28mm - Napoleonic Portuguese - 9th Cazadores Battalion

 

The latest work from my painting table. This is the 9th Cazadore Battalion, one of the very fine Portuguese light infantry battalions raised during the Napoleonic Wars.

The figures are from the wonderful Perry Miniatures range.  I did wonder how best to base these; skirmish order, or in line or in threes, so I can send some out to skirmish?  In the end I opted to base the musket armed men in Line but for the rifle armed company, the Atiradores to be in skirmish order.

I'm not too fond of having too many figures on small bases. I find that muskets and bayonets get damaged too easily, especially when forming close order again.  If I really needed to deploy the main musket companies in skirmish order I can always space the stands out and declare them to be skirmishing.

I opted for the 9th Battalion. The main reasons for this being that they were in a lot of the actions of the Peninsular wars (as were the other Battalions), and also I just liked the combination of black cuffs and red collars lined with black.  It was fun to paint.

Despite fairly sombre brown uniforms made from local wool, there is enough detail and colour to make them interesting.  I like to add a few different trouser shades to reflect the hardships of campaigning.  The white summer uniform trousers being worn in some instances and browns and greys among the remainder.  

The brown lent itself well to lightening with dusty shades on knees and elbows, in a measured way. Enough to suggest these are men professionally happy to use cover and get down and dirty when they need to.

I think one of the most difficult things about them was deciding whether they are called Cacadores or Casadores!  Different books have different spellings.  I lean towards the latter as it appears that this is how it is pronounced. I think the 'c' in Cacadores misses the accent in English script, hence the confusion (but I know little of languages).

The poses on the Baker rifle armed Atiradores are very much to my liking.  To my mind these really suited being on Skirmish bases.

As I'll be using different rule sets, I wanted a commander on  a single stand just to be able to use for 'Sharp Practice' skirmish rules.  These characters come in very handy and indeed, in last night's game (the first we have played of 28mm Napoleonics despite many many years of dabbling in the period in this scale!), this particular battalion gained glory by taking key ground in the centre of the field.  The Sergeant controlled his men wonderfully!  It has to be said Sharp Practice is a great set of rules to play without the need to paint hundreds of figures. It actually made having fun with them attainable without a further 15 years of painting before I can begin to play with them!

So what's next?  I'm in that position of not having made my mind up. I'm currently gathering source materials to see what I feel like doing...I think it will still be Napoleonics though!

28mm French and Indian Wars - Compagnie Franches de la Marine

 

Back to one of my favourite periods of history, the French and Indian Wars.  Oddly I don't have  a lot of figures for it.  I started playing the period with 'Age of Reason' rules over 20 years ago. This was ok at the time, but I did switch to Black Powder a few years ago. As all of my troops were based for Age of Reason, it meant 12 man units and very tightly based figures.

Black Powder played well and the 12 man units didn't seem to matter as the casualties are recorded separately anyway.  Despite being a favourite period I just never added any more figures after an initial delve and I have not added any figures for at least 20 years!

My most recent game rekindled my interest in the FIW (first time on the table for about 6 years!).  Watching 'Last of the Mohicans' combined to push me even further in. I found some more Osprey books and also purchased a 1930's ex-school book on General Wolfe on Ebay.   In addition I purchased 'A Dark and Bloody Ground' published by Warlord Games and this ensured that the whole thing snowballed again!  

I have been toying with doing more skirmish gaming and I realised this period could lend itself to some really good games. This means that I could get more use from the troops in skirmishes as well as the larger battles. There are so many raids and missions which can be played and with really interesting terrain, a land that must have seemed as strange and as distant as the planet Mars for those living in Britain or France!

I bought 2 sets of rules recently which gained my attention. 'Musket's and Tomahawks' and 'Sharp Practice'.  I have read through both sets of rules and am really looking forward to playing them both.  I suspect that I might find Sharp Practice easier to get into as I have several sets of rules by the Too Fat Lardies already and find them very enjoyable.

It's quite funny but I used to think skirmish gaming was a really inferior way to play games. I think it was caused by early experience in the 1980's with some really bad sets of rules (15 turns to load a matchlock!) and other oddball things.  These days there are so many really fine sets of rules and there are many that I have not yet tried.

Back to the figures, these are 28mm Compagnie Franches de la Marine produced by Warlord Games in metal.  I understand that these were originally made by Conquest Games.

The Compagnie Franches de la Marine are really interesting. They were formed as Companies under the budgets of the Navy. So they are designated 'Marine' being under the Ministry of the Marine but they are not Marines as we know them.  The companies were formed throughout New France as Independent companies.  As a result they could be mixed in their background, training and operational service.  The troops from non-urban areas could be superb woodland fighters and greatly skilled.  Dress and equipment would have been adapted with many native American items.  The troops in the urban garrisons probably wore the more formal uniform of tricorns and uniform coats.

The Warlord figures were great fun to paint up and my enthusiasm for them ensured that I finished painting them in 9 evenings and basing took a further 3 evenings.  There is a small magnet in the base which will help them to stay in their storage boxes on the magnetic sheet, as well as keeping them in movement trays.  I need to give movement trays more thought, as they might just speed up group movement.

What added to the fun of painting was the mixture of equipment,  The native American items added lots of colour and interest.  Getting the uniform shades of colour right led to lots of research and I think this is pretty close.

Paints used were largely Vallejo.  Basing was made with less grass than usual and more pieces of tree. I wanted a good 'forest floor' look to them

Despite using less static grass than usual, I still managed to get grass over the figures. In my joy of completing the figures today, I again completely forgot to brush off the figures before taking photos.  So please excuse the bits of grass on the troops faces and uniforms!  It will all brush or blow off!

There are some quite dynamic poses and also some marching/more static figures.  These again lend themselves well to being characters in skirmish games..

I have some more figures to paint for this collection and I look forward doing them soon.  This weekend will be a challenge as my interest might get diverted by a planned WW2 game using 'Panzergrenadier Deluxe'. Hopefully I will still remain focussed on painting FIW as I really do want to play with these soon.

I'll stop typing now and let you enjoy the many pictures.