Marins de La Garde

Here is the other unit of models from Franznap miniatures that I've recently painted, the Marins de La Garde. These gentlemen enjoyed an excellent reputation with the Empereur, and it's my hope that their performance on my battlefields shall present the same high standards!

French Line Infantry - Franznap Miniatures

Anyone who collects 1/72 napoleonics knows that there is a lack of quality French infantry in that scale. Not for lack of trying - there are a lot of kits from several manufacturers on that subject in that scale - but they are either poorly sculpted, their uniforms historically inaccurate, or both.

I've always especially resented the lack of a good option for pre-Bardin french infantry in gaiters - for me the most beautiful infantry uniform of the period!

Luckily, if not in plastic, at least in metal there are options in that regard in 1/72, offered by Franznap Miniatures, so I decided to give them a try, even though I was not looking forward to working with metal for my napoleonics.

The models are beautiful (though I find some of them to have excessively long necks!) the uniforms are accurate, detail is crisp and they paint up really well. The downside, as I already suspected, lies in how flimsy the tiny metal parts - such as bayonets and extended swords - can be. I had a few of them break in my hands as I was attempting to put the models together, regardless of the care I was investing in that task, so I fear for their durability in the gaming table.

While I was going through the ordeal of assembling and dealing with fragile metal minis, I often thought it was not worth it, but now seeing the end result, how beautiful this unit looks, I kind of feel tempted to do more of these (!)

I have another unit from Franznap to show here in the blog in the coming days, the Marins de La Garde, so stay tuned!

I'm finally better from that tendinitis I had on my elbow for the last several months, so I'm going to pick up the pace on my painting now - or at least that's the plan!

Prussian Landwehr - Province of Silesia

Another unit of Landwehr done, this time with yellow facings (Province of Silesia), and accompanied by some skirmishers:

The battalion in march column:




Firing line:

Prussian Landwehr - Brandenburg Province

Here is my first unit of Landwehr for my Prussian army. These are Hat Industries models, released a couple years ago.

I chose not to give them a flag, since these militia were forbidden from carrying them from 1814 on.

March Column:




Line:

Swedish Command Staff

After completing all units I wanted for my Swedish army, the last subject I had to tackle was the command bases. I'm going to need 7 command bases to field the entire army in a game of Black Powder, but because there are no dedicated models of Swedish generals in 1/72 that I'm aware of, I had to look for options elsewhere.

Turns out Italeri's French generals are a pretty good source of commanders for this project, since the uniforms of the Swedish generals could be pretty similar to those of the french, according to what little visual reference I could find on the web.

I used various models of Swedish cavalry and infantry to accompany the generals, and help set the scene of each command base.

The army general is going to be Bernadotte (naturally), and for him I used a model from the Waterloo officers set. I replaced his head with that from a Strelets kit, to give him a countenance that better reflects what the Crown Prince actually looked like.

With this, I have now officially finished my Swedish army. Every unit I planned on doing is done, and having actually completed an army in my napoleonic collection feels quite rewarding (!). 

I've been slow on my painting lately, and I'm afraid the trend will continue for a while. I've been having this annoying pain on my elbow, which the doctor recently diagnosed as "tennis elbow" - tendinitis caused by repetitive movement of hand and wrist (no kidding!). I guess painting a couple of hours every night does take a toll on you after all.

Among other things, I've been prescribed to stay away from my painting desk for a while, so my recently-started Prussians will be moving at a tortoise-slow pace in the near future (getting older sucks!).