A spot of painting

 

A pretty quiet first few months of the year for me hobby-wise, so haven't had much to post about really. I did paint up these additional command figures for my Prussian and French armies, plus a few Portuguese cacadores just for the fun of it.

The French generals are Jerome (left) and Marcognet – part of the pack of French Waterloo generals that Newline Designs sells. I have a few others still to paint. The Prussian figures include a landwehr colonel, two generals and an ADC. At least, I think that's right (I'm never quite sure if the figure with the bicorne is an ADC or not!)

The cacadores were nice and quick to paint. I particularly like the kneeling figure, but they're all great sculpts.

I'm hoping to get another game to the table soon. It's been too long since my last one. Currently looking at some scenario ideas for Shadow of the Eagles, so I'll hopefully have something to share again soon.

Portuguese line and Spanish light infantry

 

A busy end to the year meant no real time for gaming this month, but I'm hoping to at least get something set up and started before heading back to work in January.

I did, however, manage to get this unit of Portuguese line infantry done. It took longer than expected but was well worth the effort. I do like this earlier version of the Portuguese uniform with the barretina cap. For reference, I used a colour plate from the Blandford book of uniforms on the Peninsular War showing a sergeant of the 18th infantry.

A while back Sean from Newline Designs very kindly added some Spanish light infantry to one of my orders. It's taken me a while to get round to painting them, but here's how a few of them turned out. I'll get round to painting the rest of the unit at some point. The reference I used for these was a Gerry Embleton illustration from Martin Windrow's book, Military Dress of the Peninsular War - another excellent book of Napoleonic uniforms and well worth picking up. It shows a trooper from the Spanish 2nd light infantry regiment. I think it has to be among the most colourful infantry uniforms from the whole war - making them look a bit like dismounted hussars. Very impressive! 

I'm not entirely sure what my next game will be. I had intended to give Lasalle 2 a try out, then thought about doing another Shadow of the Eagles game. Now I'm thinking of having a go at Field of Battle (now in its 3rd edition) after buying the PDF the other day. I'll just have to see where my enthusiasm takes me. I'm particularly interested in seeing how Field of Battle works as a choice for solo gaming. I've read lots of good things from others who enjoy it especially for this reason. There's also a campaign system included in the new edition called 'Season of Battle', which looks like it would be quite enjoyable for linking games in a meaningful way without much additional effort.

So, I'll see what happens between this blog post and the next post.

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!