My next project will be to complete the British 8th Brigade as it appeared at Waterloo. Just to get things into perspective, I wont be making an accurate scale model but a representation of the Brigade for gaming purposes. I’ve put that sentence in as I know from the chatter on facebook and other forums that some ‘hobbyists’ can get quite animated over the detail when it comes to painting Napoleonic’s, or for that matter any military subject. It often seems that most of the ‘chatter’ comes from people who rarely lift a brush themselves. It’s hardly surprising though, they are too busy critiquing other peoples models to get on with their own. But lets not go down that rant road! I hope that by publishing my progress with my army I may encourage others to have a go. If nothing else, publishing my blog helps to keep me on track with my army.
So the British 8th Brigade at Waterloo comprised of the 28th North Gloucesters, a Light regiment in stove pipe shakos, facings in yellow. The 32nd Cornwall, a standard line regiment, facings in white, the 79th Cameron Highlanders, dark green facings but Tartan kilts and finally 6 company’s of the 95th rifles. Also attached at Divisional level were two Foot Artillery Batteries, so I’ll probably add one of these in as well!
32nd Line Infantry (Centre Companies)
I think that it is an interesting Brigade to model as it contains a good variety of troops and it will also push me into finally taking up the challenge of painting tartan! However, I’m going to start with the easy option, the 32nd Cornwall, and see if I can churn these out fairly quickly using my batch painting technique, with a new twist for me!
As always, I do a bit of research before starting to paint and my three favourite references are the Waterloo Companion by Mark Adkin, British Napoleonic Uniforms by C.E. Franklin and the superb web site
If you are new to Napoleonic’s, you really will find it hard to find three more accessible and useful sources. I will be using the Warlord Games Waterloo line infantry for the troops. I grabbed a box of these as soon as they were released, so the version shown still has 36 troops in it. This has now changed to a set of 24 – the usual number of models used in Black powder, so I will have a few spares for another project. The boxed set is a mixture of Plastic and metal models – plastic for the rank & file, metal for the officers & ensigns. Incidentally, there is a very good colour leaflet to help with painting included with the warlord boxed set.
The Warlord figures are nice sculpts, particularly the metal figures, which have plenty of character. The plastic infantry are in just three pieces, Body, head and back pack. You do just get a marching pose, with none of the figures firing but I am happy with this for wargaming purposes. If you prefer a firing line, the Perry Boxed set is for you. If you would like to mix it up, try Victrix! Assembly is quite straight forward, with little flash to remove. As I mentioned previously, I intend to build a unit of 24 models and so I assembled the 18 infantry men first.
Warlord WATERLOO BRITISH-LINE INFANTRY 28mm
This time I did not attach the back packs, I decided to test a technique used by others which involves priming the main body in grey but leaving the packs on the sprues and priming them in black.
Rear of Box
The theory being, that I will save time painting by not painting over the primer. So on the bodies, the trousers will be left in the neutral grey primer and on the equipment, I just have to paint the water bottles, blanket & straps. Batch painting 18 figures in one go is more than I would usually attempt but I am under no pressure to get these on the table for a game at the moment, so it will be interesting to see if I can keep to the plan. The other advantage in doing things in this way is that it is easy to paint in short bursts. So if I just have 5 minutes spare, I can paint say, a couple of the water bottles without having to figure out where I got to on my last session. Well, we’ll see how it works out. Here’s the progress so far, showing you the primed figures & separate equipment and the first colour painted on, Vallejo Flesh 70815. The picture will perhaps help to make sense of the above…
warlord figures, assembled & primed