Friday 31 May 2019

Franco-Prussian War - French Brigade Commanders - 28mm


Here we have two command stands painted and based for use as Brigade Commanders for my French Army.


Brigade Command Stand 1



Here we have the Brigade Commander with another senior officer and a rather animated senior NCO of French Line Battalion.  The Brigade Commander looks rather nonchalant about things, but there is an air of tension!  Perhaps the SNCO has had enough his men being marched and counter-marched with little enough to eat and the sound of the nearby guns being ignored.


All of the figures are by Wargames Foundry and each one is a lovely sculpt and were very enjoyable to paint. I have always really liked the equipment packs on the infantry figures.


The cigar is a really nice touch, though it was always rather loose and bent on my figure and despite adding glue and varnishing it, the cigar snapped off before I had even put the stand to join their comrades in the plastic container box!  I decided to make a new cigar out of florists wire. This necessitated drilling into the hand with a pin vice and fitting the 'cigar'.  I then had to create a new finger to hold the cigar. I used 'green stuff' from Games Workshop to make the finger.





Brigade Command Stand 2


I wanted to use a different mounted figure for this stand.  There was a good reason for this.  I have never seen the mounted French Commander with cigar in the Foundry range since I bought mine!  It is a lovely figure and I have raised the matter with Foundry when I visited their shop, though I can't say that I received much interest in my suggestion to re-release it.  It is not in their catalogue or on their website and hasn't been for many years.



This mounted figure is from the Maximilian War range. I don't know what I'll do with the sombrero clad figures who were in the same pack but this was the one I was really after.




I combined him with another French officer and an SNCO shouting orders.


Well, my Franco-Prussian Command project is coming along - more work to do yet - and yet I hear the call of other projects. Hopefully I can stick with this project a bit longer to really feel like I have made progress.

14 comments:

  1. A lot of character in those bases, Jason!

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    1. Thanks Peter, I'm on the big command stand now,a larger vignette. The figures are done but I am unsure how best to present the figures. An enjoyable dilemma.

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  2. Nice command stands! Foundry's FPW range is a great one and a real joy to paint.

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    1. Hi Jonathan, I completely agree. They are such a pleasure to paint.

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  3. Wonderful looking command stands Jason!

    Christopher

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    1. Thanks Christopher, I have nearly finished another!

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  4. Wonderful looking command stands! The cigar smoking general is fabulous!
    Best Iain

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    1. Thanks Iain. I was quite despondent when his original cigar dropped off! I think the replacement has done the job nicely though. :-)

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  5. Excellent and inspiring figures, Jason! I see you are way out in lead for FPW! The Foundry FPW range is quite extensive and exquisite.

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    1. Thanks Dean. I started the collection in about 1995 and only now i'm finally on to the commanders! ...and its only now that I realise that my playing area will only take about 2 Divisions a side in 28mm at a real push. Oh well, I guess I will have to start the smaller scales at that point! :-)

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