28mm French Napoleonic Infantry From Ebay

This is a collection of three separate units of 28mm French Napoleonic infantry that I purchased from three separate Ebay auctions. This post could also be titled, "the good, the bad and the ugly", or "caveat emptor". More about that below.

This first unit in greatcoats I purchased about 15 months ago just as I was moving into my new home. They are the 'good' part of the story. They were based individually for Sharpe's Practice or some similar skirmish rule set. The figures are mostly plastic figures and were well painted and arrived well packaged and in good shape. All I had to do was re-base for my preferred basing, and do some minor touch-ups and a little bit of washing to give the great coats better shading. A nice unit for a good value.

These two units were purchased from the same seller on Ebay. While I usually consider myself a savvy Ebay purchaser, I definitely did not review the photos of these figures carefully enough. They were only partially painted. Many of the details on the rear of the figures were still in white primer: cartridge boxes, bayonet scabbards, canteens, powder flasks, packs, etc. Also most of the minor straps and pack straps were unpainted. The backs of the figures were in short - an incomplete mess. This is the bad.

The figures were plastic, and packaged four to a small bubble-wrapped pouch. These pouches for 48 figures were over-stuffed into a USPS Priority Mail small flat-rate box. While I cannot prove they were damaged when stuffed in, by the time I received them the figures were destroyed. To the left, a typical selection of four figures from a pouch. Every musket is broken, some in up to three places. Heads decapitated, ankles broken, pom-poms ripped off. Three of the 48 figures were a complete write-off. Many more ended up not having bayonets after repairing them. Of the 48 figures, only 13 had no major damage, of these 4 were lead figures that required some re-bending to straighten them out.

One I had completed the figure repairs using plastic cement, the re-painting, or in many cases the initial painting of everything began. I put another nine or ten hours into touch-ups, re-paints, painting details and finally putting some heavy washes on the figures to hide the myriad of sins. 

In the end, I have a couple of 'OK' units for my collection, not the 'very good' ones I had thought I had purchased. In contrast to the great coat unit above these were far inferior in all ways: more expensive, damaged, un-paited and even after re-working them they're much less eye-catching on the tabletop. Still, they're now done and will see at least a few battles on the tabletop before I consider replacing them. I want to get my time investment back before I consider trying to recoup a portion of my monetary losses. 

Here's a small gallery below of the completed units based up. I'm counting this entire project as 32 stands re-based and 12 figures 'painted' based on the approximate amount of work re-painting.

2021 Basing & Re-Basing Part 6 - Napoleonic French Cavalry

More progress on the 2021 Re-Basing project. These two units of French Napoleonic cavalry were purchased on 2020 and kept in their original shipping boxes for my move to my new home. Now that I can laser-cut bases, I've mounted them up for use with my Electronic Brigadier rules as well as for use with my friend Charlie's rules, Napoleon's Rules of War.  Both of these were Ebay purchases from one of the usual suspects from China.

This unit of Hussars didn't fare very well in shipping to me originally, and suffered additional damage in the move. Nearly all of the riders were knocked off the horses. Several of the pelise coats were also dislodged and there was a lot of chipped paint - mostly the black areas. It's obvious that these are primed black and any black areas are simply left in primer. They've been re-glued and retouched as well as based up. Even with the repairs, it's a sharp looking unit.

The chasseurs fared much better during shipping and the move. Minimal touch-ups were required although I did have to re-glue on the standard. The way the figure is holding it I'm expecting this to be a problem in the future. Next time it gets knocked off I think I'll replace the standard's shaft with something long enough to have two points of contact on the model for strength.

Eight more bases in the 're-based' totals for 2021.

28mm French Napoleonic Marshals - Finished!

After posting several WIP posts about these, here they are, finished. The eight figures make up four brigadier general stands and two corps command stands. There are six Old Glory figures and two Perry. Now that they're mixed on the bases, you're hard pressed to tell the difference. I think Old Glory sometimes gets criticized unfairly by some wargamers. Sure, there are some exceptions, but in general I feel they're a high quality and very high value figure line.

I'm counting these as sixteen figures for my annual painting totals. Like all mounted figures I count the rider and horse separate. I feel this is justified since I paint them separate and mounted figures are twice as much work as foot.

More Saga Crusades Spearmen and Napoleonic French Artillery

Quick update today. These are some odds and ends finally based up. There are eight Old Glory heavy spear men for my Crusades Saga army and two French Napoleonic foot guns. For the latter, the gunners were part of the haul I bought from my friend Ed, but the Guns were painted on my Twitch stream. The guns I got from Ed had four gunners per gun, but my basing system only allows for two gunners per gun, so I needed to paint up two more guns. The guns are Old Glory French 6 lb. guns.  The shields on the spear men are from Little Big Man Studios. Total count for figures painted: 10.

WIP French Marshals - Part 2

Here's a second update on the 28mm French Marshals that I've been painting live on my Twitch.TV stream. I've added some background music to my stream so I won't be posting the replay videos on YouTube any more due to copyright reasons. You can however, still see replays of my recent streams on my replay page. There is a short highlight of last night's stream in my Twitch highlights folder for you to look at to see if this interests you.

The painting on these is now done. I'd like to give a shout out to my friend Ed M from Ed M's Wargame Meanderings Blog for giving me some constructive feedback on my last WIP shots when I asked him for some. Ed clued me in that the Marshal's hat crests should be black or white feathers, most commonly white, instead of the gold that I had painted them. They're now corrected thanks to Ed. I'll be setting these aside for now until I can finish up the horses.

I'm very excited about the quality of the paint job on these. There are multiple layers of intentional highlights. Painting on stream has helped me pay more attention to the finer details and motivated me to 'up my game' a bit more on these and I think it shows.  As of now I'm 50/50 if I'm going to brush paint the horses or try some airbrushing on them.

Big French Napoleonic Re-Basing Project

Having recently posted about my large Austrian re-basing project, this is another effort to increase my collection to a size large enough to host some Electronic Brigadier Napoleonic play test games. These are 28mm French Napoleonic figures my friend Ed of Ed M's Wargame Meanderings blog generously sold me. The figures are from Ed's extras collection that he was looking to part with.

The figures needed a bit of touch up here and there and each unit either had to have a figure converted to a standard bearer or in one case the standard bearer had to be repaired. Then they were based, flocked and after drying the bases decorated with foliage clusters and grass tufts. All of this was done live on my stream, shown in a couple of earlier posts here and here. The figures are all beautifully painted, so the touch ups were only to repair wear and tear.

 


There are a total of 37 stands re-based. Also, since the Austrian re-basing post included a German WWII anti aircraft gun, I thought I'd toss in a bonus WWII vehicle, a British Mk I Daimler armored car. This was bought from Ebay. It was priced, including shipping. for less than the cost of the un-painted model, and was base colored, but a bit light on detail. I didn't need another one, but at the price I couldn't resist! I gave it some edge highlighting and a dusting of European Dust MIG pigment powder.

WIP - 28mm French Marshals

I made some progress on these 28mm French Marshals yesterday while streaming on Twitch.tv. This is a pack of Old Glory "French Marshals 1", and two Perry "Mounted Infantry Colonels". The figures are surprisingly compatible. Unless you look for the saddles, which Perry cast on the horse and Old Glory cast on the rider, you really can't spot a big difference in figure size or quality.

The first pass was mainly to work on the faces and block in the hats and coats. Future work will highlight the coats and start working on the details. I still want to do a little more work on the faces, and I have to dry-brush some grey onto the black-haired figures. Still I'm happy with the progress and look so far.

As usual, below you can see a YouTube video of the stream I panted these on.

Big Austrian Re-Basing Project

After my recent Napoleonic play test of Electronic Brigadier with Ed, I decided I should get off my duff and finally get to re-basing all of the Austrian Napoleonic figures I've purchased from Ebay over the past three years. While I was at it I tossed in a couple French dragoon officers Ed sold me and a German WWII 88mm AA gun. To the left is the group shot of the total project. This is a total of 36 stands re-based.

First up the two Perry plastic Dragoon officers Ed sold me. These are beautifully painted and were based when I got them. Unfortunately Ed's lovely oval officer bases don't match my slotted system which makes re-labeling for Electronic Brigadier much easier so I re-based these to match my other officers. The trooper combat stands I left on Ed's original bases as they're easier to adopt to my labeling system.

Next up a nicely airbrushed 88 factory fresh from Collector's Battlefield. These pre-painted figures came out about a decade ago? I'm not sure the company is still in business. Google searches didn't net me any good links to them any more. Still this was a STEAL on Ebay. It came un-assembled, and it was a touch tricky to get the gun shield onto the model in a way that made me feel comfortable. The irregularly shaped base that came with it was OK but the gun carriage hung off it. I ditched it for a square 3mm plywood base.

The cream of the crop for the Austrian figures are the two of the officers on the right. These were originally on a two-figure stand, but like Ed's not compatible with my labeling system. Since I have enough two-figure command stands I split these two up. the third figure came with the bulk of the infantry and is normal tabletop quality. He'll do fine for larger games.

Eight stands of Hussars I bought in a separate auction. Lead figures of unknown manufacturer. Tabletop quality. This brings my Hussars to twelve bases (squadrons in Electronic Brigadier). More than enough for even large games.

Infantry regiment number one. This one is lead figures of an older vintage. The castings are soft, and the original painter made up for this with some effort with shading and painting. When freshly painted I bet these were quite nice for the time. Now they're a bit worn. I did some touch-ups where the paint was chipped off and based this in three battalions of four stands each and a three-stand battalion of grenadiers.

The last unit was the worst to deal with. These are more modern plastic figures, painted to an OK tabletop standard. The big issue was they were mounted on MDF bases glued down with superglue. This was a NIGHTMARE to un-do. I had to soak the MDF for 3 days and eventually peel it apart layer by layer to get it thin enough to finally carve off the figures. After that I had to re-paint all the bases of the figures before re-basing. Even then the final two battalions aren't all that great. These will eventually be replaced by something a bit nicer to match the rest of my collection. Still for now, serviceable tabletop troops to bulk out larger games.

Finally some group photos and a short video of my complete Austrian collection so far. This is more for me to refer to in the future than for any other reason. Still satisfying seeing a full shelf. On the long-term to-do list is to have my French collection match the Austrians in size.