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!