It's about a week to go until Salute 2007 and the figures still have a little way to go. Over Easter I polished off Napoleon's Chasseur escort (below left) and some more "hangers-on" (left), alongside continual work on the Dutch 6th Hussars (below right). Whilst researching the uniforms for the hangers-on I realised that they are all Guard officers, so these figures, together with the other generals etc I have painted, can double up as a Guard command group. Left to do for the hussars are 3 horses and 6 riders, which I should be able to complete in good time. Also on the workbench are a couple of mounted Imperial Orderlies which I hope to have floating around the table, if I manage to finish them in time. The key stuff has to be fully varnished and based by next Thursday, when Loughton Strike Force are having a dress-rehearsal. The Dutch hussars are in various stages of basing and include 6 volunteer light dragoons in the rear rank.
Napoleon and his chums are still not based but I think I have finally decided on how to base them. There will be a large 200mm x 250mm base with Napoleon, his escort, his personal household and Ney, Drouot etc. Behind that will be two 100mm x 100mm bases containing the aides, adjoints and hangers-on. If there is not enough room on the table those smaller bases can be dispensed with, although when I set all the figures up the other day it looked impressive and seemed a decent representation of a busy army headquarters. I suspect I may have to take a day off work next week to do the basing!
It has been fun painting 25mm Napoleonics, although painting all the horses for the cavalry has at times seemed a bit of a chore (Richard Jackson has painted almost 100 cavalry for this game - I take my hat off to him!). Assuming everything gets finished, my final Napoleonic tally for the Salute game will be: 44 cavalry, 35 foot, 5 casualties, Napoleon's horse and 2 tables. Throwing in the various AWI bits I worked on in January (when I'd run out of Napoleonics and was awaiting the next order from the Perries), gives a total of 49 mounted and 54 foot painted since Christmas, which isn't too bad given that I lost 4 weeks whilst out in New Zealand.
5 comments:
Happy Friday Giles,
Absolutely wonderful Napoleonic figures, especially the three guards officers. Wish I could take in the visual specatacle of the game when your group stages it. It will look impressive, I'm sure.
Best Regards,
Stokes Schwartz
Excellent visual impact!
Good work on including 'background' in your photos as I think this is what makes the difference between game pictures and suspension of reality in our tabletop imagery.
Regarding your cavalry painting efforts, I too had problems in getting results quickly, until I got some interesting advice from Jeff "Bluebear".
Painting Horses
Check out Jeff's thoughts, I combined his efforts with some of my own for my Napoleonics and now will continue to use the techniques with future horse efforts.
Cheers
Murdock
MurdockS MarauderS
Good Day Giles,
Wonderful Work as usual.
How about some info on how you make your wonderful bases?
Michael Kroft
Giles,
Can you recommend any good reading materials and websites for the AWI?
I'm particularly interested in the British and their German friends.
Theo
Theo
For reading, any of the standard histories will do, by Hibbert or Harvey for example. "Washington's Crossing" is also good and I have heard good things about Ketchum's "Sataroga" (haven't read it yet). I am slowly putting more links up in the links section. Once Salute's out of the way I'll re-jig the links to separate the historical ones from the gaming ones etc. I collected together most of the AWI links I know of in the appropriate section of the Wargames Directory: http://wdlovesme.19.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=291
Giles
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