Newline Designs - Portuguese cavalry

A few weeks ago a parcel arrived for me quite unexpectedly. It turned out to be an early Christmas present in the form of some Portuguese cavalry and Spanish infantry, very kindly sent from Sean at Newline Designs. I'd asked Sean about the cavalry at the beginning of the year when I first had my eye on building up a British and allied army. At that time, Newline Designs didn't have any, but it so happened that they were already in the pipeline, along with various other Portuguese and Spanish units.

I remember reading a series of posts about 20mm Portuguese Cavalry over on the (highly enjoyable) 'Prometheus in Aspic' blog, dating back to 2011. At that time no-one made any in 20mm, so they had to be cobbled together using horses and riders from other nations. It'll be interesting to know if this new release from Newline is indeed the first dedicated Napoleonic Portuguese cavalry available for 20mm.

I decided to paint this unit as the 3rd regiment, based on this plate by Michael Chappell from the Blandford Colour series book on the Peninsular War. Looking at the plate again, I realise I may well have mistaken the sideburns on the figures for chinscales. Easy enough to fix it that is the case, but I will need to investigate further.

The 12 figures are mounted on 50x30mm bases, three figures per base, as per my plan for playing games of the new Lasalle rules once they're released. For games of Commands & Colors, I'll only need to use three bases (not sure yet how I'll go about distinguishing light cav from heavy cav).

My thanks go once again to Napflags for the flag. According to the info over on that site, Portuguese cavalry carried one flag per squadron, each of a different colour. I opted to give them the flag carried by the 1st squadron.

Next up will be the Spanish infantry. These are 'remodelled' figures, which I'm assuming means they are new sculpts to replace the old ones. I never owned any of the previous models, so I won't be able to make any comparisons, but the new infantry do certainly look very fine.

I have another week off work coming up, so should get most of that unit done before deciding what to focus on next. I'm hoping Sam Mustafa's new Lasalle rules will be available soon so that I can give them their first try out, pitting my French against my Prussians. I'll be putting together a battle report for that when I do.

A very happy New Year to everyone when it comes!

French light infantry - a new basing project

A little while back I learned about a new set of Napoleonic rules in the pipeline from Sam Mustafa, which are a reworking of his original 'Lasalle' ruleset. He is calling them Lasalle 2nd edition, but judging by his introduction to the rules, they are not just a tweaking of the original rules but are a complete rewrite.

Sam has done a short podcast to talk about Lasalle 2nd ed, and there are various free downloads available, including a full sample chapter. The new game sounds like it might be just the sort I'd like to play, even as a solo gamer, and the size of my 20mm Napoleonic collection would be a good fit for an average sized scenario.

Anyway, it got me thinking about basing. The new Lasalle rules don't have any restrictive base size requirements (you'll find basing info over on Sam Mustafa's website), but the arrival of the new game has coincided with my wanting to standardise my method of basing anyway. At the moment, I have a lot of infantry based on 25x25mm bases (4 per base), but also some on 35x25mm (6 per base) and even some on 50x25mm (8 per base). Cavalry are mostly 30x30mm (2 per base) or 45x25mm (3 per base). The variations are down to nothing more than my own caprice, but I've decided to try and get everything more consistent.

So, this reworked unit of French light infantry is the first of what I think will be a larger rebasing project. There is some new painting here, too. I added around 12 more figures, taking the unit up to 32, which is the standard size of infantry unit I'm aiming for, using 8 figures per base on 30x50mm bases. When I first painted some of these lights a few years ago, my knowledge of Napoleonic uniforms was pretty sketchy, so I took the chance to correct some of the more obvious mistakes I'd made. I should say, my knowledge is still far from complete, so I'm sure there will still be errors here. In particular, I sometimes find researching uniforms for command figures a bit tricky when it comes to details such as plumes, shako cords, epaulettes etc. Am I way off the mark to have this command group using green for these items? Quite possibly! I also mistakingly printed off a line infantry flag from Napflags, but away from the painting magnifier my eyesight is too bad to make me worry about that.

So, the plan is to use the same 30x50mm bases for cavalry (3 figures per base), with artillery also on 50mm wide bases. Cavalry units will also be four bases, so 12 figures in total. Artillery will, I think, be two bases.

It might seem a bit silly to go about rebasing an entire collection in readiness for a ruleset that hasn't even been released, and which doesn't even demand any rebasing, but I've been wanting to use larger bases for a while now anyway, and I like the idea of larger infantry units, even though it will mean more painting. I'm also planning to use these base sizes for games of Commands & Colours using larger hexes than what I use at the moment, trying out 140mm wide hexes instead of 100mm. That's another project for later though.

The new base sizes will allow for representing the main formations quite easily - line, attack column, march column and square, so should be useful for other rulesets besides Lasalle.

Anyway, I'm eagerly awaiting the release of the new Lasalle. I certainly hope it will give a fun game for the likes of me. If you're a Napoleonic gamer who is always interested in a new set of rules (which must be nearly all of us!), then check out Sam Mustafa's website for some more details on the forthcoming new edition of Lasalle.

Next for me will be to reorganise and rebase some of my French line units, but I'll also be taking a painting detour to the Peninsular War - more on that in the next post!

Sam Mustafa's Honour website: https://sammustafa.com/
And his podcasts page: https://sammustafa.com/podcasts/