French Army taking shape

So, I finished my third French Line Infantry, and figured my Grand Armée is already large enough to deserve some army shots, even though it isn't big enough (on infantry, basically) to meet the table yet.

Here is my first skirmish base. I decided to go with a small base for skirmishers, which allows placement in woods, villages, etc.

My Old Guard is going to have 6 bases, instead of the standard 4, to represent it as a large unit. So far, I've only made 5, but another kit is already ordered and soon these guys will be at full strength.

As for cavalry, so far I have a unit of Dragoons (25º regiment) and a single base of Chasseurs. More to come soon.

This is work of less than 4 months, which is amazingly fast even for my standards - and this isn't everything napoleonics I painted so far, some prussian and british units have already been displayed on this blog too. I expect to have the french and the british in shape for my first small engagements by late August/September, and from there I'll start building the other nations, while expanding the british and, mainly, the french.

It's really a joy to see this army becoming a truly large force. I'm used to playing sci-fi, where your entire army is usually no more numerous than a single of the 32-man line infantry I'm painting, so the feel of epicness when I look at these french is thrilling. I look forward to having this army in double the current numbers, it'll be quite a view on the table!

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British foot Artillery

As I progress with my French army, I'm starting to work on the first oponnents to play against them: the british. Here is my first artillery unit, a Revell British Foot Artillery:

It's odd to find limber and horses on a foot artillery set, and also odd to realize that the Italeri's british artillery set, which is a horse artillery unit, doesn't have one. But all is well that ends well, and I'll be using this limber for that horse artillery set once it is painted.

Next post will be featuring some army pictures of my ongoing french forces.

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French Line Infantry and Terrain

I finished the second regiment of French Line Infantry. This is identical to my previous unit of line infantry. I'll need a couple more to be ready to start playing this army.

I also painted a Battlefield acessory kit, from Italeri. It has got some interesting items, such as the watch tower, trenches, gun emplacements, etc. Most of the small parts I assembled in a single base, to create a camp. The rest I left separated, to be arranged as needed on the table.

The bridge is a bit too small for the river sections I've done, but I might make another section, a little narrower, so this piece here will fit more properly. I also purchased the Italeri Stone bridge, and that one is going to fit just fine for the river sections I already have.

A scale shot of the camp with a french grenadier for comparison:

That's all for today, folks.


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British and Prussian Staff

Here are my first non-french Napoleonics. Even though I still have a way to go with the French before they are ready for the table, I decided to start the other armies already, particularly the british, which is going to be the first I'll have ready to fight my french forces.

This kit I just paint is Italeri's. It comes with 3 generals for the British and the same number for the Prussian, all escorted by their respective cavalry (scot greys and Cuirassiers).

Now, 3 is not enough to do all the command bases I'm going to need, so I'll have to come up with more prussian generals from another kit. As for the british, I had several spare french generals, and since their uniforms are quite similar, they did the job perfectly fine.

It took me some testing to find a prussian blue I'm happy with. I wanted it darker, more greyish than what I'm using for the french. Some mixing and highlighting later, I got it.

These prussian command bases have some historical issues. The Generals are using late war uniforms, while the cuirassiers are dressing early war outfits. But this is no big deal to me. My Napoleonics will cover the entire period, and I'll be fielding units together that didn't see action on the same time, so I won't bother with these incongruences.

Besides, we can always assume these to be late war scenes, with this detachment of cuirassiers here using early war uniforms as homage to their comrades of yore.

The British:

On this base below, the dismounted general is a spare french one:

The next 2 bases have only re-purposed french generals, as well:

And now, back to painting my second French Line Infantry unit...

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