Wednesday 9 March 2016

More Prussians and French for Volley and Bayonet

 After the last game of Volley and Bayonet I discovered that I needed to base up more French and Prussians. Fortunately I could fast track the Process by making use of some oddments from Steve, and a number of old school Airfix paint conversions from Glenn.

Prussians. Three Infantry Brigades, and three Artillery Battalions.
Two of the Prussian Infantry Brigades have been made up from Airfix French Infantry (click here for PSR review) that were painted to look like Prussians. The other one was made up of figures from the rather nice Revell Prussian Infantry set (click here for the PSR review).

Airfix Prussian Infantry.
Admittedly the paint conversion does get some things wrong, particularly with regard to backpacks, belts,and other such items - but I think it does capture the general impression of Prussian troops of the period. Refurbishment was the usual quick touch up, followed by basing and a brown wash.


Prussian Artillery. Airfix guns and Hat crew.
The Prussian artillery were made up of guns from the Airfix French Waterloo Artillery set (click here for the PSR review), and gun crew from the Hat Prussian Artillery set (click here for the PSR review). When Steve based up his Prussian artillery, he had some spare gun crew, so I added the French guns to them in order to quickly add to my Prussian artillery park.

The French, Teeth and Tail elements.
 First up are some nicely painted Airfix Waterloo French Imperial Guard that I got from Glenn. (click here for the PSR review). Since they are shorter than many modern figures, I put them on a taller base.

Airfix French Imperial Guard.
 Next up is a vehicle I built years ago using matchsticks, wheels, horses, and a figure from the Airfix French Artillery set. The barrel comes from an unknown plastic kit. The design is pure fantasy, but I think it looks good!

French wine wagon with nearby Imperial Guard nursing their hangovers.
The final two additions are a battalion of French horse artillery from Italeri (click here for the PSR review), and a French command stand. The figure seems to be painted to represent Napoleon himself (the grey coat, added to the fact the figure was in the same batch as the Imperial Guard above, are fairly big clues to the intended identity).

Napoleon and Artillery. A natural combination.
The mounted figure is of course from the classic Airfix Washington's Army set (click here for the PSR review), and the figure is generally viewed as representing George Washington. Clearly, the original painter decided to go a different route! As Napoleon, the paint conversion is quite serviceable,but in my view  the pose is a little too martial. I plan to replace it with the figure from the Italeri French Imperial General Staff (click here for the PSR review), which I think is a better fit for a command stand in V&B.

5 comments:

  1. Wonderful. Airfix conversion take me back. I like the water wagon and the desperate muddy guard base - they look fantastic.

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    1. Thanks SoY!
      I love being able to refurb these Airfix figures, as some of those old school conversions are amazingly clever. I still think I have a great deal to learn about basing, but I think using the artists madium has certainly improved my basing.

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  2. Great stuff, I too use V&B rules with 20mm plastics so it's nice to see I'm not alone! I decided to use two smaller bases for a brigade so you could see which units were stationary and which were marching but I'm not sure it was a good idea.

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    1. Thanks Phil!
      It is good to know that someone else is doing V&B in 20mm Plastic! Frank has a couple of players doing it in Auckland NZ as well, so there is a few people doing it.

      As to your idea of having two stands for each brigade, I guess it would come down to how good it looks and how often you use road movement? I am toying with the idea of having my extra road movement stands consist of wagons, marching troops, etc, rather than just dust clouds, so I would be very interested as to your stands.

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  3. Great stuff, I too use V&B rules with 20mm plastics so it's nice to see I'm not alone! I decided to use two smaller bases for a brigade so you could see which units were stationary and which were marching but I'm not sure it was a good idea.

    ReplyDelete