Napoleon at War

I am giving the hobby a break for a while as the year moves to its busy side. Next year will be a year of changes for the family. Among these many changes will be my oldest daughter moving off to Auckland University. Anyway, I hope to keep the hobby going in 2017 but I will sign off now with a pic of my old Del Prado Napoleon at War. Vive la Emperor!

Artillery awaiting limbers

I  guess most artillery would have had 6 horse teams so I will have to raid my spare french figures to make up for the deficit in horses. All work for the coming months.

Stone House by Italeri

Today I  took a  break from figures and built up this little house. I have a dearth of houses and general terrain for my imaginary wargames table so today's effort goes some way to fixing this. It was a great little day project in between my work on the Austrian artillery. Good times!

Austrian Artillery

A nice change from painting infantry. The figures aren't as goog as the Hat French but still quite ok. I  might have to do some chopping to get the riders to look more natural.

Mixed Austrians

The "German" battalions are finished and now I am awaiting the start of the Landwehr/Grenadiers and Grenzers. Another 15-20 battalions methinks. In the meantime I am going to start on my baggage wagons and cavalry artillery.

1809 Austrian "German" battalions

Been a bit sick and busy lately. Anyway here is a snap of the continuing project.

One more shot

Austrian Artillery

As the title suggests I now have an extra arm to my Austrian Army. The brown of the uniforms is passable and on the table will look ok. I really like the cannons though. The Austrians had a lighter caliber than tbe French and I think the models reflect this well. My next part of the project will be the 1809 Austrian "German " infantry.

Leads?

I found a company online which does Uhlans and Hussars in 20mm lead called Newline Designs. Previously, I had decided to avoid leads as the figures look a little like dwarves and are very chunky. These figures however might fit reasonably well next to my plastics at one pound a pop they are certainly more expensive than plastics but since I'll only need about 50 figures it isn't too much of a big deal. Getting these figures would mean that the project will be fully provisioned and all that will be needed will be time to paint. That I can handle!

Austrian Cavalry

Apart from a few touch ups these figures are ready for the box. I really enjoyed these dudes and I look forward to starting on the hussars and uhlans down the track sometime when a company gets around to producing a good couple of sets of 1/72. In the meantime I am spoiled foe choice in terms of painting my Austrians. I'll see what the fates choose for me later in the week.

Latest Additions to my Osprey Library

Not quite ready to post pictures of my Austrians yet. In the meantime this is some of my future reading courtesy of a gentleman in Dunedin who was downsizing his library.

Reinforcements have arrived!

Kurassiers

OK so it is time to publicly confess my sins... I have put off painting an Austrian army for decades because I thought they looked boring. My massive project (as it swings into action) was really an attempt to get an Austrian army built and out of the way so I could paint more fun armies. Tonight however, the scales fell from my eyes when I started basing some Austrian Kurassiers. Boy was I wrong about the look of these figures! These guys really pop! No photos for a week or two but suffice to say a combined 1809 Austrian army will look fantastic on the table.

A snowy weekend

Friday was a  snow day  so I was able to stay at home and paint the day away. Saturday saw I light dump but a significant freeze as well. Unfortunately I was away for the evening doing family duties so painting had to wait. Today saw me being a taxi driver all afternoon for various activities so tonight will be paint "en mass" night. For these figures I have decided on a big brush for the first four colours and a much smaller brush to finish. I have never been the type to paint individual figures and I suppose the mediocre results prove it.  Still,  it makes for large armies and fun weekends!

Ah, ces terribles chevaux gris!

Just before I kick off my project I should post my Italeri Scotts Greys. Just like the Revel Guard Cavalry they are only good for Waterloo but since I had nothing to paint during the wait for my Red Cross parcel to arrive I had to buy these chaps from the local toy store. The grey was tougher to paint than I had expected. In the end I used about five different colours to make the hues of the horses. I am quite happy with the result. Here they are sneaking up on some unsuspecting Zvezda French line artillery.

The Austrians are coming!

The new project is going to be the largest I have ever attempted. I  am in the process of gathering 40 boxes of Hat figures to put together a  Shako ruleset Austrian Army. The size is going to be as daunting as it is going to be fun to paint.

Here goes the basic outline:

"German" infantry 20 battalions of 25 figures.

Hungarian infantry 10 battalions of 25 figures

( these may include Grenadier battalions making up 10? Battalions)

10 Grenzer battalions of 25 figures
10 Landwehr battalions of 25 figures.

2 squadrons of Curassiers
2 squadrons of Dragoons
2 squadrons of Chevaux Leger
2 squadrons of lances
2 squadrons of Hussars

8 Artillery stands
6 stands of Cavalry artillery
8 ammunition wagons.

I think this going to take about 40 boxes (of which the first 8 have already arrived ).

More pics to come as the project takes off!

With nothing left to paint....

A red cross parcel is winging its way to nz but since I am completely out of figures I present a vignette of workers at a field forge - completed in 30 min while sitting cross legged at our coffee table in the lounge.

Finished product

After a relaxing weekend finishing off the final bits these babies are now safely tucked away in their box in the laundry. Now I am thrashing around looking for a new winter project. There are a few British  infantry to paint but in all honesty I am pretty much out of figures to work on. I am going to have to raid Hannents for a restock.

After the weekend

Austrians in the weekend!

I have been painting til I lost feeling in my legs - and loving it.

I got up this morning, climbed over sleeping children in the lounge (josie had come back  with a school friend at about 1 in the morning after a karaoke party) and got straight to work on a couple of battalions of Austrians. I must have painted for at least two hours before 2nd child asked me to make pancakes. I managed to get another couple of hours in before dropping 1st girl off for a sleepover tonight and then going down to record my wife's concert.  Now I have lit the fire and am settling into a restful evening of painting. Winter seems to be slowly making its presence felt (about 6 weeks late ) but I am happy in my little house at the bottom of the planet.

An Unexpected Project.

For the last 25 year or so a bunch of about 200 Austrian figures have languished in a plastic bag or have been lying based(in varying stages of repair) in boxes in the garage. On Friday, on a bit of a whim, I took them out and decided to paint them and rebase them as to the standard of my current figures.  Austrians had historically larger battalions than those of the French but had the same number of companies (six). This would have meant that I would have had to have recut bases to signify a larger physical size of the battalion. I didn’t want to be bothered by all that so I decided to stick four figures to a base rather than the normal three. This meant that an 18 figure battalion now becomes a 24 figure battalion – with the same dimensions.  Visually, I think this improves the look of the battalion and the Austrians do take on the look of a battalion mass. All of the figures are Esci or Italeri and have the middle period Raupenhelm which in my humble opinion really define the Napoleonic conflict for the Austrians. I am no fan of the shako but of course will paint a post 1809 army later to take on the French at Leipzig.  I have 9 “German” battalions and one grenadier at the moment in the process of being painted and am having a ton of fun. Austrian line make for really pleasing figures inspite of the white uniforms.  Photos to come J

Moving towards completion

Life Guards

Over the weekend I have been chipping away on some household cavalry. Still a bit of work to do on them but already they look pretty cool IMHO.

I'll finish these chaps by Thursday and then the family is heading up to Christchurch for the regional chamber music competition final. Maybe I can get more kitset in the big smoke. Here's hoping!

Front of the "Big Box"

Pretty box don't you think?

By the way here is the latest group of La

 Grande Armee to get flocked. Come to think of it the whole army got pretty flocked in 1812! They are minus their cannon in this picture. That will be another evening of painting and mounting.

Italeri La Haye Sainte

On a bit of a brain explosion I picked up three kits of the Italeri Waterloo 200^th Anniversary La Haye Sainte. This was not really on my agenda but the impulse was just too great.  The local model shop said they would match the internet price so in I went with $220 . This was about $60 cheaper than the shop would have otherwise put the boxes on sale for.

Anyway – the upshot is that I now have a pretty fantastic MDF La Haye Sainte to put together. This is going to be a summer project I guess because I just don’t have the room to have a massive farm sitting in the lounge.  The family house up in Hampden has much more room so I guess it will live there. The question will be can I live with the set in my room whispering “Build me build me!” Here are the pics of the set minus the front of the main boz which simply had a Banner Waterloo 200th Anniversary above a Brown Bess.

Back of the "Big Box"

Side with a blurb of the battle with some pretty dodgy English

The complete sets on the Big Box

Barn- I am interested to see whether this reflects the real farm at the time or the later additions which were done about 20 years after the battle.

Stables -

I haven’t seen any reviews of this specific set on the internet so I think I might do a review as I build. This will be something new for me and I am infamously disorganised so this is more aspirational than a real promise.

Send in the Cavalry!

French Guard Chasseurs and British Guard Heavy Cavalry

Winter has crept into the the South Island and to celebrate the dark, cold evenings I picked up some Revell sets from a very nice gentleman in the North Island.  I am not so sure that these sets will be super useful to me for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I already have a squadron of Guard Chasseurs to protect the Emperor so I'm not too sure what the other three (hopefully ) squadrons will do. There is one bluish squadron of Guard Chasseurs which looks awesome so I'm going to paint up one to look like those dudes at least.  The second reason lies with the subject matter of the second set. These figures are the Life Guards.  Unfortunately, these chaps are wearing the uniforms from Waterloo.  This doesn’t give them any scope outside of that battle.  They do however look bitchinly awesome. So over the course of the next month I will be working on four squadrons -all the time checking the internet for the arrival of the Hat new releases of British cavalry. Hopefully these chaps will be my monster summer project!

The outskirts of Johnsdorf!

Every imaginary wargames table needs a town or two. Here then are the outskirts of the famous Johnsdorf - held at the moment by a lonely battalion of Nassauers in column.

Quietly Working Away

Over the past month I have chipped away on my Saxon Lieb Garde and French Curassiers. This has kept me painting quite happily as autumn slowly makes its presence felt at the bottom of the South Island. Between the Saxon and the French,  I pulled out a broken old Airfix cottage kit and started resurrecting it over the Easter period. Still a long way to go on this baby but it will go some way to dealing with my dearth of buildings on my imaginary wargames table.

Easter Cuirassiers

I recently picked up two boxes each of Saxon and French curassieres from Zvezda.  These are fantastic kits and for the first time I am making an effort to paint the horses as well as I can with my meagre skills rather than just painting them generic brown. This has been a lot of fun and I think the results will make much better eye candy on my imaginary wargames table.

Christmas Project Finished

Apart from the sword hands the Bavarians are finished and ready to be put to bed - or rather stored under the bed.  Not sure what the next project will be but it could well be either bavarian dragoons or hat's british heavy and light cav when they get released later in the year. Overall, this was an unexpectedly fun project and I will look forward to starting a new one in about six months.

Here are some more...

Figured out how to post more shots from my phone. Next job is to figure out how to edit the posts to put in commas ;)

Cavalry and artillery

Great weather over the weekend didn't stop me from forging ahead with the Bavarian project. This was a 'sprue to base' effort for both arty and cav and it was a lot of fun. I was particularly pleased with the cavalry colours  (horses). The varying browns look pretty fab IMHO.

I also like the apple green on the tunics of the light cav figs. Actually, I might buy about three more boxes of Bavarian cav so the I can have another squadron of apple green dudes as well as two squadrons of dragons in their cool looking white uniforms.

In terms of the artillery, I am quite pleased but the cannons seem a little small. Perhaps they can be battalion guns. Not sure if the Bavarians used foot guns though.

Waitangi weekend at the beach

This will hopefully be a cropped picture for the updated title of the blog when I get around to it.

Light companies get their plumes

These figures pop with just a few more varied colours- in this case the company designating plumes. Love the blue!!

Much much further along

In spite of a lack of poses these have been a blast to paint. Bavarian uniforms were quite pretty really- perhaps almost as good as french Grenadier uniforms. Still lots of little bits to finish but soon it will be time to move on to the cavalry.

Even more further ahead

Coming along

Bavarians

I  haven't painted for so long that lots of my paint tins have dried up and my brushes have gone all fuzzy. Still. .. the project is to paint 10 battalions of line and two of light. I also am going to add 3 cavalry squadrons and one battery of artillery.  Life is so busy but it seems much better if I squeeze in time for my hobby.

Bavarian infantry