Final Painting Offerings of 2011

Happy holidays and a Merry Christmas!

Well, for those of you who don't read the blog from Analogue Hobbies (link on the left); you really should! But as well, I will post up some pictures of what I have been painting lately on here too!

First up, some Napoleonics!

One of the wonderful Perry casualty miniatures. This is one from the forthcoming South Linconshire regiment.

My second artillery battery, 2 9 pounder guns and a 5.5" howitzer with all their crew

The reverse of the same unit

 Plus, the all important man himself, Stephen Fry! I mean, the Duke of Wellington...

If you have a spare 5 minutes, I highly recommend reminding yourself of this show. I like to think of the Duke like how he is portrayed here!

Two shots of the Duke himself, maintaining a commanding position on the battlefield!


In addition to that Napoleonics stuff, I also managed to get an M8 Greyhound scout car done. Why? Well it was sitting on my desk waiting to be painted. Or is it for a secret project?

Hint- It's not for a secret project...

Well, that is all folks! No more painting for 2011 for me, I am off on holiday this afternoon, returning in the New Year. I think I will put up one more blog post before the year is out, but this is the last one with proper pictures!

Merry Christmas, I hope Santa brought all of the Toy Soldiers you desired...

CP

Painting Challenge update One!

Well, here it is, my first update for the painting challenge.

So, what I have I completed?

Well... no full stands of Napoleonics... but I did paint these six chaps!

Six artillery crew; which marks exactly where I left off last time I painted Napoleonics! I had just finished their 3 guns, then got caught by a serious bout of "can't-be-bothered-itis". I just don't actually enjoy painting these guys, not sure if it is the Victrix faces (which I hate) or the combination of colours (I really hate yellow) but they just are not enjoyable to paint. What is enjoyable however, is that I only have 6 more to go!

What's the plan then? Well, I am off on holiday on the 26th. Until the new year. Which means no painting (at all) will be done in that week! Which will keep putting me behind (darn it). So my goal before Christmas is to get this artillery battery done fully. I then plan to make up for the no painting week by a whole week where I am at home, and I don't have to work. It will be my goal to get as much painted in that week as possible! So look out for some frantic updates from the 2nd of january until the 9th of January!

Oh, in other news I finished a secret test figure (pics tomorrow), and my Thirty Years War army is winging it's way towards me from the UK.

Back to painting!

CP

Step One, Complete! Napoleonic British Based!

Well, after a week of PVA glue and big paintbrushes, my British Napoleonic Army is based!

There is what I have got! In Lasalle terms: 2 Large Guards Infantry Units, 5 Infantry Units, 1 Hussar Unit, 1 Unit of Artillery, extra skirmisher and sapper stands, 4 commanders and some casualty markers.

A close up of the Artillery base. The bases themselves need a little bit of colour, which I am sorting as we speak. It is hopefully winging it's way to me from England....

So what is left to paint for my Napoleonic British?

• 2 Units of Infantry (69th South Lincolnshire and some more Landwehr)
• The artillery crew for another base of artillery
• The Duke Himself- because it ain't Waterloo without the Duke!

With that in mind, here is the 69th Regiment ready for some paint

Although I have just noticed one of the front ranks has a particularly... exaggerated pose of his head. I will fix that before I apply some paint!

Because it aint Waterloo without him; here is the Duke of Wellington himself, ready to get some paint applied also.

But no paint (other than undercoat) can be applied until 11:01 am on the 20th of December (00:01 Canadian Time) so these chaps will have to wait! I still need to assemble the regiment of Landwehr, so that will likely happen in the next day or two as well.

But in other news, there has been some trouble brewing in Bangkok; which concerns the economic interests of the Kingdom of Brittania in that little slice of the globe....

CP

That wehr has land....

Ok, so the title doesn't make sense, either grammatically or comically, but I am sticking with it!

Over the last 4 days, some painting has been taking place! First off, here is the first of my two Hanoverian Landwehr regiments, this is the regiment from Osnabruck.

 Here is the regiment as a whole.

And a lovely close up of the regiment's sergant, showing off the wonderful Hanoverian peaked caps that they had! All in all, a very suave german!

And the regiment's colours. These are from GMB, and since there is no recorded standards for the Hanoverians, it is a bit of a guesstimate for what they would look like!
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So, in addition to my Landwehr, I also finished the guns for my second artillery battery.

Two 9pdr guns, as well as a 5.5 inch howitzer. I think when I get some horse artillery- which I will do when I buy the heavy horsement (Scots Greys....) they will be using the lighter 6pdr gun, to contrast to the infantry's heavy 9pdrs.

And finally, I managed to paint my second sapper model. Yes I know I will probably never use him, but I figured I might as well paint him up since I had him! He represents a sapper seconded from the 42nd (Black Watch) Regiment, attached to help shore up the defences at Hougemont farm!

He is not amazing, but I am still pretty happy with him. He will look much better once his basing is done...

So, a fair bit done. Just 2 infantry regiments and gun crews to go, as well as any other miscellaneous I need to paint!

CP

Royal Artillery reporting!

Well, I finally managed to get some painting done, so without further adieu, here is my foot artillery battery.

The entire battery, 2 9 pdr guns and a 5.5 inch howitzer, along with their accompanying crew.

The howitzer crew, along with the battery officer. These guys have impressivly colourful uniforms, red, yellow blue and white. Yellow is my nemesis as a colour, but the yellow on these chaps was not too painful, perhaps I will be able to do the 88th with their yellow facings?

I am going to base the whole battery on one base, 150mm x 75mm; so I had to keep crew numbers down a bit, and they will be alot closer to their guns than would be safe operating practice for a normal gun crew! In Lasalle terms, the british artillery battery is underwhelming compared to other batteries. The standard French battery is 4 guns, where as the Russian is an impressive 5 guns! Now, size isn't everything, but when firing cannon balls, it really is. So, the british batteries are small, and frequently outgunned. I think that is a theme in the British army in the Napoleonic period. Why did I choose the army which requires solid tactical skill to use effectivly? That might teach me to choose armies based on my dubious understanding of history...

These are some of the Victrix artillery heads, the one on the extreme right is a good example of how some of them just look... weird... I am definilty more fond of Perry, simply because of the faces!

As for what is next on the painting table, here is what I have started...

Might even get them finished tommorow, since I am working the rest of the week. I really do need to look into my photography too, but not right now.

CP

Objective

Well, I promised more pictures this time, so I will see what I can do!

Here is what will be my objective marker for Lasalle. I bought some 65mm bases, with the intention to use them for my Colonel bases. Unfortunatly, they are too large for that, so I came upon the idea when I had a spare officer (or two) from the Artillery boxed set, to have one of them observing the battle with his eye glass, standing next to an artillery limber (also from the boxed set). It is a Perry bicorne, story goes that this artillery officer has been fighting since the Peninsular and really didn't want to give it up! I will need an objective for Lasalle games, the base size for that is not really given, but I am happy with this one! In missions with no objectives, I could use this to represent my artillery being limbered I suppose.

I got a good bit of painting done on my artillery unit, but they aren't done yet! Here is where they are at.

And a closer shot of the gunners

So, hopefully will get these guys done in the next day or two, definitly by the end of the week I hope to have these chaps finished!

And, lastly, a Napoleonic story for the day. The final fall of the Napoleonic Dynasty came when Napoleon III's son (the prince regent) was killed fighting alongside the British against the Zulus in 1879. How did he die? The army was routed, and he was unable to mount his horse to escape. And the reason he was unable to mount his horse was that his pants were too tight. Just remember that when you start mocking Napoleonic era fashion!

CP

Victrix v Perry

Well, any blog about Napoleonic wargaming was always going to have to include a comparison between miniature companies, so I suppose this was a long time coming!

I managed to get some painting done today, not alot, just a few single miniatures. I then did a lot of assembling! Here is the comparison photo, on the left is a Perry skirmisher from the 29th company, and on the right is the freshly painted Highlander from the 71st Regiment of foot. Note that the Highlander has no kilt; because the 71st-75th lost their kilts in 1809; prior to the Peninsular campaign. They replaced them with tartan pants (classy!) which I will hopefully replicate on a couple of the soldiers (definitly the officer!). The story goes that the tartan pants didn't last long on campaign, hence the grey pants for this skirmisher! His headband should also be white/red checked, but I gave it a go, and it really didn't work. So, thats why you get the red! The highlander is wearing the traditional scottish bonnet, which may also not be historic but... meh, it looks cool! The head is from the Victrix Highlander Centre Company box, the bodies are from the Victrix Centre Company box. I copied the idea (shamelessly) from Dave Taylor, check it out if you want to see where my ideas came from!

Well, onto the comparison. I mentioned earlier how I thought the Victrix miniatures were a bit blocky. I thought my opinion might change when they were finished, but I am not convinced just yet! There is more detail on the Victrix models, but the execution is lacking- excess flash, flaky plastic.

It;s like... the Perry have less, but what they do, they do so much better. The poses and the faces are just so much more natural than the Victrix. Could you mix the two? I don't think I will. The Victrix will admirably do my Highland Regiments (there will be 3 of these!) and I will use some of the Victrix command units in combination with Perry. Victrix takes a lot of time to assemble too; especially given the excess flash....

Right, too many words, not enough pictures. Here are the fruits of my afternoon's assembling while I was painting the solo Highlander! I have these, in addition to the rest of the Highlanders to go along with the skirmisher!

The different heads come from the Victrix Centre Company box (plus one Perry head), because the ones that came with the artillery box are absolutely ridiculous! According to Victrix artillery crew spend all their time squirreling acorns into their cheeks, or at least thats how they were modelled!

In the background is another little extra for the army, not a unit per-se, but will be useful for game play!

Well done for reading that all, I suppose a good distraction from work? I promise more photos, less words next time.

CP