Salamanca Summer Painting Challenge 2012

Hello everyone!

So, I recently joined the La BRICOLE wargaming forum, a site dedicated to Napoleonic wargaming. The members there were very welcoming and I'm looking forward to sharing with them! :)

Anyways, the site is hosting a painting competition, and I've decided to enter. It will be the first painting competition that I've ever entered, so I'm pretty excited!

The theme for this competition is "vignettes," which also includes command stands. (A link to the rules HERE) While I normally don't like to do command stands until after I get units completed, I figure that doing a couple will be a nice change of pace from the rank and file.

I will have two entries: one will be a Russian battalion command stand (Colonel Dmitry Petrovich Lyapunov, 1st Brigade, 7th Division from the Borodino OOB), and the other will be an Army command stand for the British Forces at New Orleans (MG Sir Edward Pakenham). I will need to order some minis from Eureka here within the next week or two, then I will post up the required pictures in a thread over at La BRICOLE (and here, of course ;) ) This will also be a good chance to do some experimenting with bases for commanders to make them recognizeable on the table.

Well that's about it. On the buying front, I was able to get the RHA Rocket Battery, but was sniped on the Portugese. Oh well.

Have a great week!

--Chuck

New Figures and Thoughts on Artillery

Hello again!

NEW FIGURES:

After another week I have now become the proud owner of three boxes of 1/72 plastic Napoleonic miniatures for my 1/72 scale experiment. Here's what came in the lot:

British Rifles, French Guard Artillery and French Imperial Staff, all of which I can use (the Rifles to represent the 3rd Battalion of the 95th at New Orleans, the Guard Artillery for Borodino, and the Staff for command stands).  Hopefully my experiment will be successful and they won't tower over the other figures too much.

Also, I figured it was high time that more Americans were represented, so I purchased a battalion's worth of American infantry from Blue Moon Miniatures. I must say, they look really good, and I'm looking forward to painting them up as the 7th U.S. Infantry Regiment.

Other than that, it's just a few other eBay bids that I have running at the moment: a troop of RHA Congreve rocket artillery and some Portugese infantry. I hope I can score these without too much fuss (I got bid-sniped on the 1/72 plastic lot and had to snipe them back at the last minute).

THOUGHTS ON ARTILLERY:

 I have determined that instead of using one gun to represent a battery (as per the Black Powder rules that I like), for these I will use half of the number of guns actually used in a battery at the time. This means a British battery (which generally consisted of 4 cannon and two howitzers during the Napoleonic wars) will be represented by three guns on the table, an eight gun French battery will be represented by four models, and so on. I think this will look better visually. During movement, however, the entire battery will be represented by one caisson or limber, and each battery will have a battery commander mounted on a separate base. I think this arrangement will work well both visually and practically. Besides, when there is supposed to be a battery, I expect there to be more than one cannon on the table; I'm a sucker for massed guns. :)

Well, that's all I have for the night. Thanks for looking!

-Chuck

I'm Back, Sort of...

Hello everyone!

So, it's been a little while since I've posted, and it's been longer than I've anticipated. I'm currently away from school doing training so my paints and figures will have to be put on hold until the start of next semester in mid August.

On the other hand, since I've got internet access, I have been doing a little shopping in preparation. I've ordered more miniFigs British from eBay to fill out the ranks and I'm watching some more in another auction. I've also bid on something else: some 1/72 plastic soldiers.

While I love the look and heft of lead soldiers, I thought I'd do a little experiment. I've played with 1/72 scale figures when I was a child, and I don't remember them to be much bigger than the AB figures that I love so much, so I will try a few stands using them (if you've had success or failure with this, be sure to leave a comment!). If they are too big, then it shouldn't be much of a problem as they are cheap, and if it turns out to work then I have yet another source of figures to bolster the numbers of figures that I need. Either way, it will be an interesting venture for next semester.

As far as what I've completed in my absence, well, it's not all that much, I'm afraid. I only finished one figure, the ADC for my French command stand (and he looks smashing with his leopard skin saddle blanket, by the way), so I will have to finish the other two figures before I will have a picture of him up.

Well, that's everything for now. Hopefully I will have more soon.

All the best!

--Chuck