Holiday Napoleonics WIP

I started off the 2016 holiday season with another refight of Quatre Bras, using the same scenario reported on here. The three major differences were:

1.  I brought along to the game extra figures, bases, and blue tack, to make skirmish stands as they were needed,
2. I played the French, rather than the Anglo-Dutch forces, and
3. The French didn't even come close to winning - but the butcher's bill was significantly less than the previous refight. 

During the game it was mentioned, that while the French were coming along in leaps and bounds, the Anglo-Dutch, were looking very much like the poor relations of my V&B forces.

The whole lot - in various stages of refurbishment.

With that in mind, and having some free time due to the holidays, I decided on a mass refurbishment of my British forces. I have been fortunate in acquiring over the years a number of painted and semi painted British figures from a variety of sources, so I figured I should start with these figures, and then if required paint figures from scratch.

Eight artillery stands. Guns are Revell and Airfix 9pdrs, figures are Revell Foot Artillery, and Airfix and Esci Royal Horse Artillery

 The figures are from a variety of manufacturers: Airfix, Revell, Esci, and even some Eagle Games figures.

Artillery and Revell 95th Rifles painted as 60th Foot and based as skirmish stands.

I still have to finish the basing by adding tussock, scatter grass, etc to the stands, and to touch up paint on a number of Airfix figures where the older enamels have flaked. I still have to add an ink wash to many of the stands. I have started to experiment with black and sepia washes.

Brown washed Revell and Airfix Infantry.

In the middle, a very thin red line is formed by Esci British infantry.

Another view of the Revell and Esci infantry stands.

 I still have a couple of stands of Airfix Highlanders to refurbish, and a few more stands of Airfix British infantry - but they (and some more command stands) will have to wait a little longer to finishing.
 

The Esci thin red line. I acquired a large number of nicely painted Esci British infantry, that were primarily made up of the standing and firing pose from the Esci British Infantry set (click here for PSR review). 

After the last game of V&B I really wanted to make sure that I had a pool of skirmish stands available for use. The 60th foot stands are probably of more use for the Peninsula War than Waterloo, but since I had acquired some already painted from Steve H., I figured I should just base them up.

Riflemen of the 60th Foot. Metal British 16th Light Dragoons in the background.

Essentially, if I had a painted British figure, I was going to find a stand to base it on in order to bulk up the number of British forces available for use on the table top.

Airfix figures that had been converted to Riflemen. I suspect the intent was to create a detachment of the 95th Rifles. My intent is to use these skirmish stands as generic Jager stands for Netherland and Prussian forces.

Esci skirmish stands with a couple of Revell figures thrown in to the mix on the center stand.

The other major weakness has been the hodge podge of command stands available for the British. While I do have some of the very nice Strelets British command figures from their Aliied command set  (PSR review here), and the Waterloo Napoleonic Mounted Line Officers set (PSR review here) - I am still in the process of painting those figures. So since I had some other mounted officers available, I decided to use those, even though strictly speaking they are in the wrong uniforms,

LtR (Left to Right): Airfix Highlander Officer, Italeri French Officer (repainted) Airfix British Infantry Officer.

 Another source of officers has been the Italeri French Imperial General Staff set (click here for PSR review). I can't remember if it was Frank or Steve H. who first alerted me to the paint conversion possibilities of this set, but the British and Prussian forces Steve H. gave me both had examples of the figures in use as officers.

LtR: Airfix Highlander, Eagle Games commander, Revell British officer, Italeri French officer (repainted)

 Eagle Games used to sell additional figures for their game 'Napoleon in Europe'(click here for the Board-Game Geek review and here for the PSR review of the figures). I bought a set these some time ago with the intent of using them to supplement my Prussian forces. I have re-horsed the mounted figures with Esci British horses, and have started painting up some of the mounted officers as British command stands.

Eagle Games British General on Esci horse - still a WIP as base needs finishing and sword needs to be painted,

 One very interesting event that did come about from the holiday Napoleonic fest was that I discovered my wife has a talent for painting miniatures. I hate painting Napoleonics - hence my great love of refurnishing older figures - and routinely bitch about it being hard. Katherine commented that it looked fairly straight forward, so I asked if she wanted to try painting some.

Katherine's first painted stand. She wants to add more to to the base before she finishes it.

Katherine said yes, and the next day I had another freshly painted skirmish stand at my disposal. I think she has done a very good job with these! I am currently negotiating with her to see if she wants to paint up some of the Netherlander command stands I need completed!

Lucky Products Hessians

I have recently finished the first Hessian stand for Volley and Bayonet using the Lucky products figures I purchased some time ago (Click here for more details). While these are not the most detailed figures available, they do have a certain charm to them. I have painted them as Grenadiers of the Hesse-Cassel Regiment Von Rall. While their breeches were white, many ended up with ones made of red and white striped mattress ticking.

Hessians occupy an unfinished BUA.

The model building in the background is an experimental design by Fitz from Shouting into the Void. He kindly designed a basic building for use on the school laser cutter. Hopefully I should be able to show him an example within the next few days.

A close up of the stand.

For the Brandywine scenario I need to base up another stand of Hessians to complete the Grenadier brigade. I will probably use the same format, but perhaps adding on a few more figures with mitres. I have toyed with trimming the trumpet like instrument back to a more fife like size, but I feel this would defeat the purpose of using these figures, by removing some of their quirkiness.

Angled for the camera.

Oddly enough, the fifer has what appears to be a regular sized fife case sculpted on the figure. Still I think that my Hessians will fight better for having a war trumpet rather than a fife!

Maps and Stuff

A nine piece foam tile set bought by Kat for me!

As Archduke Piccolo noted in his comment on my last post, the photos were indeed taken on a map of Gettysburg.

It works out at being around a metre square.

I have regretted not getting one since seeing it the Gettysburg visitors center in 2008.  I was worried that it would be too bulky to take back home, given the other stuff I was carrying back.

No scale is given however.

 I plan to run a very simple game of the Battle of Gettysburg on it, using a simplified version of Volley and Bayonet.

The township itself. Unfortunately the location of the best toy soldier shops are not marked.

To continue the theme from my last post of items I purchased and had waiting for me in PA, I purchased some more Star Wars Micro Machines figures, and two Forces of Valor German trucks.

In and out of the packaging.

 The trucks are very sturdy diecast models of German Bussing-Nag 4500As, and make a nice change for my German transport park that consists of a collection of Esci and Airfix Opel Blitzs. From memory these two trucks are rated as being medium trucks under CD.

Side by side. Each truck comes with a canvas tilt and two passengers.

 I also decided to grab some cheap Imperial Naval Troopers to bulk up my Galactic Navy forces.

Imperial Naval Troopers.

More recruits for the Galactic Navy.

The final picture shows some toy soldiers my Mother in law found for me. The big grey cowboy is around 80mm high, and is a hollow cast metal figure. Some time spent researching on the internet revealed that he is a Barclay cowboy - No: 752 Cowboy with Lasso.(This link gives more information, scroll halfway down the page for a picture, and return to the main page for detailed information)

New additions to my figure collection - a Barclay Cowboy and two Bonnie Bilt GIs.

The two semi round GIs appear to be figures from a US company called Bonnie Bilt. I managed to find a blog with some information on them, but apart from that I wasn't able to find much about them. The figures are hard plastic, and are quite visually pleasing. I am sure that they will look good on one of my bookshelves.

More Motorcycles WIP.

Around early June, the hard drive on my laptop started to fail. With the help of some very tech savvy friends, I have managed to keep the laptop lurching along in a rather zombie like fashion. Fortunately, my very generous in-laws gave me a replacement machine - for which I am very grateful. What all this has meant for this blog has been a) a rather delayed amount of posting, and b) as I transfer data from old to new, discovering pictures I meant to post - or though I had already posted.... Such as these ones....

Part of my personal rebuilding after the late unpleasantness, has been a redividing of my stockpiles of German gear into four main bands of use - Early War, Late War, Africa, and Eastern Front - with a few subdivisions here and there.

This process was also applied to my stock of German Motorcycles. firstly the early war WIPs. These are going to be the basis of a Motorcycle battalion, for use with CD 3.

Currently undercoated, but needing a little bit of TLC.

Motorcycles are largely Fujimi, with added Matchbox and Airfix figures.

Currently awaiting the next burst of activity....

The other group of motorcycles are the ones I am planning to use in North Africa. I have gotten further along with these fellows, as I am enjoying painting with sands and browns - makes me think of Harad in the spring....

Of course not much further along than the early war chaps...M/Cs are largely Italeri with some Hasegawa added in.

Of course I painted the command stand first.

Right, since I have posted these I can feel a bit less slack about not posting them earlier....

It's been some time since the last post...

Two major earthquakes and another series of house moves have caused a delay in my blogging project. So lets get back into the swing of things with some more german armoured cars.

 Photo quality is still awful.

Better pics next time.

Frankenachraden

Recently I decided that I needed to make some Sdkfz 234/3s to flesh out the CD TOE of a 1944-45 German Panzer Division Heavy Armoured Car Company. Rather than trash a nice Matchbox Puma kit I decided to use a couple of old Airfix 'German Armoured Car' kits and turn them into something useful.