More 15mm Napoleonic French!

This is a recently completed 15mm Napoleonic French Army for based for the Lasalle rules. This batch will expand this customer's French forces. It includes line, cavalry in the form of lancers, and artillery with limbers.

15mm Napoleonics are one of our most popular items. There are times, though, when it sometimes feels like the movie Groundhog Day.  This was one of those orders. For some reason I could not get any kind of momentum built up on these. As a result, I ended up sinking almost another week into them. It doesn't help that it is tax season and I had to divert some of my attention to getting the taxes sorted out. Now that the taxes are out of the way things are a bit more relaxed here.

Here is the block of infantry. These are 4 battalions from the 92nd foot. He is using the company pom pom color and the flags to designate the battalions:

This order also included cavalry units representing four regiments of lancers from the 1st, 2nd, 5th, and 6th Chevau-leger regiments:

The lances still need straightened a bit more. I will handle that at packing time. I really dislike bending the soft metal numerous times. It tends to weaken it and makes them more prone to break. Since these need to be mailed to the customer I prefer to bend them around a little as possible:

Finally this army included artillery from the 16th Battery, 1st Artillery Regiment:

And a shot of the sub-commander for the army:

The figures are all AB Miniatures. Next up for this customer is a 15mm SYW Austrian army for the upcoming Maurice rules from Sam Mustafa. At least its a change from 15mm Napoleonics!

15mm Napoleonic Russian Army Based for Lasalle Ruleset

15mm Napoleonics are pretty popular for us. They race neck and neck with 15mm World War II for the most popular periods we paint. I can understand why with Napoleonics: the uniforms are complex and require quite a bit of research, there are usually a ton to paint up to get an army together, and it can be rather monotonous painting over 300 of the same thing over and over again! I know I was feeling that way with this order. It took me a bit longer to get the order done but to be honest I was also trying to get some of the cleaning and priming done for the Fall-In orders. More on that at the end.

There are 317 foot, 114 mounted, 21 guns and 6 limbers in this army. All figures are AB figures and the flags are from The Flag Dude. The bases are from Litko.The army is supposed to represent the Russian Life Guard Division during the Battle of Borodino.

The infantry composed of the Preobrajenski, Siemenovski, and Izmailovski regiments.

The cuirassier units composed of the Emperor, Empress, Chevalier-Garde, and Life Guards units.

The army and sub commanders.

The artillery stands. Two units of Position Batteries and one Horse Battery.

A note on the limbers: Technically there should be more space between the ranks of horses on the Russian limber teams due to the way design of the yoke. This would result in exceptionally long bases and possibly have consequences in game play. In order to make everything fit on the base size I had to condense things a bit and widen the space between the two columns of horses. This makes the limbers about the same size as the French ones he already has and keeps anything from hanging out over the edge of the base, preventing damage during game play.

The bayonets of the AB Russians are a bit fragile. In fact, almost all of them were bent over in the packaging, some more than 90 degrees. I straightened them as best I could but I didn't want to keep moving them around further weakening them, as some had already broken off. . Since they need to be packed up and shipped out to the customer I am sure some will need a slight readjustment afterward. That is a downfall of more realistically proportioned miniatures: weak parts. Personally I prefer something more robust, especially for gaming, since it will be handled more often.

Now that this order is out of the way I can jump into the Fall-In orders. There's still an order of Reapers that needs based up (about 50 figures), and some basing to do for display orders for Acheson Creations and Scale Creep Miniatures, but the painting for the other orders is out of the way. We did manage to get a couple of things done already but the lion's share of it still needs done. I laid everything out on the dining room table Saturday to get it organized and take stock of where we were and here it is:

Orders for Fall-In

These figures are already painted and simply need to be based.

The lead I already need to clean and prime yet. It will add about 3-4 more trays of figures to be painted.

Hopefully I can get it done. It will be tough as there's only about a month until the show and Allison is due to sub for a teacher going out on maternity leave. It'll be a rough October!

Napoleonic French Lasalle Army Finished

We've just completed a 15mm Napoleonic French army for the Lasalle rules for a customer. All figures are AB and the bases are from Litko. Flags are from The Flag Dude.