Detachment, 95th Regiment of Foot (Rifles)

A break from the redcoats to add a detachment of riflemen from the 95th Regiment of Foot to the force.  

All the figures are from the rifleman frame included in the Perry Miniatures Plastic Napoleonic British Line Infantry box set. 

I assembled some of them without backpacks and a few are head-swaps for heads from the French infantry frames, the head with the pokalem making a fair impression of the soft hats.

The green is a basecoat of Rustoleum Camouflage Forest Green primer with a highlight of VMC Russian Green and a AP Green Tone wash. 

The addition of a few without backpacks and with head swaps I think breaks up the unit rather nicely given that there are only two bodies and two arm configurations on the frame.

As these are supposed to be light infantry I based them three to a base rather than four to make them a little more loose order, it also means that these will constitute two groups for Sharpe Practice games.

Using the spare backpacks and a kepi from a head swap I made an additional deployment point for our Sharp Practice games.

 On deck right now a section of 9lb guns from the Royal Artillery that I hope to get finished this weekend.

59th (2nd Nottinghamshire) Regiment of Foot

Some Englishmen from my one of my home county regiments are the third unit for the Anglo-allied forces for my Hundred Days project.

Like the previous two KGL units all the figures are from the Perry Miniatures Plastic Napoleonic British Line Infantry box set.

The standards are again from Victrix, and if you browse their catalog you can likely predict what my upcoming units for the Anglo-allied contingent are going to be from this flag sheet.

I tested out a new colour palette for the overall trousers using a base-coat of Neutral Grey rather than Basalt Grey, I think I prefer the Basalt Grey that I did on the KGL, but I'm not unhappy with how these came out.

In another test of something new, the packs are done in Black rather than from a base of Chocolate Brown.

Although this unit was in Belgium for the campaign it took no part in the battles of either Quatre Bras or Waterloo, being a part of 4th Division that was securing the right flank for the latter. 

Some close-ups of a few of the bases.

On deck at the moment is another battalion of English foot and a detachment from the 95th Rifles to be added to the Anglo-allied forces. I'll probably add a battery of 9lb guns after that then I suppose I should start on some light dragoons.

Marshal Ney, Colonel Heymès and Colonel Levavasseur

Yesterday evening myself and the chaps from the Madison Tea & Crumpets Wargames Club had a virtual club meet on Messenger where we painted and chatted for a few hours.

I put my time  on the call to productive use doing the highlights on these figures that I had base-coated and washed earlier this week. I started the base work before work this morning and finished them off at lunchtime.

 

All three figures are from the Perry Miniatures "Marshall Ney and staff mounted at the gallop" set  and are based on the depiction of Ney leading the cavalry charge during the Battle of Waterloo shown in the Panorama displayed at the battle site.

There is a rather splendid close-up of this section here.

As I mentioned in my earlier post I wanted to get some practice red-head in so I could work on Marshall Ney and I quite like how it came out.

All three make a lovely group although my meager force of seventeen battalions of foot, nine regiments of horse and four batteries of guns probably does not warrant a Marshall of France to lead them, so I had better get painting some more.

A few close ups of the figures in the group.

Michel Ney, Prince of Moscow, described as le Brave des Braves by Napoleon, he survived Waterloo only to be executed later that year.

Pierre-Agathe Heymès, an Aide de Camp to Marshall Ney since the 1812 campaign, he was a Colonel at the Battle of Waterloo, survived the battle and died in 1842 at the age of 65.

Colonel Octave René Louis Levavasseur served as an Aide de Camp to Marshall Ney during the Battle of Waterloo also survived the battle and dies in 1866.

This completes my current project of French, apart from a few loose figures I had ran out of stuff to paint. 

I placed a small order on Arcane Scenery last Thursday, six days later it's across the Atlantic and here with me in Wisconsin, now do I hand on with an "on parade" of the French painted so far, or just do an interim one anyways?

 

On deck right now another unit of Anglo-allied infantry, with a break from the KGL it's a regiment of English this time.

5th Line Battalion, King's German Legion

The emerging Anglo-allied forces sees some attention this time with another battalion of King's German Legion joining their countrymen painted a couple of weeks ago.

Again all the figures are from the  Perry Miniatures Plastic Napoleonic British Line Infantry box set.

This unit is a less regimented than the previous match with pretty much every type of pose available in the set represented among the troopers in this battalion. 

I'm not sure how to represent a battalion of about 450 men doing platoon fire with only 20 figures but I don't think it looks too bad.

All the figures are painted using my standard base-coat, wash, highlight method and for those interested the infantrymen's red coats are a basecoat of 50:50 Black Red : Flat Red, washed with AP Strong Tone, once dry the basecoat is re-applied then highlighted up with 25:75 Black Red : Flat Red and AP Red Wash painted into the detail.

The officers coats are similar but start at 25:75 Black Red : Flat Red and the highlights finished with just Flat Red. Their sashes are done the same as the infantrymen's coats.

The officers bare head was painted with ginger hair, for no other reason that I will soon be adding a more famous red head to my French forces and wanted to try out a scheme for him. 

The next shot is the pair of KGL battalions painted so far formed up in echelon, I've got a lot more painting to do if I want to play General de Brigade or Over the Hills, but I can get four groups of foot out of these so could probably do a start force for Sharpe Practice with only a few more painting sessions.

 

More Anglo-allied on deck at the moment with a unit of English infantry this time assembled, primed and starting to have the base-coats blocked in.

11ème Régiment de Chasseurs à Cheval

I noted on Sundays post that I had set aside painting some French cavalry to crack on with my first Kings German Legion unit, after finishing those I went back to the Chasseurs à Cheval that were pretty completed as far as the base-coats went.

Progress was so good that I reckon these were finished a couple of days ahead of schedule.

I base-coat the horses first and give a wash of AP Strong Tone, then basecoat the riders and stick them on their mounts before also giving the riders a wash of Strong Tone too. Once the wash has dried I paint the highlights on the riders and mounts two at a time, so the unit is finished in six fairly short sessions.

This unit represents the 11th Regiment of Chasseurs à Cheval that were a part of Grouchy's 1st Cavalry Reserve Corps.

Like the previous unit of Chasseurs à Cheval all the figures are from the Perry Miniatures and are from the French Line Chasseurs a Cheval 1808-15 set with the exception of the officers horse which comes from the French Hussars set. I thought it would be better to have a slight difference on each units officers mounts so they were not too samey.

Like the last lot there are a mix of Spencer jackets and Kinski coats on top with overalls and breeches down below.

Again, I really did enjoy churning these out, maybe I've found some cavalry that I don't consider a pain in the arse to paint.

I did note that while editing the photos that the officers horse had a patch of static grass stuck to his tail, this has since been picked off. Also, looking at them now I think I paired the officer with the wrong trooper, this one looks like he's about to slash his saber across the officers face.

This is four units of light cavalry painted now so likely constitutes a division so I better order a horse artillery battery for them when I next put a Perry order together.

These also constitute the last French unit I have in the painting backlog, there are a few characters, commanders and personalities, but this is it for French units. I've just ordered another set of French line infantry though, so I can bring the infantry strength up to a couple of  brigades.

 

With the French completed for now I'm going to concentrate on painting more Anglo-Allied troops with another battalion of KGL on deck although a couple of French commanders may sneak in front of them.

2nd Line Battalion, King's German Legion

This week was a change of tack for me, I started the week out painting some more Chasseurs-à-Cheval, but caught a dose of the 'new shinies' and picked up some of the British infantry that I've been stockpiling during the pandemic and decided to paint a battalion of them as Kings German Legion line during the Hundred Days campaign.

All the figures are are assembled from the Perry Miniatures Plastic Napoleonic British Line Infantry box set. As these were for the Hundred Days campaign they are built with Belgic Shakos and the officers have short tailed coats.

The flags are from Victrix, and although overly large, I do think that they are very nicely done. 

The units are built in 20's rather than the 24's I did for the French, for no other reason that I like the pair of colours on a base in the middle and that by adding one British Napoleonic command sprue 1808-1815 for each box of infantry I can make two battalions from it.

I'm also experimenting with some new Windsor & Newton Professional matt varnish today, and I'm happy with the results, although, you can see that I managed to spray a hair in the midst of the colour party that looks like a white line across some of the photos, I have since picked that off.

Now that little diversion is over, back to those Chasseurs-à-Cheval, I'm coming to the end of the French models that I have in hand, so, you can expect more Anglo-allied troops over the coming weeks.

More French commanders, characters and personalities

Another week of spending an hour or so each morning and evening at the painting table sees another set of figures added to the Napoleonic French collection.

Firstly, a bit of a break from the Perry Miniatures with this rather lovely special from Calpe Miniatures that was released back in 2012 that Tony very kindly sent me. It will make a great deployment point for when we play our Sharpe Practice games, and will surely feature in some way in our "big battle" games.  

Although the set was intended to be three artillerists and an infantryman I did paint them all as infantry, in my mind they are taking some solace after the overnight rain by brewing a breakfast of coffee on the morning of 18th June 1815.

The next pair is a infantry colonel conversing with an aide-de-camp that I plan to use as one of my brigade command stands for our big battle games. 

Both of these are Perry Miniatures from the Mounted Infantry Colonels and Mounted Imperial Orderlies set. The ADC should really have a leopard skin rather than a sheepskin, I only figured that out after painting though.

I'm quite taken with the General d'Armee rules and painted up another one of the Imperial Orderlies as an ADC for that.

Although if I do want to play General d'Armee the ten units I have painted so far this year are not going to cut it, so, I'm going to either have to fetch the rest of the collection from the UK else spend the rest of the foreseeable future painting more Frenchmen.

I've painted all the marching infantry that I have from the plastic French Napoleonic Infantry sets I had in hand, but there are still a ton of skirmishers left to do so I added another four bases of those this week. 

Three are line infantry where as the one on the left is from a line infantry unit. 

Finally an infantry sergeant from the Line Infantry NCO's set, this chap will be useful as a leader in our Sharpe Practice games, else can be used as a disorder marker or similar in the larger battles.

I think I've had quite a productive week, on deck at the moment is another regiment of Chasseurs à Cheval and then I plan to start on some troops from the Anglo-Allied army to fight them with, hopefully starting of with a small collection so that we can play some Sharpe Practice and working up to a similar sized force to the French for some larger battles.