28mm Bavarian Napoleonic Artillery

These are five Bavarian artillery batteries based up for Napoleon's Rules of War or Electronic Brigadier. I purchased three of these guns and all of the gunners pre-painted from a seller on Ebay. Since there were many more crew than I needed for three batteries, I printed up two additional French 8lb Gribeuval cannons from my own STL files (available for free on Thingaverse).

These figures are the last of my current batch of Napoleonics re-basing. They include 14 purchased painted figures/guns and two 3-D printed and painted by me guns. Definitely a mixed bag!

This photo, a close up photo of the 3-D printed guns made from my own designed STL files. They're nothing super fancy, but serviceable on the tabletop and I've given the files away free for non-commercial use. I hope you get some use out of them!

Even MORE Napoleonic Re-Basing

Here's the other group of Napoleonics that I promised to post earlier this month. These are another two groups that I picked up on Ebay already painted. I just needed to re-base them to fit my favorite rule sets, Napoleon's Rules of War and Electronic Brigadier. 

These very nicely painted Bavarian jagers will represent a small two-battalion regiment of light infantry.

These Austrian line infantry are quite sharp with their purple facings. That's the primary reason I picked them up. I didn't really NEED another large three-battalion regiment, but the purple facings sold me on grabbing this unit. Also it was a good value for the quality of the paint job.

Further losing pace on my purchased vs. self-painted figures. These represent another 56 figures in the purchased column.

More Napoleonic Re-Basing

 This group of Prussian regular line infantry is the most recent addition to my Prussian Napoleonic army for Electronic Brigadier and Napoleon's Rules of War. I purchased them on Ebay along with some other figures that will be the subject of future figure re-basing posts. 

These are plastic figures, probably either Warlord or Perry. I can't figure out which as I'm not much of a plastic figure aficionado. They're painted to a good wargaming standard and based up into two medium-sized and one large battalion. I was excited with this group as it also included a mounted officer and a foot battery.

Not much else to say. This adds 77 figures to my 'purchased 28mm figures' totals for the year. It looks like I'll be upside down again this year on painted vs. purchased figures. Keep an eye out on this blog, as there will be a considerable bit of figures that I did paint myself posted soon.

28mm Bavarian Chevaulegeres Re-Based

I purchased these figures from Ebay. They were nicely painted, but well used, severely worn, and had received significant damage in shipping. Although I've labeled this as a re-basing project, I also spend upwards of of a dozen hours repairing and re-painting every figure and every horse. In the end, they came out looking quite serviceable. They were painted in a 'toy soldier' style and I tried to keep true to that in the restoration efforts. Six bases re-based in the annual painting totals.

 

 

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.

Northern Conspiracy July 2019 Game Night

Last Friday night was the Northern Conspiracy's July game night. Two larger games were run. I played in Charlies 28mm Napoleonic game featuring his rules, Napoleon's Rules of War. Ralph, Kevin, Byron and I played the outnumbered French trying to link up around a Spanish held Town. Mark, Rob and Dick did a good job of keeping Ralph and I controlled and surrounded while fending off Byron and Kevin's repeat attacks. Good fun!

On the other Table Phil ran a very popular 15mm Fire & Fury civil war game. The ever popular rule set brought out some faces we haven't seen in a while which was great. UPDATE! More photos taken by Rob available here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/45w6f2aj15tl2ll/AABvY3PpWEOtuftoitH9Sq3Na?dl=0

Northern Conspiracy April 2019 Game Night

Last Friday was our club's monthly game night. I played in Charile's Napoleon's Rules of War game. Charlie and I played the Austrians defending a hill top against Davout's superior attacking French corps commanded by Bob and Ralph.

The French quality and tactical limitations of the situation were telling. On my flank Ralph's French had their way with the Austrians winning every melee and a majority of the firefights. On the other flank I think Charlie did a bit better. At the end of the game the dead figures box contained hordes of dead Austrians and precious few French. Well played by Ralph and Bob.

President Dick kept up the Saga momentum by hosting a four-player game of Saga featuring his Vikings. Veteran Saga players Michael and Mike helped get Kevin and Paul some Saga time under their belts in preparation for this fall's upcoming Saga big game day.

Mark who authors the My Brave Fusiliers Blog ran a large and beautiful AWI Cowpens / Guilford Courthouse game. You can read more about his game on his blog.

I'd like to thank all three game masters for hosting another trio of awesome games for the club.

NROW Play Test at Charlie's

Last Friday we got together to play another game of Napoleon's Rules of War at Charlie's place. On the menu a test with French against Spanish and British as a change of pace over the Austrians that have been facing off against the French in recent play tests. New rules to try were cavalry react and counter-charge. The former needs a few tweaks, but the latter seemed spot on and worked nicely.

Having been French a lot lately the random draw chose French for me again. I partnered up with Rob, Ralph and Earl. Opposite us were Bob, Robert and Mark. I took up the attack on the right side. My attack went reasonably well in the center, but on the right Mark's counter-charging cavalry sent my infantry running to the rear in droves. When we stopped the battle was still in question, but the French had made significant progress against the Allied center with the guard about to go in for an attempt on a coup-de-gras attack.

Photos for your enjoyment, and a video at the bottom: