Good day friends:
Napoleonic Thursday has rolled around once again and this week I have som 6mm Baccus Austrian Uhlans that I am calling finished, ready to be taken off the painting sticks, cut and bunged (a technical term I’ve learned from the (slightly) mad author of the Service Ration Distribution blog) onto bases. I followed my usual recipe of a black undercoat and batch painting all 45ish figures (!), which gives me enough for three different regiments (1st, 2nd and 3rd) in their distinctive cloth czapka colours. My source is Haythornthwaite and Fosten’s Osprey book, Austrian Army of the Napoleonic Wars (2).
Once I get these done, I can finally tackle my Battle of Wertingen project, as the Austrians had at least one regiment of Uhlans there, I believe. Not sure about you, but lancers give me the willies, and if I had to face any type of Napoleonic cavalry in battle, I think I would fear lancers the most. I am sure that there are drawbacks in combat once your lance gets broken or caught and some brute with a dragoon sabre gets inside your reach, but it would be terribly intimidating to be charged by lancers, I would think.
In other Napoleonic news, I’m currently dipping into the Memoirs of Marshal MacDonald (trans. Simeon, Leonaur 2011), the Marshal of whom Napoleon once said that it would be dangerous to let him hear bagpipes on the battlefield. MacDonald’s memoir is at times self-serving, as one would expect, but the accounts of how he survived his service in the Revolutionary army during the Terror, of being chased and chasing up and down Italy, and keeping his small corps intact during the Russian campaign are all entertaining.
I had a look at the Front Rank website, once I learned that the owner is retiring and has the company up for sale. My dear friend James has a huge head of steam up with his 28mm Napoleonics project, and I am sometimes tempted into joining him, but to my credit I closed my browser without buying an Front Rank figures. James and I have agreed that after Covid restrictions ease, he can visit me to game with my 6mm Naps kit, and I can visit him and play with his big 28mm figures. Thus my willpower and my wallet live to fight another day.
Finally, in the books received department, two very interesting books arrived in the post from David Ensteness’ The Wargaming Company, the new edition of his Et Sans Resultat rules and his guidebook to 1808 Peninsular campaign. If I’m to be tempted to buy more Napoleonic figures, it will be for Spain, I think. Comments on these books in the weeks ahead, I hope.
Cheers and thanks for reading. What Napoleonics stuff are you working on?
MP+
Front Rank potentially closing down??!! I better get over there and buy some stuff I have had on the back burner for some time ...thanks for mentioning this Michael
ReplyDeleteI like the lancers! Nicely done on yet more tiny yet detailed figs.
ReplyDeleteNo Napoleonics for me. I need to get into and purchase for a new gaming genre like I need a hole in my dense noggin!
Lovely lancers!
ReplyDeleteNice work on the lancers! Two battalions of 28mm Spanish infantry recently came off my painting desk. That's it for Napoleonics, for now.
ReplyDeleteFantastic painting of these 'little fellas'. You included such excellent, fine detail.
ReplyDeleteRegards, James
[Since you ask. For me it is slow and steady 'factory production' at two scales: 2 mm and 1/72. The former generic Austrian and French armies, the latter early versions of infantry for the two (circa 1796-ish). Hundreds of each, and some First World War French thrown into my long pipeline, hence the weekend's painting time got flesh parts done.]