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.

Two 15mm Built-Up-Areas for Napoleonic through WWII Gaming

I made up these two 15mm BUAs primarily for use with the 'O' Group WWII rules. They can as easily be used for any 15mm gaming from Napoleonics through WWII. 

The farmhouse and stable were resin pieces pulled from my 'dead lead' box. I believe I purchased these about 20 years ago. The walls I 3D printed. All pieces were painted and glued to a custom laser-cut base. A trough and wagon were added. I think the trough was from Musket Miniatures and the wagon might be Essex. 

The small house and outhouse may look familiar to regular readers of this blog. This is a reduced scale of the "Small Italian Farmhouse" that I printed and painted in 28mm scale a few posts back. The outhouse was a free STL file and the walls come from the same STL pack that the house comes from. Coincidentally, these are the same walls that I used above in the farm complex.

 

Both pieces are designed to have some open space to accommodate a few stands of 15mm figures. Here's an 'action shot' of the farmhouse being garrisoned by some US infantry.

I'm counting these as two 'terrain/misc' in my annual painting totals.

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 Napoleonic Bavarians Re-Based

These are 56 Bavarian Napoleonic infantry and four mounted officers that I've recently re-based for use with either my Electronic Brigadier rules or my friend Charlie's rules, Napoleon's Rules of War. I purchased all of these on Ebay recently with the exception of two of the officers in bicornes which came with some other figures I bought and re-based years ago.  I'll count this as 32 stands re-based in my annual totals.

15mm Napoleonics at Robert's

Last week a bunch of us played an excellent game of 15mm Napoleonics using my friend Robert's rules which he's been working on for the past couple of years. The games are coming along more frequently as the rules approach a state of completion. 

This was a large, 7-player game. There were four French players and four alliance players. The alliance army features Austrian, Prussian and Russian forces. Robert's collection is quite complete!

The French got the first march and we set off to capture the center of the battlefield including the central town and windmill hill. I was tasked with holding the left flank against the Allied reserve of heavy cavalry and converged grenadiers commanded by my carpool partner, Byron. I also had the left section of the battle line opposite Mike. 

Here the rules author Robert, new friend Kurt in the middle, and CinC Charlie on the right. Kurt pushed the right flank quite successfully as Charlie pushed the right center. My task was to hold my own on the left and eventually deny the flank.

Here the French get stuck in.

The aftermath of Byron and Mike's attacks (two photos). Mike destroyed nearly the entire right-half of my command in a Pyrrhic effort. Byron, with the elite reserve corps, fared much better eliminating a majority of my left wing with acceptable casualties to his infantry and his heavy cavalry untouched. 

In the end, I bought enough time for Kurt and Charlie to edge out a minor French Victory, their efforts being more effective than mine. 

Left, the result of Mike's efforts for the battle. Remaining of my command, a small battery and a single stand of infantry. Certainly not enough to hold off Byron's command on the flank.

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.