96 Frenchmen

It’s been a good week, painting wise.   I’m pretty much ready to declare these 96 6mm Baccus Napoleonic French infantry done and ready for basing.   I was afraid that painting them would be a chore, but I was pleased to discover that at this scale, assembly-line painting, one or two colours a night x 96 figures, isn’t that awful, and the rewards as they near completion are quite substantial.   I’m very happy with this lot.  Depending on whatever scale I’m using, with 4 command stands and 5 infantry stands to go with each command element, I either have a brigade or a division, which is not a bad week’s work.  I’m currently working on the skirmishing light infantry figures to accompany them, and then I can start working on the bases.

 

Paint Table Saturday

 

Not much painting today, but I did get a few moments after returning from anniversary celebrations with Madame Padre to make a start on these 6mm Baccus French Napoleonic light infantry.  They’ll be the skirmish elements for some bases of line infantry that got done earlier this week.

In the back left are three Reaper baddies for a Weird War Two project, and in the back right are some Front Rank Russian SYW figures that are getting reworked prior to getting new banners.

Blessings to your brushes!

MP+

Forgotten and Glorious ACW Minis Are Unforgettable AND Glorious

My order of ACW 28mm miniatures from FG Miniz Forgotten & Glorious Company of Art arrived on Monday and did not disappoint.   F&G are a relatively new French company, and seem to be additional proof that trans-Atlantic hobbyists like myself don’t just have to look to Great Britain as the centre of gravity for our hobby.   European companies like F&G and Black Hussar are doing cracking work these days, and I am sure there are many other Eur minis companies that I don’t know about.

I was considering F&G’s Kickstarter campaign for their 14th Brooklyn figures (they seem to specialize in early ACW) but when the announced a new line of Iron Brigade sculpts, I was hooked.  I have several regiments of this iconic Union brigade and thought that these F&G figures, especially the command figures, just had loads of character.  There was also the thrill of getting figures from the first production run of minis from brand new moulds.  

Here’s a command group, taking the air on my patio table.  I love the look of the colonel with sword on the right.  He seems to be saying, “Now then, Padre, you seem like a fellow with the right mettle, I’m sure you’ll move us to the front of the painting queue."

 Another thing I love about F&F is that their national standard flagpole comes with a US eagle.   I’ve never seen a company do that before, and I’ve always wanted one.

 

 These figures compare well in size with other lines of 28mm ACW figures.  Seen below on the far left is a Perry plastic figure, and on the right is one from Old Glory.  I would say that the F&G figures are slightly larger than the ACW line from Foundry, and perhaps a tiny bit smaller than the ones from Redoubt.

There is stiff competition for the painting queue, but I suspect I’ll get on to these fellows sooner rather than later.

Blessings to your dice and brushes!

MP+

"Zee RAF Bimmers Are Farting For Freedom"

I know there are very serious events and ceremonies happening in Normandy as I write this.  

However, in a less serious note, this image got me wondering, is it too much to hope that somewhere in Normandy, among the throngs of reenactors seen in these fab photos, are some who are recreating the liberation scene from Allo! Allo!?  We can only hope.

Still More Soviets: Tankodesantniki! 20mm Britannia Tank Riders

Last year I posted here about two Italieri ISU-122s that I’d completed for the 2013 Analogue Hobbies Challenge.   Shortly after painting them, I learned the hard way that Dullcote does not interact well with pigment.  While the models weren’t ruined, exactly, most of the pigment turned a wintry white and I had to redo them.   A little heartsick, I put them in a “To Do Later” box and sort of forgot about them.   Then I dug them out while working through a pile of Britannia 20mm Soviet infantry, including a half a dozen tank riders.   Finishing them off gave me the motivation to pull out the ISU-122s and get them back into shape.

I like these Britannia figures, and their combination of uniform items - greatcoats, fur heats, etc - matches the Italieri AT gunners I showed here previously, making them perfect for a winter/spring 1945 assault force on the Reich’s cities.

With only six figures, total, that doesn’t allow me a whole mob of tank riders, but it does suggest men who have been detailed to ride with the assault guns and protect them from snipers, Hitler Youth with panzerfauts, etc.  I figured the easiest course was to glue them to the tank models, since otherwise they would only fall off when in use and rattle around in boxes when not in use.  For game purposes we can decide whether the figures are in play or not in play.

 

 

I won’t count the two tanks towards my 2014 totals, since really they were finished and blogger last year, but I will count these six tank riders.

 

 

 

 

These figures bring my 2014 totals to:

28mm Mounted: 13

28mm Foot:  22

28mm Artillery: 1

20mm Foot:  26

20mm Artillery: 2

20mm Terrain Pieces:  1

15mm Foot: 26

15mm Terrain Pieces: 3

6mm Buildings: 2

Kilometres RunL 621  

Blessings to your brushes!  MP+

 

 

More Soviets: Italieri 20mm ZIS 3 AT Guns and Crew

A year ago I declared the six weeks of Easter to be the time of my Resurrected Armies project and one of those goals was to finish off and fix up my 20mm Soviets.   While I didn’t formally declare that this Easter would be another Resurrected Armies period, that goal was still in my mind, and so I dug out this Italieri kit that I had started on last spring.   The kit is a hard(ish) plastic, a little softer than, say, the plastic figures from Warlord, but quite easy to work with.  I am by no means an expert on cannon, but the AT guns appeared to be well cast and fit together quite easily.   I rather liked the box cover which said that 12 “Servants” are included.  One of those harmless translation errors that made me think of Downtown Abbey with loud explosions.

 

Because the figures are dressed in overcoats, fur hats, and quilted tunics, the gun crews give off a winter vibe, and made me think of the last terrible months in Berlin or other Fortress Cities like Konigsberg, so I stole an idea from Sidney Roundwood and designed these bases for them, something I’d tried last year for some Soviet tank destroyers.  For the bricks I chopped up some of the wooden sprues from a 4Ground kit, and while a little on the large side, they worked alright, I think.  

 

I’m not sure if this project qualifies as another pigment disaster, but I wanted to give the impression that the guns had been hauled through and coated in concrete dust, in a manner reminiscent of those pictures of Manhattan after the Twin Towers collapsed, when everything and everyone was coated in grey dust.   I used a slate grey pigment, but when it dried it looked more like snow than dust, so I had to scrape some off the bricks on the bases with y fingernail.   When I tried scraping it off the cannons, the paint started coming off, so I abandoned that plan.

 

 

This last shot is to my mind what AT guns would have been most useful for in Berlin - not fighting off the few remaining German tanks so much as winkling defenders out of buildings.  I believe that was a favourite use of 6pdr AT guns by Commonwealth and British troops in Ortona and Caen and other FIBUA situations.

These figures bring my 2014 totals to:

28mm Mounted: 13

28mm Foot:  22

28mm Artillery: 1

20mm Foot:  21

20mm Artillery:  2

20mm Buildings/Terrain Pieces:  1

15mm Foot:  26

15mm Buildings/Terrain Pieces:  3

6mm Buildings/Terrain Pieces: 2

Kilometres Run: 610

Blessings to your brushes!  MP

Some Britannia 20mm Soviets

A few years ago I bought a platoon’s worth of Britannia Miniatures Red Army infantry in summer dress.  With all due respect to the late Dave Howitt, I confess I didn’t like then too much.  The sculpts seemed a little rough and clumsy, and they all had shaggy heads of hair, whereas I suspect that the average frontovik kept his hair close-cropped.    I tried painting up some and didn’t much like the results, but the spirit of guiding spirit of May here at the Painting Chapel has been to clear the old projects out of the way.

You may notice that the colour of the uniform is a bit off, and perhaps too yellow for everyone’s tastes.  I was not happy with the thinness of my Vallejo Russian Uniform and tried adding some other colours to it to thicken it up a bit, perhaps not very successfully.   Anyway, this gives me a start on a 20mm platoon for Too Fat Lardies’ Chain of Command and/or BG Kursk, though I need to find the rest of the bag of unpainted figures and paint them so I have complete sections of riflemen and SMGs.   

The NKVD officer reading from Stalin’s latest patriotic proclamation (Fight Gloriously Or Be Shot) will make for some tabletop colour, and of course there is the customary junior officer waving his pistol in the air.

What do you think of Britannia figures?  It’s good to see that the moulds have survived and the figures are still being sold by the Grubby Tanks people, and I must admit I do like the Britannia 20mm WW2 resin vehicles, of which I have a few.

Blessings to your brushes!

MP

These figures bring my 2014 totals to:

28mm Mounted: 13

28mm Foot:  22

28mm Artillery: 1

20mm Foot:  9

20mm Buildings/Terrain Pieces: 1

15mm Foot:  26

15mm Buildings/Terrain Pieces: 3

6mm Buildings/Terrain Pieces: 2

Kilometres Run:   596