Form square!

While I had took the little men out of their cupboard, my son decided to make a square formation using a load of French infantry. You can see the result below, along with an infantry division of 9 batallions and a cavalry division of 4 regiments (my scale).

Some Chasseurs a Cheval

Just finished basing these guys tonight. They could be either the 8th or 9th Chasseurs which had the pink facings. Based three to a 40x30 MDF base and grassed. This time I tried a three colour technique on the troopers - base colour, darker colour and highlights. It worked ok with the green but I'm not happy with the pink coats of the trumpeters, looks like they have been slashed by sabres. I may redo these when I get my enthusiasm back.

All my painted 15mm Men

Here are all the completed French and Prussian forces. The French have 416 Infantry in 13 units the Cavalry have 64 troopers in 3 units, along with 8 skirmishers, we have 16 artillery men in 4 batteries and 2 command bases with 5 men.  This gives a total of 509 French.

The Prussians have 5 Infantry units of 128 men, 16 skirmishers, the Cavalry have 4 units of 80 men and 4 batteries with 16 men but no command bases. This gives a total of 224 Prussians.

This gives a grand total of 733 painted 15mm figures. As you can see, my army's are unfinished as they are highly unbalanced in terms of unit composition and I can't as yet play a proper game with them. The last game I had was a mixture of 1/72 plastics and 15mm.Not ideal but I just had about enough units to refight the battle of Ligny.

The kitchen table! The buildings are by TimeCast and are 6mm. Perhaps I should have gone for 10mm but wanted to have several buildings so they would look like towns and villages. These are based 2-3 and 3-4 houses on 100x100mm MDF bases. The river is painted on many sections of hex tiles  - see earlier blogs for details.

French Legere Unit

It didn't take too long but doing all that white lace was a pain! These are Old Glory Young Guard figures. I saw these on Paul's 'Napoleonics in Miniature' blog and I thought they looked good. I wanted a legere unit all with plumes and these seemed a good way of doing it, they also have the short gaiters which gives them a 'light' infantry look to them. The old glory figures are good but the best units are generally made of AB figures, these allow excellent painting results(even by me!) but sadly are a bit too expensive these days (what? -three price increases in a few months). I guess the bulk of my infantry will be Old Glory and the cavalry by AB.

 I composed them with the command base and two others as Chassuers and the fourth stand as carabiniers. The voltiger stands will be the smaller bases with two figures. I've yet to buy these guys.

The flag is by AB, usually I download and printoff the free WarFlags.

I based them the usual way using 'no more nails'  and  different sizes of scatter but didn't use the grassy tufts - just hairy grass scatter this time.

OG Prussian Jaegers

These Old Glory guys have been sitting on my workbench for months and months. I started them off but just couldn't bear to finish them.This OG pack is a bit limited as there are too many advancing poses rather than skirmishing.

My First 15mm French Command Bases

Completed two command bases. I obtained about 200 40mm diameter Poker chips/tokens from ASDA for £2, not a bad deal, although with three figures they look abit crowded. The first is Marshal Murat a figure by Fantassin with a AB ADC. I got Murat from a friend (thanks Paul!). I enjoyed painting him and I'm reasonably pleased with how he turned out but white uniforms certainly presents a challenge, so I think it will be a while before I start off an Austrian army. Murat is now ready to lead the light cavalry to glory! I may order some AB cuirassiers sometime in June to provide the heavies.
The second one is that of Marshal Grouchy with a hussar ADC and General. The uniform I chose for Grouchy is the one below. I used one of the AB generals but filed down his boots so it looks like he has shoes. Now I can use him for my 100 days campaign...can imagine him saying "do we march to the sound of the guns or what?!?"

French Line Lancers

Well, here they are. These are AB 15mm figures from Fightin15s. It took a few weeks of stop-start painting but I eventually got them finished. I based these using the same size bases I use for the infantry which are 40x30. I stuck them to the bases using 'no more nails' and flocked them as usual. The new thing I tried was to make some reeds from this straw like material I got from Antenocetis workshop, can't say I did a good job - maybe I should have used fewer stalks and spread them open more?

If you click on the pictures you get a more detailed view.