28mm - Napoleonic British - 14th Light Dragoons

 

It's been a good while since I painted a cavalry unit. In fact its been a good while since I painted a Napoleonic Cavalry unit, in particular...it would probably have been about 1987 and that would have been 20mm Airfix or Esci. 

I can now see why it's been a while.  Painting these was a labour of love that has taken about 4 weeks including 2 weeks where I did nothing but paint every day.

Was it worth it?  At times I wondered if the Sistine Chapel might have been an easier painting task.  The sheer amount of detail to go on Napoleonic cavalry is never ending.  Yet, there was a joy in seeing that detail come together and create something greater than the sum of it's parts (to use a slight cliche).  Once finished there is something magnificent about Napoleonic cavalry that little else compares with.

These figures are painted as the 14th Light Dragoons.  A regiment that saw action throughout the Peninsular War.  They retained their beloved Tarleton helmets throughout the campaign and still wore it even when the new French style uniform was being introduced for British light dragoons.

I was particularly taken with the orange facings, which also meant that the Trumpeter was going to wear an orange coat in the reverse colours.  Orange frequently has difficulty in being quite a thin paint, so a certain delicacy and accuracy had to be used with it. A black line on it would take several touch ups of orange to hide it.

The figures are from the magnificent Perry Miniatures plastic range.  The British Light Dragoons boxed set give 14 figures with horses and options to use the '1815' French style uniform with Shako or the earlier Peninsular Hussar style uniform with Tarleton helmet, as well as mixing to make transitional uniforms.  This flexibility of options is really good. One box gives a lot of choice.

I moved away from using Micron Pigment pens for the lining in. I had used this recently but found there were just to many inaccessible parts that a brush could get to and a pen couldn't.  In addition to this, I found I had to keep going over bits with the pen and this removed paint from the figure...not good!

The brush just flowed nicely and I could thin the paint as necessary too to aid the lining in flow.  This was an interesting experiment to try the pens but the old methods of the brush and thinned black came out as supreme.

You might notice one omission after all the effort put in to get the detail right.  Yes, I have not put the regimental numbers on the saddle roll or water canteens.  I nearly did but I find that unreadable hieroglyphs done in a scrappy way undo the detailed work done on the rest of the figure.  

Napoleonics seems to be getting a renewed popularity.  There seems to be more rules, blog posts and You Tube videos relating to the period (and some darned awful movie!), and I think that someone will bring out canteen, back pack and saddle roll regimental numbers as decals/transfers.  I have seen them years ago but they seem unobtainable now.  

I think this absence will be picked up on soon and a manufacturer will fill the void (or at least I hope so!).

So is there anything about the figures that I don't like?  Not much. I had to do a little bit of filling with plastic putty on the joins of the saddle rolls.  I think the only thing I would change would be for the Paget carbines to be slung from the carbine belt rather than being stowed on the horse. I just can't imagine that in action the carbine would be stowed and with the lock cover left on.  I also like to see the carbine...I own an original and look forward to trying it out sometime soon.

So what's next.  Well I don't know. I actually have sore elbows which I think was caused by too much painting and supporting my elbows on the arms of my painting chair. A short break would therefore probably be sensible!  I noticed that I have actually removed the plastic stippled texture on the chair arms and they have become smooth and polished by this very motion (rather like the wooden tools of the old timer's where the handles reshape to their hands)!

I do have more cavalry to paint - Chasseurs a Cheval and this is tempting. I also did the crazy thing of buying a boxed set of the Warlord Games epic scale Prussians with an eye to playing Placenoit with General d'Armee rules.  This Christmas madness was compounded by me also buying myself as a present the Warlord Games, La Haye Sainte set in 28mm!  Same period in different scales...crazy!

Something simple to paint - Ewoks for Star Wars  or something similar is also awfully tempting! Dry brush, big teeth and eyes - job done, no dolman's, Tarleton's or Shabraques! We will see!

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 - Napoleonic Portuguese - 9th Line Infantry Regiment

 

Well, this is a happy moment. The fruition of two months of work. Napoleonics are a real joy to see completed and they are an immense and enjoyable challenge for me, but they do take so much longer for me to paint than just about anything else from any other period.

These are the 28mm Portuguese Line Infantry from Warlord Games. Well I say that but in fact there are 6 interlopers to bring their numbers up.  Warlord put 24 figures in a box and I wanted to have a battalion 30 figures strong.  I wasn't sure whether to buy another box of Warlord or go elsewhere for the remaining 6 figures.  In the end I found that Perry Miniatures also produce Portuguese Infantry but in lead.  They fit in pretty well...See if you can spot them!

I must say that the Warlord figures didn't seem like the poorer cousin. They are really nice plastic figures, very cleanly moulded and nice distinct detail. This, unfortunately, was more than I could say for the other 6 figures which took a lot of blade work to get them devoid of flash and blobby detail.

I really do like the Portuguese infantry. Their uniforms have a distinct look with their own style of the British stovepipe cap (replacing the  Barratina, that very smart piece of headgear which some believe lead to the design of the British Belgic Cap (trying not to say 'shako' as I have been picked up for this by British Napoleonic re-enactors). It was always referred to as a cap in contemporary sources apparently).

The flags are by the wonderful GMB Flags. In this instance, they had the very flags that I was after. The 9th were in many of the Peninsular War battles and there is a very nice colour plate in the Osprey book on Portuguese uniforms (first book of the series).

Below we have the Grenadiers of the line battalion. Their identifying features are moustaches, Sabre Briquets and yellow and blue shoulder laced wings (at least in the 9th).  As I decided to expand my unit size I added two of the line figures (with moustaches - non-regulation for non- Grenadiers), I used Vallejo plastic putty to make the laced wings. Plumes seem to be the same colour for an entire battalion and did not follow the British model.

Some of my newly transferred Grenadiers didn't have sabre briquets, but I could live with that, I could imagine that supply shortages meant that uniformity was really a dream for almost any unit during that very hard war.  

As can be seen, I went for a mixture of trousers; winter, summer, locally produced and grey overalls.  I can only imagine how quickly these would wear out on campaign.  I still kept a general uniformity as I wanted my units to look nice.  A true campaign uniform figure might make an interesting large figure vignette, but for wargaming it would make it pretty unappealing in my eyes.  Uniforms of rags are not much fun to paint for whole armies.

I based the unit in close order on 50mm x 50mm bases. The exception being the command stand that had to be on a 60mm x 50mm as it was the only way that the flags were going to fit on there as well as 6 figures.  The drummer is slightly obscured alas, a shame as so much detail went into him and his drum!

My plan is to use these for just about all of my Napoleonic rules; Black Powder, Sharpe Practice and Valour and Fortitude when I get those play tested.  

As usual, I tried to give my unit a bit of personalisation with a decent unit label printed and glued beneath the magnetic sheet under the base.

So what's next? I have about 3 units on my desk from different periods that I'm de-flashing and undercoating. It could be any of them...I'm just awaiting the inspiration!