Replenishing Santa's Sack!

French Baggage Wagon x2
French Ammunition Caisson x3

French Wurst Wagon x2

On their way from Adelaide even as I write this. I was going to buy 6x 6 horse limbers but it looks like there are none in the southern hemisphere. From following Hat's website it seems that E26 are restocks so with any luck I should be able to pick them up in the New Year.

This weekend since I am not working, I intend to base the light ambulances at least. Fun fun fun at my painting table!

Saturday night at the painting table

I can't say that it was exactly a night at the painting table but in was an enjoyable hour. The kids went to bed and the wife disappeared into the lounge leaving me to my wagon fabrication yard. I base painted the horses and painted the first coat of green onto the field forges. They look so cool even in their unfinished state so they are sure to get even better once I get a fresh draught of horses in from Adelaide.

As I have mentioned before I have really been enjoying this brew as I paint. It is a fantastic lager

The brewer deserves a medal for this lager and the dude who thought of the name... well I don't know what to do with him!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Work in progress. All my projects are works in progress and seldom ever get finished.

A new project takes shape

With Christmas still such a long time away and those boxes looking just too appetising, I ended up starting to paint those two boxes of 1805 French arty followed by a box of baggage wagons and then a field forge. They looked so cool that a new idea started to form in my crippled little mind... How about creating the following....

The limbers for the cannon = 8*6 horse limbers
8 baggage wagons = 8*4 horse limbers
8 caissons = 8*4 horse limbers
3 wurst wagons (not sure whether 8 would be better) =3*4 horse limbers

Plus what I have now

Light and heavy ambulances and a field forge (each times three) plus four horse limbers for each.

The Hat sets come with only two horses per item. In my opinion any self respecting wagoneer would need a minimum of 4 horses per wagon. Cannon would probably need eight horses but I will settle for six.

All this will require another ten boxes...

The finished look should be absolutely awesome and a cool Christmas project should the weather turn to custard up at my mum's house. I am planning on taking three weeks off this year followed by another week in March. Plenty of time to enjoy the Summer with the kids and give the Grande Armee some serious wheels.

Will there be any figures left for Santa to put under the tree?

After finishing my Grenadier Cavalry I found myself gazing at a couple of boxes of 1805 French artillery like a junky eying a line of coke. My addiction as it is, it wasn't
long before my evenings were spent painting these cool looking figures. As of tonight they are based and looking pretty neat. I decided to make the bases 6cm by 8 cm just to give the figures more room. I am pretty happy with this as it makes the finished look quite a bit more imposing. I really liked the extra arms in this set. This meant I was ably to do the bucket dude, rammer and a random dude with a long stick. For the first time that I can remember there isn't a designated officer figure. There is though, the addition of a figure of a chap who inserts the plug into the touch hole (or at least I think that is what he does). In the coming week, I have promised to myself that I will finish these figures. At present the chaps are a little generic. I think I will repaint their trousers with a bit more variation to make them seem a little more "active-servicy". I'm thinking of building an army of General Bonaparte in Italy. I hope Hat will make a few sets of the early Revolutionary Wars armies from various nations. They have dome a few Frederich the Great sets so perhaps they could do... Italieri has done a early Austrian set but they are giants so I can't see myself using them.

My grand battery... Now for 20 battalions of 1805 French in greatcoats!!

Del-Prado's figure with a hat which is a little too big I think...

With these figures nearing completion and December not even here yet, I wonder if it will just be coal in my sack again this year... Maybe there is enough time to get some more figures from Aussie?

Anyway, I am not sure how much time I'm going to have from now on. Work is hectic and by the end of the day I'm pretty shagged. Still... Those baggage wagons....mmmmmmmmmmmm.

I lied...

In my previous post, I said that I would take these figures slowly but it just didn't turn out like that. It never does. Sunday dawned with one child away in central doing the rail trail with her friends and another in her room cocooned in bed with her computer being a sullen teenager and a wife away at her religious observances. This meant that I had the whole morning and a large part of the day to myself. I was kept alive by raspberry jam and sour dough bread during the morning and my favourite craft beer in the afternoon. Little by little the Horse Grenadiers took shape. I painted the tunics in off-white (in acrylics)  and the belts standard white. As James suggested I mixed orange and flesh colour for the blankets. Perhaps they still look a little orange but I kind of like the finished effect.  Painting only 12 figures over the course of 6-ish hours was a very relaxing way to spend the morning and as the photo shows they chaps seem pretty at home guarding my command tent along with some of my imperial guard figures.

None of the stands in this picture are actually finished. The poor old Old Guard still haven't got their flags finished and that sad state has existed for the last four or five years. This is pretty much par for the course at my house. Anyway, now that this weekend has passed so agreeably I might just start a new project of revamping my cuirassiers. I have Esci versions at the moment but they suffer from the Esci problem of short sabers. The Zvezda figures look so much better. My Aussie supplier doesn't have any so I'll just have to wait until his restocks arrive. No problems though...I have a pile of spring gardening to keep me busy in the meantime.

Pulling together painting guides.

In terms of painting the riders I am in a pretty good situation because I have the Osprey Napoleon's Guard Cavalry MAA(83). In terms of horse furniture I am going to rely on the Del Prado figure that I have. I'm going to take these pretty slowly.

Awesome looking paintings from the 70s I think.

The 1/72  box

Orange on the saddle cloth?? How cool is that? I think the Del Prado figures were my best buy in terms of painting guides because they used the Osprey books not only to base the shape of the figures but the colour scheme as well.

12 little figures

The "All Blacks" of the French Cavalry

The temptation just got too much for me... The tent project has been shelved and I accidentally opened a box of Hat's Horse Grenadiers of the Imperial Guard. I knew absolutely nothing about this body of men so I did a bit of research. After about 10 mins on Wikipedia I have come to the conclusion that they were pretty much like the "Jonah Lomus" of the army. It seems that they even got out of Russia pretty much unscathed. Impressive reading and a pretty impressive set of figures from Hat. I think this is one of their early sets but I think they pretty much nailed the imposing feeling of these dudes.

The Tentative Steps...

Busy camp scene

You should just be able to make out Berthier in his tent handing out orders for tonight's dinner.

Not sure how much more I'll get done today. This though is the final shape of the command stand for a non-existent future war game.  These figures are Zvezda and had been lying around in one of my boxes for about 5 years.

Quite a satifying weekend.

Santa delivered my French figures on Friday so I set about completing a few battalions of Spanish who needed grenadiers to fill up their ranks. I had initially painted the Irish regiments in spanish service without grenadiers with bearskins but a couple of weeks ago I did see a contemporary scene of Bailen with light blue coated grenadiers who I assume were from a foriegn regiment. Waiting for me under the Christmas tree are;

A field forge, 2X 1805 French arty, 2X 96 fig 1805 French Inf, 1X light ambulance, 1X Heavy ambulance, 1X Horse Grenadiers (which look shit hot!) and 2X Baggage wagons.

A number of these may not make it to the Christmas tree... they long just so much fun to get such in to!

Filled again with enthusiasm and a flagon of beer from a really good brewery called Harrisons , I decided to get going on the project of making a camp. In the end I made 4 tents for the plebs and Berthier's tent. these are a long way from being finished but it was a great weekend of creating stuff from scratch. I will post photos in the coming week.

But here is a teaser....!

Although I try to only blog about matters Napoleonic, I just have to add that today the temperature reached 24 degrees!! The kids are outside without jerseys or sweatshirts. This is a very novel temperature for us. There is a high north of Auckland and a low in the Tasman that seems to be pushing Australian weather our way (120 km winds in some places). Can we survive this heatwave???