Cazadores

Hoi,

A while ago I've posted pictures of the 60th Rifles skirmishers that will be forming the light infantry screen in front of my Allied 3rd brigade advancing on Thomieres division. Last week I managed to paint some more figures which will represent the 12th Portuguese Cazadores to accompany the 60th Light Bobs.

The brown uniform colour turned out a bit too bright, but I reckoned that since they had been in the field in summer for quite some time, their uniforms would have faded a lot by now. Another realisation dawned: I need to paint about 3000 figures for this dio; the level of painting detail has to come down a bit to enable me to do this within my lifetime.Seeing this, these figures are not my best work ever yet not my worst by far.

So another small step towards the end goal!

Cheers Sander

83rd Regiment of Foot

Hoi,

This time I am not even going to apologise for the long absence of posts here on this blog. I knew from the start that this project was going to be one for the long run. Most of my hobby-stuff ends up on the other blog, so for regular updates you should look over here.

That said work has not altogether been reduced to nil over here. In a recent bulk shipment I acquired a lot of British Peninsular Command sets from HäT and have been able to put together the set up for one of my Salamanca regiments.

The 83rd of Foot was amongst the second line brigade advancing upon Thomieres division with Pakenham's Fighting 3rd Division, well actually it was Picton's division but he was sick at the time of the battle. In my calculations the regiment (actual strength on the day was 319) should amount to 70 odd troops so I put these together on the table to see how it looked and well it looks like this:

Now a few things are not totally historically accurate, the formation is a bit off for the regulations of the day. The officers and nco's I've put behind the line should actually be interspersed amongst the ranks in between each company. The musicians should be put behind the line but I found it visually more attractive to put them together with the pioneers behind the mounted officers. But to limit the frontage of the regiment I have chosen to put them behind. In this regiment the companies are all about 8 man strong, as figures of the regiments involved varied greatly, form the huge 2 battalion 5th Regiment of Foot, counting 1210 actives on the day, up to the 3 companies of the 60th Rifles amounting 254 troops. It would be nicest if I would be able to adhere to the figures I have counted out but I guess I will be settling for less...

Cheers Sander

200 years!

Hoi,

It's rather a special day today: exactly 200 years ago the Battle of Salamanca took place! I'm a bit sorry that the diorama is not ready to commemorate this feat but hey you can't have it all!

Cheers Sander

An update: finally!

Hoi,

As usual progress on the "Big Project" has been tiresomely slow! But I did find time to finish some of the 60th Rifles awaiting on my desk. Since my last post I have realised I do not need quite that much figures as I'd intended at first so I decided these to be the last Rifles I'd paint for the dio, excepting the officer which I still have to do. The remaining 10 or so Rifles I've prepared will be painted as Cazadores.

Here are the pictures of the lads. The other batch had grey trousers these rankers wear brown ones.

Here they're still mounted on sticks for ease of painting. I'll cut them off soon, but leave a little wire attached to the feet in order to secure them to the modules firmly.

Cheers Sander

Doing the numbers...

Hoi,

A while ago I laid out the modules in my table again, and just to try out how it looked I took some HäT Peninsular British and set them on the board where they will end up in time for real. This made me realise that I have made a startling mistake in the first place: my ground-scale and figure-ratio are not compatible! I had planned the first British brigade to have regiments of about 250 figures each, after putting figures on the board this showed that I can have regiments of about 40 figures instead!

This means I will have to do the numbers all over again. But on the bright side is the notion that I will be able to finish earlier since I have to do less figures.

Cheers Sander

2012 and all that!

Hoi,

Yes yes I know: I have been neglecting this blog immensely last year! This came to be because I hold the opinion that it is better not to overflow a blog with nonsense posts (like this one) and rather update it with real news. So 2012, the 200 year Jubilee of the Battle of Los Arapiles has come round and I should at least get something done on the diorama before the year's end. Some friends suggested I'd get the entire work done this year to celebrate but that  won't work since I'd rather have quality then a job done too fast and therefore badly. Besides there's the problem regarding the French- and Portuguese infantry miniatures or rather the lack there of as described elsewhere in this blog. At least HäT have announced they have picked up work on the British Peninsular Light- and Heavy Cavalry which is great in any case.

So we come upon my New Years Resolutions for 2012. I'd like to divide this in two types of resolutions: first the goals I really have set myself to actually fulfil for this year:
- painting the remaining skirmishers of the 60th Rifles still sitting on my workbench.
- creating the groundwork/ terrain on the modules so as to make them ready for the placement of the figures.

second up are the resolutions I would like to finish but I realise I might not actually get them done.
- paint up some of the first line British regiments
- paint up some of the French train of equipage that I want to accompany the marching columns including the artillery that supported Thomiéres Division.

Oh well we'll see how much I'll get done in real life :-)

As always I'll keep you posted and in the meantime you're invited to see what's distracting me on the other blog!

Cheers Sander

French Fantasies

Hoi,

It's a bit of a sketchy title to this topic, I admit it, but bear with me and all will be revealed in due course. Anyone checking the HäT website has discovered that their 1:72 scale French Napoleonics have gotten a separate page all to themselves 


http://www.hat.com/currentF.html

On this page masters and drawings of the new French MAC infantry sets are show:

French 1815:
http://www.hat.com/Prev/NFrench/Bx8294Mast.html


http://www.hat.com/Prev/NFrench/Bx8295Mast.html


and French pre-1812
http://www.hat.com/Prev/NFrench/Bx8296Mast.html

http://www.hat.com/Prev/NFrench/Bx8297Mast.html

It's about the latter two sets I'm thinking a lot lately. For the diorama I will need heaps of pre-1812 Frenchies of course, and while it is perfectly possible to make such a force of combining all kinds of existing plastic and metal figure sets, I really want my figures to have an overall same-ish look. The new HäT British Peninsular Infantry will set the benchmark (with some converted Revell Brits mixed in for diversity) and this is no problem as most other troops I have for the project will mix with those nicely: Italeri Hussars and Revell Chasseurs of the Guard as the 3rd French Hussars, Revell Life Guards as Portuguese Dragoons and Revell and HäT British artillery as... well RHA and RFA obviously.

The real problem at the moment is the French infantry as stated above. The present HäT 1812 Big Box is not a bad set at all but the figures are pretty chunky and very different in style to the newer Brits and French Légère MAC sets and while I could opt to alter several sets of the latter into regular infantry it would take a lot of work.
Seeing these shots of the pre-1812 masters has convinced me to wait for them and start with the Brits already lying around here. The drawings clearly show the panoply of separate head-options were gonna get with the French sets and these are superb for my purposes because I want to depict the rigours of campaigning in Spain at the time and have a big diversity in headgear and colours of clothing.

Other opportunities arise as well with the spare heads in these sets like using the Tarletons provided for AWI light troops. Or converting Dutch Light cavalry into British Peninsular LD's since the announced HäT set on Peninsular cavalry has been a little slow in progressing so far. The shako's included will be great for loads of conversions: i.e. I want to make several wargames units of French Artillery with shako's rather then the horrible Italeri busby's or the bicornes on the latest HäT set because I don't do the very early Napoleonic Wars.

Still the problem with all this is: we'll have to wait for a while yet before these figures become available. Argh! I want it all and I want it NOW! as the popular saying goes...

While I got a grip on myself again, let's talk about the MAC system. HäT has come up with, in my eyes, one of the best ways to sell plastic troops in current production by dividing the sets in 3 boxes: a box with Marching figures, a box of Action poses and a Command set. Now we can buy just as many boxes as we need figures and so will not have poses lying around which we have no use for and do not need to buy even more boxes to fill out our units with enough troopers that we do need.This system does have an Achilles heel: it will save us money because we need to buy less boxes but will leave HäT with lower sales... Hopefully we will all buy more of these sets in total then we are buying sets that leave us with spare poses but all the same it's a humongous gamble HäT is willing to take for the convenience of us customers; thanks heaps guys!

For my Salamanca project this just works out great indeed, since I need but a few action posed French and quite a lot of marching ones. So I will keep my fingers crossed the progress on these sets is speedy and without much of the trouble which happens during the production process.

Well that's my ramblings for today,

Cheers Sander