Russian Command

My Russians are done*.

I got my quartet of Russian Generals from Front Rank finished, so this means that all of my Napoleonic Russians are painted!

I have Barclay de Tolly and an ADC as a Divisional command and then two brigade commanders looking appropriately heroic. The chap waving his hat is Bagration. So bit of a demotion but he definitely should be leading from the front. 

Barclay de Tolly in Sharp Practice will be a Deployment Point. 

The single commanders can possibly be very Big Men. So I'll probably only ever use one of them in SP. I suppose the second could be a Secondary DP if needed until I get a spiffy ammunition caisson or something.

Bagration was a one piece casting. The others you have to select the horses separately. But I was extremely pleased and impressed with how well they sat on the horses and also that the reins actually lined up with the hands! (Old Glory, Warlord Games, I'm looking at you.)

These figures are absolutely scrumptious and were a joy to paint. They are packed with details and those details are crisply sculpted and easy to paint. I was inspired to really stretch myself, putting extra effort into the faces and adding more highlights. I even painted the eyes! Something that I haven't bothered to do in years.

The drum is from an extra sprue of French comnand that Hät included in my order.

*until I buy more that is. I'm just waiting for the Perry plastic Russian cavalry to be released. 

Basing Bling

It's all about "bases, faces, flags and shields" right? 

Those are the parts that really make a unit pop on the table.

So I had the brilliant idea to add a discarded French shako to Blücher's base and make him pop that little bit more.

Someone had given me a pair of French Chasseurs a Cheval which were one of the free Warlord Games plastic sprues that often come with Wargames Illustrated magazine. 

Painted the shako on the sprue and then cut it from the head. A quick dab of black to cover the exposed plastic and then tweezers and superglue to position it among the long grass at Marshall Vorwarts' feet.

Bavarian Jaegers

My second formation of Bavarian troops is ready for a Sharp Practice game now. Two groups of light infantry with an NCO. Started on Monday and ready to paint and flock the bases by Thursday night!

These are all from the Hät "Bavarian Infantry (Action Poses)" set with the hornist and NCO coming from the Command Pack. One group and the Big Man have red plumes for the elite company, which in a French light battalion would be called the carabiniers, but who knows what they are called in German?

Painting was extra distressing, being plastic figures in dynamic poses, there are a lot of places that in newer kits would be accommodated with separate parts to get the gaps and undercuts. You just have to fill in the solid parts with paint and hope no one notices, but from three feet they look fine.

Every brigade of Bavarian infantry had a Jaeger battalion to four line battalions. I can get 3 more six figure groups, so I'll have lots. I should probably do some line battalion light companies too, just for completeness when I play General d'Armee etc.

Roll Out The Barrel!

My first formation of Bavarians is done within a week of starting them!

This consists of two 8 figure groups and 2 Big Men, an officer and an NCO.

View of the rear

The Hät figures aren't terrific sculpts, there are some soft details, but the price can't be beat at less than Cdn$1/figure including shipping. So a quick and tidy paint job over my standard runny burnt umber base coat without any highlights etc. and done! Kinda took me back 40 years to my Airfix figures, except this time the paint won't flake off!

I found a shade of blue I liked. Lighter than the test figure, but darker than the sky blue in the Osprey. Happily it matches the shade of blue on my Bavarian flags, which is probably a good hint. I got the flags from Warflag.com. The blue I ended up using is an Americana craft acrylic appropriately named "Uniform Blue."

Close up of officer before basing

Close up of Sergeant

For the raupenhelm I used black ink for the leather helmet so it would contrast with the dull black woolen crest.

Totally staged White Dwarf studio "action shot". They look not bad on the same table as the Warlord figures

In Which Rabbitman Joins All the Cool Kids

 

Part of what I like about the hobby is talking about it. So writing this blog and reading others is big to me, even if blogs seem to be dropping off in popularity.

Sharing WIP updates on Twitter.

And now the Mad Padre has roped me into being his co-host on The Canadian Wargamer Podcast. Like dice rolling Bob and Doug McKenzies we plan on exploring the Canadian wargaming scene and what makes it Canadian. Maybe it's just the prevalence of donuts and Tim Horton's coffee at games? Maybe something more significant? Hopefully we'll find out. 

So far we've done two episodes. Our second features an interview with two-fisted sculptor Bob Murch and we talk about why Vikings are dicks.

But this is where it is if you'd like to listen to Mike and I natter away:  https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-qgd8d-10703f1

The plan is to put out one episode a month and cast our steely journalistic gaze on every part of out vast country.

In Which Rabbitman Finds a Unicorn

When I first played Napoleonics way back in the 70s and 80s, the Russian gun-howitzers were called licornes, which is the French translation of the Russian name Единорог, Yedinorog. They were called unicorns as a nod to General Shuvalov who overhauled the Russian artillery Corps in the mid-18th century and the new gun-howitzers that he championed had handles on the barrels in the shape of unicorns, because unicorns were on the Shuvalov family coat of arms.

But I always saw them called licornes, perhaps because it sounded posher? Or we were all just taking ourselves far too seriously and felt that referring to the heavy howitzers as unicorns seemed a bit silly?

Either way, when I was ordering some bits and pieces to round out my Russians I just knew I had to have a unicorn! They are uniquely Russian, kind of nifty and my Russian force is big enough that I needed at least one more gun.

So during Monday's day off I painted the Perry Miniatures 10 pound unicorn and the limber. The limber came with an extra figure standing, so he made the fifth member of the gun crew.

I like having limbers and since I can afford it, I've determined to have one limber for every 2 or 3 gun models. I might even get some caissons from Warbases this fall too. The limber was a bit of a bugger to assemble, and I ended up with parts glued to fingers. Patience really is the key and taking your time with each step instead of trying to assemble the model all at once.

Ready to move!

The full battery. 12 pdr n the right.  New10 pdr unicorn on the left.

Taking a Me Day: Warlord Russian Infantry Completed!

Took a Me Day today to decompress, unwind and hobby like a crazed hobbyist.

Essentials for a complete Me Day

My goals for today were to finish my Napoleonic Russians and start my Bavarians, with an intermediate objective of building a small force so I can start actually playing Sharp Practice.

I got this box of Warlord Russian infantry almost 10 years ago, when Warlord sent me stuff to review. Of course they were never sending me stuff I was excited about so it's taken me this long to get them painted up. Obviously they've stopped sending me things to review since I wasn't a terribly fast painter. Unlike now with a Covid empty schedule and multiple nights a week to paint to my heart's content. 

Oh well.

But here they are finally. The box has seven four-figure frames of plastic infantry with a choice of grenadier or musketeer heads. The packs and cartridge boxes are separate and you have to glue those on, giving better details, fixing a problem they had with the earlier Landwehr. But if you're going to assemble them as musketeers then you have to trim off two of the flames from the cartridge box plate which is molded with the three pointed grenadier badge. I couldn't be arsed to do that, and I like plumes, so I did them all as grenadiers. The figures themselves are nicely done with four variations to the march attack pose. The faces were particularly nice, although details at the sides of the head were a bit soft.

The metal command group comes with a few of options. You could assemble the drummer carrying his shako under arm for example. But I found some of the details on them rather rough and the drummer has incredibly long fingers on the hand steadying his drum! But you won't notice from 3 feet away.

Officer  out front, pointing his sword energetically, is from the Warlord set.

In this batch I added three more officers from the Big Bag of Second Hand Russians. I put one of them in the command stand, and then based the Warlord officer as a Big Man, since he's different and gives a bit of welcome variety to my Russian Big Men. I also think his charging forward pose is rather at odds with the rest of the box in an upright march attack position.

The flags are from the insert that came with the box, and they are actually for a Grenadier regiment! But don't ask me if the shoulder strap or facing colours are right for the Kiev Grenadiers, because again, I couldn't be arsed. 

So 9 1/2 years to get them out of the box. 11 days from brown undercoat to flocked. Not bad. If I could've painted things that fast 10 years ago they might have kept bunging me freebies. 

Oh well.

In between waiting for brown paint and flocking glue to dry on these fellows I got my Perry Miniatures 10 pounder unicorn and limber painted and ready to flock, and a nice starter force of Bavarians assembled and primed. But I'll post about those later.

When taking breaks from the painting bench I drank lots of tea and read Napoleon's Last Campaign in Germany 1813 by F. Loraine Petre.

A pretty good day.