Austrian Napoleonic Dragoons in 6mm from Henry Turner

 Good day friends and welcome to the weekend.  I had fully intended to post this yesterday as one of this blog’s semi-habitual Napoleonic Thursday post, but my computer had some issues and no matter, here they are today.

While I have some Austrian cuirassiers in my collection, I didn’t have any Austrian dragoons (though in 6mm it’s hard to tell the difference between the two) so I easily rectified that by printing myself a mass of 6mm figures thanks to Henry Turner’s Europe Asunder Napoleonic Kickstarter that I’d backed last year.

The figures are based as per my usual standard for 6mm Napoleonics, giving me either a division’s worth for a grand scale game like Blucher, or a full regiment of four stands (1 command stand and three rank and file bases) for Sam Mustafa’s LaSalle 2.  I have a separate post planned for basing units for LaSalle, coming soon.

The flags were purchased from Stone Mountain Miniatures.  To their credit, they have a good selection of 6mm flags, though it took me a very long time to receive them.   I always want to cut self-employed hobby business owners a lot of slack.  Who knows what’s going on in their personal lives? 

A quick word on Henry Turner’s figures.   I printed these on an Elegoo Mars 2 resin printer.   The results were quite satisfactory, the figures have a decent amount of detail, though some have told me the horses don’t look convincing.    I wouldn’t print his figures at any scale larger than 10mm, but for 6 they satisfy and mix nicely with my Baccus collection.  I’m a fan.

I have a lot of 6mm Napoleonic stuff currently on the painting desk - a substantial mass of Austrian grenadiers and some Polish Uhlans, and after that lot is done it’s back to the big scales for a while.

Cheers and thanks for looking.  Blessings to your brushes!

MP+

Things I Did in 2022 - Tiny Prussians

I don’t think I’m going to do a full year in review blog post, but I will do a few posts to highlight some projects and directions that seemed fruitful to me.  3D printing was definitely the big thing of 2022 for me, and while it was often enormously frustrating, it also opened some doors, including the possibility of doing SYW battles in a big way.

In 2022 I agreed to help Henry Turner by printing and painting some figures from his recent 6mm/15mm Seven Years War Kickstarter, in return for a discount on the range of STL files.    Henry sent me some files, including these Prussian musketeers, which you see here.

 The figures print in strips of four, including one strip of musicians (seen above in the front left of the second base) and below on the far left, and a command strip.  I would say that the detailing is comparable to Baccus, and while these figures look lumpish and squat when scaled up, at 6mm they look fine.   Fairly easy to paint and they look good when based, using the same size bases I use for my 6mm Napoleonics and with my scenery.  There’s definitely a large battle project here if I want to pursue it.

 

If there’s any downside to 3D printing, it’s simply the time cost of cranking out figures - a print run of this size, assuming it all goes smoothly, is a day to set up and print, and another to clean and cure the figures.    It may be easier to just order some starter packs from Baccus, and then flesh them out with prints as I choose to.   At any rate, this project was a successful proof of concept.

Blessings to your printers and brushes!

MP+

 

6mm Napoleonics 3D Print Update

Happy New Year friends:

I hope that the year is off to a good start for you and yours.   Joy and I had plans for NYE which had to be sadly but prudently cancelled.  Here in Ontario the spread of Omicron is so rapid that the provincial health authority has given up on testing and contact tracing for the general public.   While we both have our three doses of vaccine, we decided to cocoon at home and have a low key start to the year, which meant that I got some figure painting done.

Several weeks ago I described here getting some 3D print 6mm Napoleonics from V, the owner of the local gaming store.   V really wants people to play LaSalle in 6mm with him, and while I have a large collection of old school metal 6mm Naps, I was intrigued to see how these figures would paint up.

They didn’t paint up badly at all.   Since these figures all have bicornes I painted them as Spanish.   As a painting guide, I used the Spanish 8th Regt. de Soria from The Wargaming Company’s Campaign Guide, To Assure My Dynasty: 1808 in Iberia, which is an excellent resource to b featured in another post. The 8th’s Fusilier uniforms are white, though there is some purple facing on the cuffs and tunics, but I doubt anyone will notice that on the table top.   

Front:

Back:

They are very well equipped and uniform for a Spanish army, but again, the 3’ rule applies, and is especially true of 6mm.  If one wants historically accurate and ragged individuals, 28mm is the place to go for that.

I’m rather proud of the handpainted flag.  As you can see from the rear stand below, the second rank of figures in each stand has very little detail on the front face, so other than the two figures at either end, I contented myself with painting the muskets, red hat cockades, and flesh for the faces.   Otherwise only the rear of the back rank figures required painting.

Just for fun, here’s a comparison shot of these two stands facing off against two stands of recently painted metal Baccus French figures.

If you didn’t know better, you might think that just from this shot, these two forces were from the same manufacturer.   Because the Baccus figures are cast in strips of four, they have 360 degree detail and can be painted individually, but again, looking down at the table while standing, I think the differences are minimal.

While I’m not sure that I would want a whole army of these particular printed troops, there are definitely producers out there who are doing 6mm 3D files in luscious detail.  I have my eye firmly on Turner Miniatures, for example, and hope to get some of their sample figures printed as soon as I get the teething issues with my new machine sorted.  That’s another post, so for now I’ll wish once again wish you a happy, and happier, new year.

May God bless and keep us all in what lies ahead, and give us good gaming and friendship.

Cheers,  MP