A spot of painting

 

A pretty quiet first few months of the year for me hobby-wise, so haven't had much to post about really. I did paint up these additional command figures for my Prussian and French armies, plus a few Portuguese cacadores just for the fun of it.

The French generals are Jerome (left) and Marcognet – part of the pack of French Waterloo generals that Newline Designs sells. I have a few others still to paint. The Prussian figures include a landwehr colonel, two generals and an ADC. At least, I think that's right (I'm never quite sure if the figure with the bicorne is an ADC or not!)

The cacadores were nice and quick to paint. I particularly like the kneeling figure, but they're all great sculpts.

I'm hoping to get another game to the table soon. It's been too long since my last one. Currently looking at some scenario ideas for Shadow of the Eagles, so I'll hopefully have something to share again soon.

Some more Prussian infantry

It's been a bit quiet for me recently on the hobby front. The hex terrain project I mentioned in my last post only got so far before my enthusiasm hit the buffers. I may return to it at some point, but at the moment I'm still searching for terrain ideas and inspiration.

I did manage to reorganise my hobby room so that I now have a permanent 6 x 4 foot table set up, which feels like a great luxury - even if my battlefields are still rather sparse!

I've also been reading a lot of Napoleonic rulesets, trying to find one that might be good for solo play and which is not hex-based. Although Commands & Colors is my favourite game to date, I would like to have a more traditional, non-gridded look to my games sometimes. Field of Battle by Brent Oman is the current forerunner, so I think I'll spend some time trying out those rules over the Easter weekend. Hopefully a standard 6 x 4 tabletop will be big enough for a decent sized game using my 20mm collection.

In the meantime, I decided to paint up some more Prussians from the lead pile. I still need to finish the bases and attach the flag, but it's nice to have another unit of musketeers added. I now have enough for five such 24-fig units, with another unit half done.

Some more uhlans...

I added to my Prussian uhlans this week with a few more bases. It's always nice to get a second rank finished to swell the numbers.

My thanks again to Sean from Newline Designs for taking the time to add these new sculpts to the range. They were absolutely worth the wait.

I'm looking forward to getting them onto the table for their first battle.

I'm not done yet with the Prussian cavalry, but this week I think I'll turn my attention back to the French army and work on some light infantry and (finally!) some dragoons.

Prussian uhlans!

A while back, in the course of building up my Prussian army, I got in touch with Sean at Newline Designs to ask him what he thought would be the most suitable figures in his range to use to represent Prussian uhlans. The Newline range is pretty extensive, but one thing I noticed that was missing for the Prussians was lancers.

My main reason for wanting to add lancers to the collection was that they are represented in the Commands & Colors game as a distinct unit type - plus, I've noticed many other Napoleonic rulesets have separate rules to distinguish uhlans from other types of Prussian cavalry. Regardless of rule requirements, though, I think lancers were a pretty cool feature of the Napoleonic battlefield, so I thought they would make a great addition to the collection.

So, my plan was to do some sort of conversion, perhaps using dragoons or mounted landwehr models as a basis, or something from one of the other nations. However, being the throughly nice chap that he his, Sean at Newline (after going away and done a bit of research of his own) decided that he would sculpt some new minis and add them to the range.

Fast forward a number of months to last week when I received a very pleasant surprise email from Sean saying he was sending me some goodies in the post. Needless to say, I was more than just a little excited, and sure enough the next day our postie delivered a very generous bag of 20mm metal goodies. Uhlans!

All other painting was immediately put on hold as I got stuck right into the first batch of these guys. And a real pleasure to paint they were too!

I'm pleased Sean decided to depict them wearing the kollet rather than the litewka, since it helps add a bit of variety to the Prussian cavalry units, which already have dragoons and landwehr wearing the litewka.

Prussian uhlans have quite an interesting history in terms of the formation of the various regiments and the different uniforms that they sometimes had. These ones I've painted are meant to represent the 1st (West Prussian) regiment, which had yellow buttons and white shoulder straps.

As with the French line lancers I did a while back, I decided to use wire lances instead of the cast ones that are supplied. The cast ones are perfectly fine, but I just prefer using the slightly slimmer wire ones.

For reference, I used Digby's Smith's The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of the Uniforms of the Napoleonic Wars, which has some cracking illustrations. And I've also recently expanded my reference library by picking up the Blandford Colour series of books on the Napoleonic Wars, which are also very insightful. Peter Hofschröer's book from the Osprey series was also an excellent source of information - the second volume covers the Prussian cavalry from 1807 to 1815.

Illustration plate from the book by Digby Smith on Napoleonic uniforms. I can highly recommend it!

A plate showing Prussian uhlans from Uniforms of Waterloo by Philip Haythornthwaite

With the other uhlans I have still to paint, I am contemplating using some of them as a basis for a unit of Prussian National Cavalry. The illustration above of the trooper from the Pomerian National Cavalry regiment got me thinking that I could basically use the same uhlan miniatures to represent this regiment because the uniforms are pretty much the same. However, I'd need to give them sabres instead of lances, so I'll see.

Anyway, if like me you've been waiting for the chance to add 20mm Prussian uhlans to your army, then I'm sure Sean will have these excellent new miniatures available on his website in the near future!

At last...some flags!

I suddenly (and finally) got round to start adding some flags to my 20mm Napoleonic collection this weekend. I've been putting this off for ages, but it was annoying me that I had so many painted infantry units that were not really finished.

I haven't had any success looking for places to buy Napoleonic flags for 20mm scale minis, so these flags are courtesy of Alan Pendlebury from the excellent www.warflag.com - thank you, Alan! The designs are very well done, and look great on the tabletop. Unfortunately, my printer didn't do a great job in reproducing the colour of the red flags, so I painted over them, which helped a lot. The blue flag of the rearmost regiment printed ok.

The size that I decided to print them at are maybe ever so slightly bigger than they should be, but I preferred to give them a bit of height on the tabletop. All in all, I'm pleased with how they look, and relieved to have finally solved the problem of what to do for flags, thanks to warflag.com. I'll probably add flags to the remainder of the Prussian infantry battalions quite quickly now.

Meanwhile, I'm turning my attention back to the French. The collection is a bit further behind the Prussian in terms of painted units, and I really need to add more line infantry, so I'll be doing those next.

And the lead pile just got a bit bigger this weekend as well, with the arrival of another wee purchase I made from Newline Designs for more 20mm Napoleonic goodness. Lots to do!

East Prussian Landwehr Cavalry

So, my first unit of Prussian landwehr cavalry is now finished. I have one other lot of 9 miniatures still to paint, which will probably be done in the not too distant future. As with the French chasseurs, I've gone with three figures on a 45x30mm base, which is also handy for making the most of the Newline Designs unit packs, which contain 9 figures.

Rather than painting another Silesian regiment, I decided to paint these guys as an East Prussian, so it was nice to paint some red collars etc rather than yellow. The central figure in the command stand is actually a landwehr colonel, which I bought separately from Newline and swapped in for one of the regular troopers to add a bit of variety.

I'm rather fond of the landwehr portion of my Prussian army. I think it's the uniforms that appeal to me. They're simple but look good once painted up, and a bit more colourful than the regular Prussian line infantry. Apart from the other pack of cavalry, I still have one more unit of foot and that'll be the landwehr finished for now. No doubt I'll want to add more in the future, but this will be enough for the time being.

Currently on the painting table is a base of Prussian reserve infantry, which I decided to do next in order to experiment with how a 6-figure base looks agains the 4- and 8-figure bases I've used so far. I'll post pics of these and the other completed reserve infantry units in the next post.

Bye for now!

Prussian foot artillery

I painted these Prussian foot artillery units quite a while ago, but only got round to taking a few snaps today. As with the Jaegers in the previous post, I was experimenting at the time with using a much quicker method of painting, using only flat colours and abandoning all highlights with the exception of a wash and highlight on the skin areas. I think a tidy paint job with flat colours can still produce nice looking miniatures for the tabletop, especially at the smaller scales. That said, I still can't resist using highlights on the majority of my miniatures, although I usually limit the colours to just two tones when it comes to 20mm figures.

Unlike the French foot artillery I painted, I decided to put the guns and figures on one base. It's what most other people seem to do, and I think it does look better, so I'll probably go back and rebase my French artillery at some point. I almost always use mdf bases, but these are plastic Renedra bases that I had kicking about, so it was nice to find a use for them, and the size was perfect for what I needed.

I'm making good progress on the French line chasseurs that I mentioned in the last post. I may get these finished this weekend, depending on how much free time I have. Here's a quick 'in progress' pic. I'll post some photos next week once they're all done and based up. Happy painting and wargaming. Bye for now :-) 

Prussian command figures

All of these command figures, with the exception of Blücher, were painted fairly recently. I enjoyed doing the two line commanders in particular (majors, I think they would be?). I'm not completely sure if the white jacket and plume on the general is correct, but I like how it looks regardless. I desperately need to add some more reference books to my collection for Napoleonic uniforms in general, and the Prussians in particular. Quick web searches are ok, but I'm never entirely sure if I'm painting certain details correctly or not.

The figures are all 20mm scale from Newline Designs. I still have some more Prussian generals and line commanders to add, but on the painting table at the moment are some French line chasseurs. Painting command figures is a nice way to take a break in between units. I'm planning to do some French generals next, once the chasseurs are done.

It's been a while...

Many a hobby blog has likely had a post with a title such as this. To be honest, I didn't think I'd return to weepaintedmen, although I always intended to start blogging about my hobby again at some point. I felt (still feel) a bit of a failure for not having kept this one going, so my intention was to start over with a new blog.

But that now seems silly. I might as well pick up where I left off, even though it's been almost two years! After all, I haven't been idle as far as collecting and painting wargames miniatures goes. And where I stopped with the blog is where I kept going with the collection - up to a point.

My 20mm Napoleonics collection has grown - and continues to grow. It's my main endeavour at the moment, with equal time spent on building the French and the Prussian armies. I have a small pile of British and Hanoverians as well, which I'm hoping to start this year once the other two armies have reached an decent size.

There have been other projects on the go for me. Besides my collection of Newline 20mm Naps, I've also been building up Napoleonic armies for France and Austria in 10mm using Pendraken, and both are coming along nicely. I have a couple of 28mm ancient Greek armies on the go, too, and I even had the inclination to paint up some fantasy miniatures.

All in all, there's plenty to show in terms of painting, but not a whole lot in terms of gaming. I'd like to do post some battle reports in the future, especially with my 20mm Napoleonics, since I now almost have suitable sized forces to take to the tabletop.

So, the blog is back, and I do intend to keep it going this time. I hope visitors finds the posts to be enjoyable and interesting. Any questions, comments, I'd love to hear from you...

In the meantime, I decided to give the blog a quick theme change. The old layout and background was a bit too busy for my liking.

Here are a few random photos of some figures from my 20mm Napoleonics collection. Once I get my camera set up properly, I'll be able to share lots more. Happy wargaming!

Prussian Jaegers

Prussian Jaegers

Prussian cuirassiers

French line infantry in greatcoats, waiting to be based...

Prussian Musketeers and Landwehr

With the first stage of the French army now done, I'm getting started on with the Prussian army. The unit of landwehr was painted up earlier this year, when I was contemplating a collection in this figure scale, so it was nice to have already struck a blow. The unit of musketeers was quite enjoyable to paint, with some nice detailing on the command figures. My understanding is that the Prussian landwehr units didn't usually have banners, but the figure pack came with one, so I added him in anyway. Once all the units are done I'll be going back and adding flags to them (as well as the French units).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNavG6sPBtE