AAAAANNNNNNDDDDD it's done.

 The 13th legere fought many a hard battle, 5 battles honours, it fought under Davout from 1805 through 1812, and just to show their awesomeness, they took La Haye Sainte at the closing parts of the battle of waterloo. My favorite French regiment and I'm happy to see it on this scale. 

The numbers are 240 close order infantry in 3 battalions

24 skrimishers.

Total 264 for a single regiment. 

Up close and at eye level, you really do feel you get a good massed feeling.

The 3rd battalion was a bit of a slog, and not my best work, I just wanted it done.

264 down, 172 left.

General d'Armee will be my go-to rules, so this brigade gets 1 extra skirmish base as half or more of the brigade is light infantry. So the next regiment the 17th line will just be 2 battalions and 12 skirmishers.
Sadly Warlord being an evil capitalist corporation has decided not to give the British spurs any skirmish figures, meaning you can't do a proper Napoleonic battle, They, for some reason decided instead of giving you skirmishers, you get close-order rifle battalions. Quite useless and I can only imagine they did this for getting as much money out of the buyer as possible. 
We'll see if we will ever get line infantry skirmishers. Or I'll have to buy some small 15mm or big 12mm to use for that. 

So on to the 17th line, I was getting real tired of the legere uniform, so some white trousers and red cuffs will be nice. The line will probably be harder to get good, as you got the white part in the center of the jacket, meaning it will be harder to get clean neat white cross belts. 

 So in less than a week, the 13th leger has gone from zero to 160! I'm a bit over halfway now, well more than a bit, I have 104 left to do 80 more close order and 24 skirmishers. 

Two battlions in column

Looks good

I've gotten a lot of positive feedback on these, which is very cool. 

Not dead!

 Well, it's been almost two months since I posted last, a lot has happened since then, Christmas and New Year came and went, the whole of January went by, and Betty White and a crapload of other famous people died. 

My flight sim had taken a lot of time and I just haven't had any inspiration to paint. I need more paint and the paint is getting expensive and I feel I just bought some etc 

But I have finally finished a unit, I have painted some stuff here and there, but nothing finished. 
But I did paint for 7 hours in the last two days, my most intensive painting sessions in months. 
And this is what I came up with. 

Waterloo Epic from Warlord. 

1st battalion 13th Legere, my favorite french regiment.

80 close order infantry.

I'm the first to criticize Warlord for the general quality and business model. But these are cool, 
For one thing, they are actually shoulder to shoulder, something sorely missing from horse and musket wargaming. And gives a much better overall impression of it actually being a unit. I cut down the bases to minimize the gap between them, but I think I can make them even smaller. So I get a proper wall of cannon-fodder. 

80 down just 1520 left, plus some 220 cavalry. 36 guns, and 18 generals. 
My first goal is the brigade that the 13th was part of, that's 5 battalions, so 400 minis. 

Chef de battalion

 I got an order from Mazzer's miniatures of Avanpost french.
I'm working my way through the order, with 1 base left to finish the battalion, I also have an 8pdr gun and crew to do. But I finished the Chef de battalion who will lead a 3 battalion brigade in Spain.

Avanpost are stunning figures.

I tried something different with the horse, unsure how well it worked.

I also did the trousers in a more off-white, keeping the pure white for the jacket, Also used a generally darker tone of blue, some detail might be lost, but it's more realistic. and makes the white and facings pop more. This new style will be more obvious on the infantry. 

Actually did something.

 Well, this is the first proper battalion-sized unit I've done since late January when I finished a Danish GNW battalion. Since then I've done this and that, painted some here, painted some there, every actually finishing anything, I got quite far on some Italian war gendarmes, but got annoyed when I didn't get the decals to work. So I stopped that, I worked on some Napoleonic Austrian cavalry, did a tiny bit on some SYW British grenadiers. Did 6 Russian napoleonic infanry. 

But this is the first unit I've finished in that time, In the last two weeks, I've been busy selling half of my miniatures, my reenactment stuff and my antique resolver to afford a super-secret thing that I will post about on the blog, as I did manage to scrape the money to get it. So it's in transit from the UK to Norway now. But I hate selling stuff, both the shipping, the danger of stuff breaking, and also I felt the thing I wanted could be sold at any moment so I felt I had a time limit to get stuff sold. But I did manage it, I sold for about £2000 in two weeks time. And I still have about £370 about to be sold this week. That will cover the VAT and then some. 

It's sort of miniature related but kinda not, more related to the history of some unit I have painted up. 

Anyway, what did I finish?

The 45th Foot, the second battalion in my first brigade of the 3rd division at Salamanca. 
I still have 1 more battalion and a crap load of skirmishers to finish this brigade. It's also the smallest of the 3 brigades in the division. 

I'm roughly working at 1:20 scale, this battalion is 20, it should be 22. But I'm rounding up/down

The next battalion will also be 20, the next brigade on the other hand will be strange. 
4 battalions, 1 at 42 figures, 1 at 20 and two at 15...

I also did the first base of my KGL hussars, but then an order of Avanpost arrived and well I had to paint those. so here is a WIP. 

I really enjoyed painting these, for some reason I hated painting the perry plastic French, I don't know why, they are very good figures, but I can't stand painting them, for some reason they take forever to paint. These 6 I managed to do in a day of semi intense painting, while 6 Perry takes me two days. Anyway, I'll continue with these and wait with more KGL hussars, I'm almost out of the blue I'm using for both of these, and I want to finish these more than the KGL hussars, so these get priority. If I still have enough blue left, I'll finish the hussars. 

Sergeant Hansen Moe

 I haven't done any work on my Norway vs Sweden Sharp Practice project for well over a year. But I've finally added a Level 1 Leader, Sergeant Jens Hansen Moe, from the Telemark regiment. He is named after a long-ago ancestor of the wife, who lived in Telemark at that time, he would have been 36 in 1808, a good age for a veteran sergeant.  

Also added the two finished units in the background. 

1 company of Lædalske light company, I independent light company, just a few years before 1808 the people of Lærdag rebelled when the Danish king reneged on a deal he had with them. And several leaders of the rebellion got executed. But in 1808 the company was instrumental in the victory against Swedes at Trangen. 

The other unit is a grenadier company from the 1st Trondjemske Regiment. This will end up being the main formation, consisting of 4 units/companies of grenadiers, which was the standard core in the taskforces that fought the Swedes in 1808/1809 Together with the 4 company grenadier formation, I have enough to do a smaller 3 company formation of light infantry. Pluss the Lædalske skirmish formation I've done. And I'll use Steve Barber's ski troops for the last skirmish formation.

Sergeant Jens Hansen Moe will be a level 1 leader helping keep the grenadier in order.

Threw in the other units too.

Kinda 1st linge.

 Well, the unit for hell is done. I started this a year ago. But the damn figures are just to damn detailed, takes forever to paint, For the first 12 I used 6 layers of white and blue, but then I never finished. So I went down to 4 and 3 layers. But it still took forever. I felt after 18 where done. Originally I used the metal bicorne heads, but I gave up on my 1805-1807 project.

 So 12 of them got the guillotine treatment and on with the shako heads. Still took forever to do, so I left, came back and did the voltigeurs, started on the last base, the command base, gave up again, after half finishing them. But I finally finished them on Saturday. But only because I forced myself to finish them before I could start on other Napoleonic stuff. If I remember correctly, I now have 3 french battalions, 24 cavalry and a cannon.

 So now I'm gonna start on some Russian Jegers, I have 1 battalion done way back in 2015 done, and 24 hussars. So this battalion should finish the regiment.

River crossing.

Finished a couple of squadrons of dragoons from the 1st dragoons. Since 12 10mm Dragoons aren't that interesting, especially since I wasn't that happy with how they turned out. I took out Kister's brigade for a river crossing. The actual river kinda didn't show up in the pictures, but it is there somewhere. 

I got 24 more dragoons, So the 1st dragoons will get all 4 squadrons. And another regiment will be half-finished for some time. 

Up next for my 10mm Napoleonic project is more infantry. With my latest order from Lancer, I'll be able to complete Friant's 2nd Division, with added cavalry support(quite a lot of cavalry support. (10 squadrons) And a nice 12pdr battery from the corps artillery park.

15th Legere and Kister's brigade.

Gergoes Kister's Brigade at Austerliz, in Friant's 2nd Divsion of Davout's 3rd Corps.

 I had originally painted the line regiment as the 108, which was in its own brigade. But I decided to use 2mm think bases, as I feel 3mm is a little much for 10mm. But the post is slow and warbases were a little slow.

So they haven't shown up. And since I wanted the same bases for the whole brigade, I redesignated the 108 into 33rd and put it with the 15th legere to make Kister's brigade. So now I have to wait for the 2mm bases so I can paint the 108th again.

I also need to paint some more skirmish bases so the 15th legere can be parcelled out as either a bigger skirmish screen or as independent skirmishers.

 15th Legere, at Austerlitz this was bearly 300 strong with the combined two battalions.

Fun to paint, I feel the blue I use work great for 10mm, it would be too light for 28mm. 

 Skirmishers out in front.

 15th Legere in line, behind the skirmishers and the 33rd in columns behind.

Whole brigade line upfront.

Can't do much more until I get bases. I don't have enough 3mm even if I wanted to continue with the thicker bases. I have been working on some artillery. Might try and finish that. 

The 3rd Dragoons

So these are the reason I started my 28mm Peninsula project, I've been waiting and waiting for Perry to do the earlier British dragoons. And when they said they were gonna do them soonish, I decided to jump on the Peninsula War bandwagon. Perry have several versions, But I choose to put mine in regulation uniform, Anyone of my troopers caught with none proper uniform will be flogged until I see bone. Proper cavalry use hats, helmets are for girls training with their pony. 

I painted them as the 3rd dragoons, who together with 4th dragoons and 5th Dragoon Guards made up Le Marchant's heavy brigade. I plan on doing all 3 regiments at roughly 1:20 scale. The regiments end up being "uneven" with like 15 or 16 figure units. So I think I'll expand 1  regiment to 24 figures while keeping the others 12. Which means 48 figures, which is a little smaller than the 54 I think the whole brigade would be at 1:20. None of the rules I have really deals with single squadrons. And one of the 3 regiments are really big enough for them to warrant being "big" 

 I like them, but sadly I feel the pictures don't really do them justice, they look better in the hands.

 They look spiffy with their blue facings and yellow lace.

 It's not that easy finding info on these earlier dragoons, at least not online for free as most stuff you find just deals with the later ones in helmets.

Now I'm gonna try and finish that french battalion I started on 6 months ago, just 1 base left to do.

I finished a brigade!

Ok, so I cheated a little, first, it's 10mm, so doesn't really count, second, it's only 1 regiment strong.
And not even a big regiment, just two battalions. The 108th fought as it's own small brigade in the 1805-1807 period, in Friant's 2nd division is Davout's 3rd corps. At Austerlitz, the whole brigade was a giant 800 men! At that battle, it had support from two small legere companies. Totalling 70 men. 

I'll give them an extra skirmish base. To add to their 2 skirmish bases, once I get some skirmish figures.
The brigadier is Étienne Heudelet de Bierre at Austerlitz and Louis Joseph Grandeau at Auerstedt and Eylau. 

 The miniatures are Lancer, and very nice they are.

In other news, I'm working on setting up an outside table, I got a plywood board that's 4x8 feet. I need to do some carpentering, but maybe a nice big photoshoot on Tuesday.

Le Moyen Boom Boom

 A Victrix 8pdr cannon. This is what I had left of the crew from an old project, I still have a cannon but no crew for it. I felt the apple green was to light, even though I used the foundry triad. But a wash of agrax earthshade fixes that(seriously is there anything that wash can't fix?)


After a break of over a month from March to April, I've now managed to throw out a few blog post the last month, so I'm happy about that.

Connaught Rangers

I started my Penisular project basically as an excuse to do Le Marchant brigade at Salamanca. 1000 strong brigade of heavy dragoons. But the perries have been slow and slower with those. But they are finally getting closer to completion, but the damn virus is slowing things down. But I thought I'd continue to work on my project. My first aim is very low, I have a tendency to aim way too high.
So my first aim is to do the first brigade, with the 88th, 71st and 45th foot and 3 companies of the 5/60th. And a division of horse guns with limbers.

I'm sure that by the time I've gotten that far, Perry has released the dragoons.

The 88th foot, was done with Perry plastic and Maverick models flags. A very strange unit this became. I started on it like a year ago, did 2 bases and lost interest, I then did a couple of coats of the jacket and facings on another base several months ago and again lost interest. So this unit has 3 different paint styles. the two older bases use reaper miniature white for the white and a mix of coat d'arms and citadel reds. a 3rd base uses the same mix for the red but now uses andrea white for the white. And two last bases use andrea for both the white and red...

 I personally like the two last bases the best, the command base looks very good and so does the base with the light company on it. 

 And still bad photoshop work for the background.