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.

Shiny Prussian Landwehr

The next units in my 25mm Shiny Napoleonic project are:

1st, 2nd, 3rd Silesian Landwehr from Bülow’s IV Corps 1815.

Each Infantry stand in my armies will represent approximately 1,000 men, so each of these Prussian regiments will be 2 stands.

Most of the figures are Minifigs that I purchased on ebay and did some minor touch ups on. Compared to most older figs that I’ve acquired, these were well painted and in good shape. All I needed to focus on was the muskets, pants, and shoes (I did a few in bare feet).

One officer (hidden in the third rank here) was a new Lamming line officer figure. I’ve read that some Landwehr officers/ nco’s came from the regular line regiments and often kept their original uniforms. This was probably more common in 1813 than 1815, but I wanted a little more variety and a nod to this practice. 

I’m still waiting for my GMB flags to replace the original flags on the flag bearers that I’ve acquired from many various previous owners. The bearer in the third rank appears to be a conversion of a Minifigs Landwehr officer. Well done, and nice variety, so I gave him a fresh coat of paint (he was somewhat chipoed and had red collar and cuffs) and used him otherwise as  converted.

Shiny Napoleonic Infantry

Here are my first Infantry units. These are all refreshes of long ago painted Minifigs miniatures. They all had been based and flocked for gaming and had to be carefully pried off their bases, somewhat cleaned up, touched up, and re-based. They retain the essential feel of their original paintjobs, which were quite nice.

 I’ve been experimenting with different unit compositions for my bases: 

My Infantry bases will have 6 foot figures (2 ranks of 3). The French Grenadier and British Foot bases are represented as a company of the same type, whereas the Nassau base is a battalion of 6 different companies. I think that this latter method makes more sense for me due to the scale of the battles that I want to fight (entire major battles rather than smaller engagements). It also looks rather fun and colorful with the various plumes, etc.

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.

Del Prado Collection

I was extremely fortunate to be able to acquire a sizable collection of Del Prado cavalry miniatures via ebay two weeks ago.

The collection arrived today from the UK. As I unpacked the boxes, I was blown away by how impressive these figures are en masse. There is certainly a fair amount of fading, cracking, and physical damage on them, but all of that can be repaired. Being able to get this large collection all at once, right at the beginning of this new project is very exciting, and gives me energy and enthusiasm to work on it.

Here is the whole thing on my gaming table:

These are 25mm, and sit nicely between 18mm, which are apparently getting to be too small for my aging eyes, and the 28-30mm monsters of today.
I will be basing cavalry 3 on a stand to represent a regiment/ stand, which means 4 stand per unit, each unit being a Division.

Infantry will also be four stands per unit with each stand having 2 ranks of three figures.

Can't wait to start refurbishing this giant lot and do up a few units to see how they'll look.

Comparing Refreshed Paintjobs on Del Prado

In my last post, I showed a few Del Prado figures that I had 'refreshed'.
I thought that it might be fun to compare the 'Before' and 'After' figs next to each other.
The fresher colors and a bit of gloss really do make a big difference!

This was the conversion of a French Cuirassier to a French Dragoon.

French Carabinier

And Prussian Hussar


The refreshed figures really shine... ;-)

Shiny Happy Minis

It's been quite a while since I posted here, but I'm excited about a new tabletop miniatures project, so I thought that it might be time.

Quite a while ago, I painted up a set of old Prince August 25mm (true 25mm, not the 28 - 30mm beasties that are common these days). And appropriately, I painted them in glossy, simple, old toy soldier style. They looked so fun and amazing, but I really didn't know what I wanted to do with them, so they just sat on my shelf.

Well, a week or so ago I ran across them, took them down, and admired them...and then the sickness took hold: "Maybe THIS is the scale that I really want for my tabletop gaming," I thought. "These are big enough for my aging eyes to actually see," I rationalized. "And look at how those bright colors 'POP'. (Never mind that I have an insanely nice - and expensive - collection of 18mm AB Napoleonics).

The fever had taken hold, and I started researching online to see if I could really put together an entire Napoleonic collection with old, out-of-production, 25mm miniatures.

I not only found several potential candidates, but I also stumbled on at least three other guys who are doing EXACTLY this sort of project right now. Perhaps there is something in the wargaming water. Perhaps there is a global 5G message going out that demands that old wargamers return to the mother ship. I don't know why, but they are doing this...and now, so am I.

My research turned up several 25mm product lines:

1) Prince August -
Strengths: I like their simplicity, size, and look. I also have hundreds of them that I bought 5 or 6 years ago on ebay for no reason at all.

Weaknesses: The line is not very extensive (almost entirely Waterloo, and very limited at that). And worse, anything that I don't have now or can't get on ebay, I'll have to cast myself. The company sells 'do-it-yourself' moulds. Ugh! I'm not much of a do it yourself person.

2) Tradition -
Strengths: They are currently manufactured, and have some good content and a bit broader an offering than P.A.

Weaknesses: I suspect that they are a bit smaller than P.A., so I'll have to be careful about mixing units. They also do not make all of the nations and units that I need, so they aren't a total solution.

3) MiniFigs -
Strengths: They have current production, which is, apparently, a bit larger than the older (out of print) 'S' line. They have almost everything that I could want in Napoleonics. The line is quite extensive for 25mm.

Weaknesses: What is with the GIANT SHAKOS and HELMETS?!  They look positively outlandish in some of the figures. Unfortunately this eliminates some of the extensive offering.

4) Del Prado -
Apparently, back in the misty past (I haven't been able to discover exactly when), an Italian company named Del Prado launched a line of painted 25mm Napoleonics called 'Relive Waterloo' which they sold as a subscription along with Napoleonic booklets. Every week (month?), the lucky subscriber would get a new issue in the mail. The small packs of 2 or 3 miniatures (Cavalry, Infantry, Artillery, Officers) from the battle of Waterloo were quite nice: good sculpts, and very solid paint-jobs.

Weakness: These are not available anymore and the only way to get them is on ebay and such.

To kick off my new project, I acquired a small parcel of them to give them a look. I received the first batch, and immediately tore them out of their original packaging to enjoy them (collective collector coronary)...

Well, they are truly wonderful! The paint jobs need a little bit of help due to a bit of fading and cracking, but I happily dove in and breathed some new life into these wonderful figures.

Here is the product of my work:

Belgian and French Carabiniers

Prussian and Dutch Hussars

British Lifeguards Heavy Cavalry

British Officer and French Dragoon (Paint Conversion from a Cuirassier)

As you can see, I also tried my hand at a paint conversion. As I put together the lists of units that I'll need for the French army, I was alarmed that there was no 'good' French Dragoon on any of the lists. I'm especially partial to French Dragoons, so this hit me hard. So hard that it was a distraction for a couple of days as my brain spent an illogical amount of time trying to solve the problem.

Then on the third morning, the solution struck me! There are too many Cuirassier in the Del Prado packs. So many, in fact, that collectors complain of just having too many of the things.
"I wonder if I could just re-paint them to look like Dragoons," I thought. They do have similar helmets, swords, and even horse furniture. The problem is the cuirass. On most miniatures, it is prominent, and very detailed. Luckily, the Del Prado Cuirassier figures are more simply made, and are small enough that the eye really can't see the cuirass once the paint conversion is complete. The illusion is actually quite good. Problem 1 solved!

I look forward to this project, and to eventually gaming many Napoleonic battles with these beautiful, colorful, glossy figures.