments to regular infantry, or even abstracted off of the table altogether. In Over the Hills you're given a few different options, with dedicated light infantry battalions that can deploy in open order and with a 'Skirmish Rating' that regular battalions have, representing the skill of their attached light infantry company.

I quite like this idea in theory (although I've yet to really test it in practice), as it seems like it can represent the way skirmishers were used to both advance ahead of the force as a whole and contribute to fire fights between individual units. To that end I've painted up a pair of four-base battalions of Chasseurs (representing around 400 men each). These guys have only two figures on a base to make them look more spaced out.

The models aren't strictly Chasseurs, but rather come from Zvezda's excellent Voltigeur set (Set 8042). I decided on doing these guys as Chasseurs because HaT do excellent sets for Light Infantry Voltigeurs and Carabaniers, so some time in the future I'd like to add an extra base to these units from each of those sets. Being Zvezda they, of course, painted up very well (in my humble opinion).

Most of the other figures from this set were set aside to be painted as Voltigeur companies for line battalions. I should have posts on those up in the coming weeks.

And here are a few British to cap things off. There were hardly enough here to justify giving them their own post, so I figured I'd tag them onto the end of this one. The infantry are from Italeri's British Infantry 1815 (Set 6095). If I'm not mistaken these particular figures are Foot Guards, so they'll be needing a few more bases in the future to get them up to full strength (six more, as it happens). For now they can stand in just fine as regular line infantry.

This mounted figure is a hussar from Airfix's Waterloo British Cavalry (Set 01743). He was floating around alone in one of my miniature drawers, so I've painted him up as a kind of cavalry officer (or else an aide de camp, if I ever need any).

I've been a little slack on posting updates, but I have actually been getting stuff painted. I'll try to catch up on my backlog a little over the next few weeks.

Cheers!