4e Régiment de Chevaux-légers (Lanciers)

It seems that I am one of lifes natural infantrymen, whenever I paint cavalry it seems such a chore and takes longer than expected. Looking back through the blog archive there always seems to be a greater time period between the previous post and a cavalry post than between any other post and a non-cavalry post.

Enough about my obvious distaste for painting those cavalry bastards, here are a dozen of them representing the 4th Regiment of Chevaux-legers at Waterloo.

These are all from the Warlord Games French Line Lancers set.

They are well cast and go together well, but there is only one type of frame in the box with two lancers and two horse halves so the poses are lot more samey than a box of Perry plastics where there are at least three of each horse halves and the heads are separate.

There is a nice bag of metals in the box, so I was able to make one of the cavalry an Eagle bearer and another a bugler. The metal cavalry colonel is currently being painted as up as one of my light cavalry generals for our games.

Be wary about using the box art as a painting reference, the pennants should be red over white, not the other way around and they should not have red crests on their helmets.

The figures are a little wide, I like to put my cavalry on a 20mm frontage per figure and these would have been better on 25mm bases, I did a bit of jiggling and this unit's six bases will only rank up one way.

All in all though I'm quite happy how they turned out and they make a change from Hussars which is the core of my current force light cavalry.

You never know, I may even get a game in with them one of these days.

2e Bataillon, 45e Régiment de Ligne

Now that my order from GMB Designs has arrived I can start naming my units so instead of "Another battalion of French infantry" I can now say, "Here is another battalion of French infantry representing the 2nd Battalion of the 45th Regiment of line at the Battle of Waterloo."

As with the earlier units painted over the past few weeks, all the figures are from the  Perry Miniatures French Napoleonic Infantry set.

For a change this unit is in a mic of troops in veste and greatcoat, usually for me I do one or the other.

There was quite a lot of head swapping in this unit too, over half the figures had the snippers taken too them, although, I probably overdid the bare heads.

As the order of standards from GMB Designs has arrived I could add the fanion while I was painting these, the pole is just a bit of steel rod.

The greatcoats of these are mainly from a base-coat of Khaki, but a few were done from either Basalt Grey or French Horizon Blue, a colour likely more apt for their descendants a hundred years later. Most of the overalls are also painted with these colours with a few browns, whites and blues for variety.

I did note in this picture that the Grenadier right at the back has quite the streak of the Iraqi Sand that I use to dry-brush the bases all up the front of his greatcoat, I'll have to sort that out.

I've now got five battalions of French infantry done over the past few weeks, but for next week it's back to the cavalry with some Chevaux-léger on the painting table at the moment.

While I was doing the fanion for these I also added the banner for their first battalion, here is my pair of battalions from the 45th Regiment.

I'll add the standards and fanions for the other troops over the next week or so and then likely have another review.

More French Troops

After doing all the twiddly bits on the Hussars I treated myself to a little Amuse-bouche and cleansed my palette with a few skirmishers and other bits and pieces for the French.

Half a dozen Voltigeurs based in pairs, these will work nicely as a group for a Sharp Practice game, else, just to act as a skirmish screen in our big battle games.

These are all plastic figures from the Perry Miniatures French Napoleonic Infantry set and these particular ones have been in the pile'o shame for many years.

I did one of them on a single base as a Voltigeur Sergeant, so that he can be used as a leader in our Sharp Practice games, else, as a disorder marker or similar in big battle games.

A dredge of the pile'o shame turned up this Perry Miniature staff galloper from the Mounted ADC's.

set. 

It's a great figure but I think the face is a little odd, maybe a saber cut at Leipzig left him rather the "Sweet William"

The last figure is a squatting infantryman from the "'hired help' for hauling guns" set found in the pile'o shame, useful as a disorder marker.

Looking forwards to be able to play some games with these once we are allowed to start socialising again with them.

7th Hussars

Ten days since my last post which is rather a long time for me, but I have been taking a break from the French infantry and painting something a little more intricate this week.

These figures have been assembled and primed for I reckon about six or seven years, well before we moved to the US, they have languished in the lower strata of the pile'o shame all these years, but my recent return to the dalliance with 28mm Napoleonics has bought them back to the fore.

All  the figures are from the Perry Miniatures French Napoleonic Hussars set.

I'd intended them to represent troops from the 7th Hussars at Waterloo, so, I'm really not sure why I assembled so many of them in Colpack, maybe I'll replace them at some time in the future but they will make a nice addition for now.

The joys of publishing, I can see that I missed the eagle and "7" from the sabretache in the one closest the camera!

Here are a few close ups:

The trumpeter and office on the command stand.

Another view of the dashing Captain

Elite company in Colpacks

And the back of the elites

When the two components of the force are reunited I'll be able to field three large units of French Hussars, the 5th, 6th and this 7th Regiments.

Back to painting plain old infantry for a while though, I can't keep up with all the excitement of this horse flesh.

French line in greatcoats

Another week brings another completed battalion of French infantry into the collection. Like the previous unit, all the figures are from the  Perry Miniatures French Napoleonic Infantry set.

This time all the troops are modeled from the figures in the set in great coats instead of the ones in veste.

For this batch  I did quite a few head-swaps, it's a simple job of snipping of the existing head with a pair of cutters and replacing with one of the other options in the set to give some variety. There are several replacement shakos, some are in pokalem and there is one bonnet de police in there if you look close enough.

I've used spray-on white primer on the previous troops, but as I planned to have these in greatcoats instead I used a Rustoleum khaki spray on these and left that as a base-coat for many of the great-coats, blanket rolls, shako covers or overall trousers, there are only a couple figures in this batch where I entirely painted over the primer.

The unit us done as a second battalion from the regiment so there is no Eagle-bearer.

Aly suggested that I do an 'on parade' shot, so here are all the troops completed since the start of May, I'm quite happy with churning out 123 figures this month! Although eight of them were started about ten years ago!

I'm taking a break from infantry this week and plan to add a unit of cavalry to the force over the coming days.