French Cavalry Casualty Markers

Last post before Christmas!

As promised, the first of the cavalry casualty markers (like the mounted officers, they are destined for a better life abroad in the New Year!).

Newline figures again, Cuirassiers and a single Hussar, with more to follow before the end of 2009.

Just remains for me to say "Merry Christmas" to one and all.

Mounted British Officers

More Newlines, this time the mounted British officers. The figure on the left is the mounted artillery officer, the middle is painted as an infantry officer and the far right is the "proper" British infantry officer.

There will be one more post before Christmas as I am currently painting a batch of Newline cavalry casualty markers, French, Prussian and British.

2010 brings a new project as well, the first batch are undercoated and I just need a bit of time over Christmas to get them done.

Vintage English Civil War Figures

John Niblett is probably most famous for his work with Airfix, but he did produce his own figures, including a range of small 20mm figures. Rather than go into a complete history check out Vintage 20mil in the links section (after all I would only be copying the information from there!).

I had never seen them in the flesh but I found two packs on eBay a couple of weeks ago. One is completely unopened and contains two ECW cavalry in helmet and coat and an opened pack of two cuirassiers. Incredibly the horse is made up of two halves and the base and sword/scabbard are separate. The detail is amazing on such delicate figures. According to the Vintage 20mil site the original moulds are sadly incomplete and so this range will never be produced again.

The Airfix RHA figure and horse are for size comparison. I am not sure what I will do with the figures-they are almost too good to tamper with (now I know some model train collectors never get their toys out of the box-but a wargamer?).

I hope to post more Newline figures which I am doing for a friend and have promised him before Christmas, so next up mounted British officers.

French Artillery Command Stand

Now I do hope my photography and painting do these figures justice, because they really are fantastic sculpts. Art Miniaturen produce an absolutely beautiful range of figures (perhaps with the 1/72nd scale modeller more in mind than the wargamer?), and I absolutely love them!

They come at a price, this vignette cost over 7 Euros (I have left one foot figure off). However, the biggest problem is how to get hold of them in the first place! Unless you live in Germany and can pop into their workshop, you can only pay by balance transfers to their bank account. Like most UK banks my own have their call centre based in Asia...now try telling someone with a limited command of the English language you wish to transfer money to a German bank account to buy some toy soldiers!!! However Miniatuurwereld (see links) does accept Paypal, even if the ordering system can be a little slow as you have to email your requirements to check if items are in stock before orders can be raised etc. However it is worth the extra little effort just to get your hands on these guys!

Prussian Infantry Battalion

Finished at last-all 32 of them! I fell ill after my last post and it has only been in the last couple of days that I have felt good enough to resume painting.

I am rather pleased with the overall look of the Prussians-my main fear was that they would be too dull an army to build, but in the flesh they look very neat as a unit. I will be conducting a similar experiment with some Austrian infantry later to see if I could face the prospect of "snow blindness" in my search for the best looking opponents for my French.

Next up I have sort of promised some comparison shots between the main metal manufacturers I use, so I plan on painting up various French artillery in the coming weeks.

Work in Progress Prussians

Back at last! I have had time enough to finish these two bases for my 32 man Prussian Line Infantry unit, the command base glue is drying and so all that is left to do is finish off the last 8 figures. I hope to have this all done by the weekend.

I still have a backlog of primed mounted officers and casualty markers which I really want to finish off soon so I can move onto the proper cavalry and infantry units.

But for now I am off to catch up of my "watched blogs" and see what everyone else has been up to.

Blucher & Ney

Here are the last of the current batch of Napoleonic personality figures, Messrs. Blucher and Ney. I actually have Blucher from 2 other manufacturers sitting in the lead pile but looking ahead I should be posting a few Prussian battalions, French artillery as well as French Imperial Guard cavalry (Lancers, Chasseurs and Dragoons) in the coming months.

However all this must wait as I am away from home all next week. I hope that on my return my real life workload will calm down a little (actually a lot) and I can spend more time with my family and hobby! I missed SELWG because of work, which was very sad...but I suppose I saved a small fortune. Ho Hum!