French Napoleonic Artillery 1804 to 1812 (Victrix) 28mm

Another great purchase from nannyogg999 is the newish set from Victrix (here) which I bought before I realised they would soon be bringing out an 1812 to 1815 set. Not to worry though they were great to put together!

The sculpting is really good on these figures, in particular I was very happy with the definition on the faces and the moulding on the gun barrels. The set comes with 3 guns fitted to Gribeauval carriage, with an option of 6 or 12 pound variants (no howitzers). Sadly these won't match with the Perry set I have which use the System of the Year XI but if you can forgive the historical differences they all look very good together. Overall I would say the quality of these figures is better than that of the Perry set, the detail in particular is much clearer, but to be honest I've come to expect that from plastic sets.

The models come with a selection of heads and arms. As to arms you can choose to have either shoulder straps or fringed epaulettes. The head options are very nice and as you can see include shakos (covered or uncovered), bearskins for Imperial Guard gunners and even bicorne hats to suit earlier time periods.

Using the information provided with the pack I decided to depict two batteries of 6 pound guns, one with First Class gunners and the other with Second Class gunners and finally a battery firing a 12 pound gun manned by the Imperial Guard. I hope I got the uniforms right, I used the Napolun site (in particular there are two useful pages, one for foot artillery and the other for the Guard).

So without going on any further here are my newest additions!

Note to self, no more guns until there are more infantry!

French Napoleonic Infantry (Perry Miniatures) 28mm

So after almost three months since I bought them I'm finally finished my most recent box and I've got to say they were a lot of fun to paint! So much so that I'm going to order another box after I've got through the recent Victrix stuff I've bought.

I bought them along with my 6 pounder and mounted officers but for various reasons it's taken me a while to get them finished.

In the box you get 42 figures, of which only the skirmishers and the officers are really multi-pose , the rest are single part marching poses - At first I thought this was a bit dull, but since I've started a Victrix French Infantry set I've very quickly come to appreciate that this format really does give you a quick and easy way to get figures out on the table. In contrast each of the 60 Victrix figures has to be assembled from a 1000 different combinations of heads and arms etc (not to mention that the labelling system of which arms match which desired pose sucks!).

I started researching French uniforms a little late with these as I was initially just going to stick to the ideas given on the box, however I did find this brilliant site... Cent Jours, whilst it's in French it's also a brilliant database of each of the armies at Waterloo including their facings and the small details that can be easily missed. I have attempted to give them a slightly weathered look, with some mud on their uniforms etc just to add some extra realism.

So without further ado, this is my effort at a French infantry battalion.

French Mounted Infantry Colonels (Perry Miniatures) 28mm

This is the second metal set I bought during my ebay rampage (this cannon being the first), x3 French Infantry Colonels and I've got to admit I was slightly concerned when I first opened the packet. The figures seemed to be bent and slightly skewed, the black horse in particular had really strange shaped legs and all the swords were bent. It didn't take much effort to get them looking acceptable but I was really worried about snapping the swords off.

These were really nice to paint, in particular the figure on the brown horse wearing the habit veste was really nice to paint. My only complaint is that the moulding on the right eye of the dark brown horse seemed to be non existent, it was simply a flat surface. Luckily the dark paint hides this but it almost made me throw the horse away and scrap that figure.

I used the same websites as previously stated here to pick the uniforms, however it was slightly complicated as this page by Calpe Miniatures suggests that the uniforms worn by officers varied due to the officer's allowance for uniforms and sometimes incomplete instructions to tailors.

Overall I was very happy with these figures, again I had to get separate bases but luckily I had some spares kicking around (I do love my spares box!).

I tried to adapt the uniforms slightly as 3 colonels is a bit much for the small brigade I want to build up. The officer on the light brown horse is intended to be an infantry colonel, the black horse figure will be a cavalry colonel (I had Ney in mind as I painted this one) and the final guy on the medium brown horse is intended to be an artillery officer - so I've attempted to keep his uniform similar to the gunners.

French Foot Artillery firing 6 pounder (Perry Miniatures) 28mm

So I managed to break my golden rule, which considering I've not done many sets since coming back into the hobby is a bit of a shame.. but it felt soo good!! I bought myself 3 sets at once, normally I like to take one set at a time so that I don't get distracted. This time however I bought myself a box of Napoleonic French Infantry, Mounted Infantry Colonels and a team of Foot Artillery firing a 6 pounder. I finished the artillery and colonels way before I had even unboxed the infantry and what I found was brilliant!

At first I was really worried that the metal would be really flimsy and snap if I wasn't careful, but once the cannon had stuck together they were fine (it took a few attempts to get the barrel to take and I had had trouble with chipping so I've got some varnish to try).

I found a couple of really helpful websites to help me with the uniforms, anybody interested in getting accurate and detailed descriptions for Napoleonic armies should certainly check out Napolun.com If this is one guy writing this himself then he's got a lot of time on his hands.

If you prefer a visual representation of the uniforms (although a slightly romantic depiction) then this Historex site is great!

Only downside to this minis (although understandable) is that they don't come with any form of base, I picked these up off ebay for a couple of squid so altogether for about £9 I'm over the moon with this set!

The English Army 1415-1429 (Perry Miniatures) 28mm (Finished)

So after quite a long time I've managed to finish my box of men at arms and archers. I do wish I had been a bit more adventurous with the jupons for the men at arms and the patterns for the archers gambesons but I stuck to simple designs so I wouldn't ruin them!

It was a great set to work on, although I would have liked to have had a wider variety of poses for the archers, there are only so many times nock, draw and loose can be interesting. I decided against arming any archers with melee weapons but maybe that would have given me more choice in poses.

Men at Arms

Archers