D’Erlon’s I Corps Shiny French Infantry

Scott MacPhee (MacPhee’s Miniature Men Blog) just finished painting the figures for the 4 Divisions of French Infantry for my shiny Napoleonic Armies project. They arrived just before Christmas, and I finished basing them.

My basing scheme is 6 figures per base, which represents a regiment. 4 regiments + a divisional command stand = a division.

Scott did such a great job with this toy soldier style paintjob, which is going to really ‘pop’ on the tabletop. I really love the bright colors and glossy finish (I gave them a second coat of gloss to really make them shine using Floquil Hi-Gloss).

Figures are current Minifigs; Flags are GMB.

French Cuirassier Head Swap

 I have been collecting Del Prado Relive Waterloo cavalry since 2000, planning to use them in my Shiny Napoleonic Armies project. The horses are truly great and some of the riders are nice as well. 

The challenge is that compared to other lines I want to use: Minifigs for Infantry and Hinchliffe and Connoisseur for cavalry, the heads are very small. 

One possible solution is head swaps. I identified 2 Del Prado Cuirassier Flag Bearers that I quite like due to their metal flags (very retro), and bought a pin drill and some expendable riders (victims/ donors) and got to work.

I really like the results.

Here are the original Del Prado figs:

And the converted version:

Here is the direct comparison:

The new conversions are somewhat bigger than Minifigs cavalry and slightly smaller than Hinchliffe and Connoisseur, but not much.

Shiny Napoleonic French Dragoons

After a crazy five year delay on this project, I’ve gotten back to my true 25mm vintage napoleonic miniatures.

I’ve been collecting painted and unpainted Minifigs, Del Prado, Connoisseur, and Hinchliffe figures. I’ve cleaned up, repaired, touched up, and rebased old painted figures from the 70’s and 80’s. It feels good to rescue these classics! Though I try to improve what needs help without changing the original artists work too much.

This set is the venerable Hinchliffe 25mm French Dragoons in Bardin 1812 - 1815 uniforms. (Note: The original painter designated them as the 9th Dragoons, which historically were converted to Line Lancers before the Bardin Regulations went into effect. So this unit never really looked like this…but I don’t mind.)

These figures were beautifully painted by the original owner, so I didn’t need to do much work on them. I refreshed the helmets with brighter bronze (actually used gold for this) to help them pop more on the table. I refreshed-painted the horsehair plumes and horse tails as the black had faded. I painted blankets red that had been left white. And I repaired a few spots where the paint had worn down to the metal. And then a fresh coat of gloss. 

All figures are Hinchliffe except the Eagle Bearer’s horse, which is Connoisseur. I’ve got flags ordered from GMB, which I’ll add soon.

French Army 18mm AB

earlier this year I had the mad idea to replace my entire 28mm collection with 15mm. The 28's were absolutely beautiful (mostly painted by Scott MacPhee), but the size and basing scheme was starting to frustrate me. Plus I wanted a table that looked more like armies than skirmishers.

So, I sold my massive 28mm Napoleonic collection and purchased 5 new Napoleonic armies from AB Miniatures in 18mm. (French, British, Austrian, Prussian, and Russian). Luckily for me, Scott was just coming back from a stint as a teacher and was available to paint these.

There may be a handful of people on the planet that could come close to his quality of work. There are zero people on the planet that could produce that work as quickly as he can. In less than six months, he prepped, painted, and based a massive French army at a '10' quality level.

Here they are, in all their glory, on my gaming table.



































Thank you, Scott!  These guys look amazing.

Toy Soldiers for my son

For years I have been intrigued with miniatures painted in the old toy soldier style.  Irregular Miniatures has a line of 42mm miniatures that are aimed at exactly that itch.  A while back (13 years ago), I started collecting some and put together two Waterloo armies, and a smattering of figures from other time periods, including Zulu, American Civil War, and The Franco-Prussian dust up.

A few weeks ago my younger son (Ethan) turned 8 and it seemed like it was time to get him his own set of toy soldiers so that we can start to play on the tabletop together. So, I decided to order two small armies from Irregular as a starter set to give to Ethan for Christmas. If he enjoys them, we can add to the set.

I chose the Franco Prussian war for the armies.  It seems like a great period for classic toy soldiers and I've been reading the history lately.

I had a few figures already from my foray 13 years ago, so I dug them out and gave them some new paint and a fresh coat of gloss. I then ordered the rest of the Germanic and French minis painted from Irregular.  They have a nice painting service available so their customers can order the figures already painted.  I think that this is a great service.

I received the figures yesterday and based them up and gave them an extra coat of gloss (I like my toy soldiers REALLY GLOSSY).

Here they are:

 Each Army gets 5 Artillery, 2 Cavalry, and 12 Infantry stands, which I think represents a pretty average force ratio on the battlefield in 1870.

 Prussian Uhlans

 Prussian Infantry

 Bavarian Infantry

 Prussian Artillery

 Prussian Infantry. These were originally painted as WWI 13 years ago, but I re-touched them to make them fit in 1870.

 French Dragoons.

 French Chasseur a' Cheval

 French Imperial Guard wearing their bearskins.

 French Infantry

 French African Infantry

 French Artillery

 Prussians

 More Prussians.

 Frenchies.

 More Frenchies.

 Prussians Artillery

One more look at the Uhlans.

I hope Ethan loves them, and that this is the start of years of playing together. :)