The 1st Battalion, Pavlovsk Grenadier Regiment: Complete!

Hello everyone!

In a two-day whirlwind of painting I managed to finish up the other three stands of figures and now the 1st Battalion of the Pavlovsk Grenadier Regiment is complete!

(Remember to click on the pictures for bigger versions.)

The eighteen Pavlovs I completed most recently; note the height difference between the Minifigs and AB grenadiers.

 

A view of the Pavlovs that few Frenchmen will ever see; unless the Cossacks have broken into the Regiment's vodka.

The final three stands are mostly old Minifigs, with three AB Pavlovs in greatcoat added to make up the numbers. The AB figures tower over all of the Minifigs, but AB is one of the few companies out there that sell their figures individually, and I only need three to flesh out the regiment. Also, them being in greatcoat ties my painted stands in with the figures that came already painted that makes up one third of my Pavlovs.

As I've done a bit more research into the TO&E of the Russian Army prior to 1812, I've learned that most Russian regiments fielded two battalions, the Pavlovs included. So in the future I will have to paint up a second battalion to complete the Pavlovsk Grenadier Regiment according to the Borodino OOB, which is fine by me since the Pavlovs have such fetching mitres.

Purchased Figures

Well, I had told myself that I wasn't going to be buying any more figures before I left for boot camp, mainly because I wouldn't be able to see them until well into the summer. This resolution has gone by the board, and there are now over 100(!) 1/72 scale figures on their way. But hear me out: I just couldn't pass up the deal I found on eBay.

The lot I found was unmarked as to what was in it (the descriptions only saying "American Revolution/Napoleonic?"), but thanks to Plastic Soldier Review I was able to determine that the lot consisted basically of the contents of Italeri #6066 French Infantry, Strelets #018 Russian Mounted Jagers, and Italeri #6060 American Infantry (from the American War of Independence), plus a mystery plastic mounted figure that I'll have to scrutinize once I see it. All in all it should amount to 109 figures, all at the price of $5.50 shipped! That's five cents a figure! As I said, it was a deal I couldn't possibly pass up.

I'll use the French Infantry for their intended purpose, use the Russian Mounted Jagers as Russian Dragoons (they wore practically the same uniforms, as the mounted jagers were converted from dragoon regiments late in 1812) as the jagers were formed too late for Borodino, and the AWI American Infantry as pre-1806 Portuguese infantry, which wore distinctively old-fashioned uniforms before the Barretina shako was introduced.

Portuguese Infantry, 1790s-1806, wearing handsomely old-fashioned uniforms that are strikingly similar to AWI uniforms.

Will I have any use for a unit of Portuguese in these old uniforms? Probably not, but they'll look classy anyways. But, like I said, I won't get to see them until late this summer, so I'll have something to look forward to and something to post about later.

Coming soon: This is probably the last painting I'll get done before I leave for boot camp Monday morning, unless by some miracle my French Foot Dragoons arrive tomorrow so I can put up a review and knock out a stand. I don't want to get started on something and then have to leave it half finished for five or six months. We'll just ahve to see what Mr. Postman brings.

Questions, comments and suggestions are always welcomed and appreciated. Thanks for looking!

-Chuck

Portuguese Infantry

Hello everyone!

I finished up that stand of Portuguese infantry that's been sitting on my painting desk for over a year now (remember to click on the pictures for bigger versions).

These are all Minifigs British in belgic shako, but they're painted up in the old uniforms of the Portuguese Army wearing the barretina shako.

Coming soon: Well, I started looking at all of my painted figures and I've decided that I have almost enough to have a game. For the scenario I have in mind, I need to have a regiment of Spanish Infantry, so I pushed back the 1/88th Foot and brought the Regimento del Rey up to the front of the queue to be painted.

Questions, comments and suggestions are always welcomed and appreciated. Thanks for looking!

-Chuck

And the Award goes to…

General Manley Power, for having the best name of the Napoleonic Wars!

Swag.

 Hello everyone!

Another small addition to my Napoleonic forces, the command stand for my Portuguese brigade, ably commanded by the brilliantly-christened Sir Manley Power.

 (Remember to click on the pictures for bigger versions.)

 

Sir Manley (how cool is that!?!) is from AB miniatures, while his Portuguese second-in-command is a repurposed American from Blue Moon.  Power is wearing the uniform of a British general, while the Portuguese colonel is wearing the facings of his regiment. In the Peninsula Portuguese infantry brigades which were integrated into British divisions (such as Power’s Portuguese, which was fully integrated into the 3rd Division for the duration of the Peninsular War) were ordered by the overall Portuguese commander William Beresford to have a chain of command that comprised of both British and Portuguese officers.  For example, if a regiment was commanded by a Portuguese colonel, then his lieutenant colonel would be British, the major Portuguese, and so on down the line. As such, I’ve put a Portuguese officer on this stand with Sir Manley, in accordance to General Beresford’s directive.

If you haven’t noticed, I really like Manley Power, and not just because of his name. One in a long line of men serving in Britain’s armed forces, Power served in Canada, Holland and Minorca as a young officer before he was sent to Egypt to fight the French under Sir Ralph Abercromby, where he fought at the Battle of Alexandria in 1801. During the Peninsular War Power was attached to Portuguese Army, where he led his brigade in the Battles of Salamanca, Vitoria, Fuentes de Onoro, Torres Vedras, and Nivelle. His actions both during and after the siege of Badajoz earned Power special recognition by Parliament, and in 1813 he was promoted to Lieutenant General. After the end of the Peninsular campaign Power was sent to America to fight in the War of 1812, where he helped remove the impotent General George Prevost from overall British command after Prevost’s failure at the Battle of Plattsburg. In January 1815 Power was part of the expedition under Sir Edward Pakenham sent to Louisiana which was repulsed by Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans. His service during the War of 1812 meant Power was not present at Waterloo. In 1815 he rejoined the 3rd Division in France for occupation duty, and after the war was knighted, served as the Lieutenant Governor of Malta, and died in 1826 following illness. His legacy continues in the form of a march named after him, still used by the 4th Battalion of the Queen’s Regiment.

That’s all for now. I may have some more soon.

Questions comments and criticisms are always welcomed and appreciated. Thanks for looking!

Chuck

Portuguese Cacadores and Highlander Conversions

Hello everyone!

 

I've been pretty busy as of late but I have been able to get a little bit of work done on my Napoleonics over the past week or two. I've been doing a little bit of buying, a little bit of converting, and a little bit of painting. First up is the fruit of my latest painting efforts, a completed command stand for the 11th Regiment of Portuguese Cacadores.

 

(Remember to click on the pictures for bigger versions.)

 

 

The Cacadores were light infantrymen that were nominally equivalent to the British Rifle regiments, and most were eventually armed with British Baker rifles by the end of the Napoleonic Wars. They wore brown uniforms and had black leather equipment. These figures are Revell 1/72 scale British Riflemen that I repurposed as Portuguese Cacadores. I couldn't find any hard and fast evidence as to what colored facings the 11th Regiment had (frankly I was lazy), so I went with blue as it contrasted the best.

 

Now on to my buying and converting. A while back I mentioned purchasing a bunch of British infantry off of eBay. I was hoping to use them to complete the 88th Regiment of Foot. When they arrived, however, I was a bit disappointed. Ten of the figures I ordered were not suitable for anything, as they had an odd light infantry helmet that looked as if it belonged in the American War of Independence than the Napoleonic Wars.

 

The anachronistically-helmeted Britons of mention.

The other twenty were wearing Belgic shakos, but that's not a travesty as they can easily be converted to Portuguese with a new paint job. But these weirdly-helmeted figures presented me with a dilemma. So I broke out the greenstuff and my X-acto and got to work converting them into Highlanders for the 74th Regiment of Foot.

The weird helmets were chopped off with my X-acto and a small blob of greenstuff applied to make a Highland Balmoral bonnet.

Once I got started I decided to go ahead and convert another twenty British infantry figures to complete the Regiment. All of the figures I chose (a mix of Eureka, Old Glory and Old Contemptibles) were picked because their heads were easily suited for conversion. The tops of their shakoes were subsequently lopped off and greenstuff applied.

The original ten with the "toories," or pom-poms, sculpted on after the main bonnet had time to fully cure. Tonight I will add the toories to the other twenty figures. 

I'm planning on painting all of these highlanders up in one big batch of thirty miniatures. I've never done anything like that before, but I've read in forums that this type of massive batch painting really speeds things along. We'll see... it'll be interesting to see how it goes. At least at the end of it all I will have another completed battalion.

On the buying front, in addition to the above figures that I converted into Highlanders, I went ahead and purchased enough figures to complete the 88th Regiment of Foot as well. I'm getting tired of blue, and I'd like to see a little bit of red paint thrown around the workbench. These newly purchased figures are a mix of Fantassin figures from Scale Creep Miniatures and some Essex infantrymen to fill them out.

Coming up: Highlanders and British... maybe some Portuguese while I wait for greenstuff to dry and for orders to arrive.

Questions, comments and criticisms are always welcomed and appreciated! Thanks for looking!

-Chuck

Portuguese Infantry and Vistula Legion Command

Hello everyone!

 

Here are the rest of the stands that I finished last weekend. First up is another stand of Portuguese infantry.

 

(Remember to click on the pictures for bigger versions.)

 

I'm pretty sure that these are Minifigs, but I'm not positive. They are really supposed to be Waterloo British that I've repurposed as Portuguese in the Barretina shako.

Next up is the brigade commander for the Vistula Legion, Général de Brigade Józef Grabinski.

 

This is really the General Poniatowski mounted figure that came in the Strelets-R 1/72 set that I've painted up as the General Grabinski for the Visula Legion brigade command. As always, my brigade commanders are mounted on a 4cm diameter round base. Both the uniform and the horse furniture based on two pictures, one each of both Generals Poniatowski and Dabrowski:

Poniatowski

Dabrowski

This is the uniform of a general officer from the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, the kingdom that was created by Napoleon that included the majority of present-day Poland.

The standing officer is wearing the uniform of the 3e Régiment de la Légion de la Vistule, with yellow cuffs, collar and facings. The figure was wearing a sash. I've never seen a picture of a French officer of the Napoleonic Wars wearing a sash, so I was at a loss for what to color to paint this Pole's sash. I could not find anything on the Net about sash color, so I went to one of my books, An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Uniforms of the Napoleonic Wars, which showed an officer in the 3e Polish Legion, which later became the Vistula Legion, wearing a silver and crimson sash. I said that it was good enough for me and painted it as such.

Coming up: probably won't get anything painted until sometime this weekend. Two more days of finals then my graduation on Saturday! Woohoo!

Questions, comments and criticisms are always welcomed and appreciated. Thanks for looking!

-Chuck

Not so Portug-Easy!

Hello everyone!

 

Thanksgiving Break has arrived! I had my last class before the holidays today, which means I had a night to work on hobbies without stress from homework and whatnot. I spent that time painting up the guys I mentioned in my last post: the beginnings of a Portuguese line infantry regiment! Tonight I present the Coronel stand of the 21^o Regimento de Valencia of the Exército Português. (Remember to click on the pictures for bigger versions.)

 

I'll tell you all the truth about this stand of figures: none of them were sold to me as "Portuguese." These six figures represent three different miniature manufacturers and two different nationalities, neither of which, like I said, were Portuguese. Keen observers will notice that the colonel (or coronel in Portuguese) and the drummer were pictured earlier on this blog in the white for the Salamanca Summer Painting Challenge 2012 as part of my British command stand (that I failed to start, let alone complete) for the Battle of New Orleans. They are British figures in Belgic shakos made by Eureka, and they are wonderful sculpts, very similar in size and style to AB figures. The two standard bearers are American figures made by Blue Moon Manufacturing, and the two rankers in the back row are British line infantry in Belgic shakos that I'm pretty sure are Minifigs.

I can already hear the gripes: Hey Chuck, how could you use these varied models to represent Portuguese? Won't there be inaccuracies? Good questions! One thing I've learned through painting 15mm figures is that the most important things that differentitate units on the tabletop at this scale are hats and equipment. Minor differences in arms and uniforms can generally be disguised by paint, but if the hats and equipage is wrong then they are a no-go. In this case, the Belgic shakos of the British figures and the leather shakos of the Americans--both of which had false fronts--are pretty close proxies of the Barretina shakos that were introduced by the Portuguese Army in 1806. Add in the fact that officer uniforms at the time were pretty much standard between most armies (to cover the colonel and standard bearers) and that Portugal accepted lots of donated equipment from Britain (to cover the rankers) and this mix of figures works pretty well together as Portuguese on the tabletop. I will be using more Minifigs British in Belgic shakos to represent the rest of the regiment. Inaccurate? Yes, but one would have to be a die-hard button-counter to be able to tell at this scale.

I've painted these lads in the dark blue tunics and white trousers that are seen in most illustrations of Portuguese infantry at this time. Portugal during the Peninsular Campaign was divided into three military divisions: the North, the Center and the South. Regiments from the Northern Division were presecribed to wear uniforms faced in yellow and carry yellow regimental colors, and I've reflected that here. Individual regiments were differentiated via differing piping and button colors. I've painted this stand as having both the King's color (the red and blue checked one) and the Regimental color together on the same stand. Both are made from glue-stiffened paper and hand-painted by myself--these flags proved a challenge in their complexity! Nominally Portuguese infantry regiments were divided into two battalions, with the first battalion carrying the King's color and the second battalion carrying the Regimental color. However, most of the evidence that I found indicated that for most of the Peninsular Campaign the 21^o did not posess enough soldiers to flesh out two full battalions and instead the regiment formed a single battalion, hence both flags being in the same battalion. The 21^o's sister regiment, the 9^a Regimento de Viana, which served with the 21^o in General Manley Power's (great name!) Portuguese Brigade in the British 3rd Division, was much larger and fought with two separate battalions for most if not all of the Peninsular War.

Whew! That's a lot of text!

Coming up: Those darn 3e Hussars. I've even included a workbench photo of them just to prove that I am in fact working on them:

These guys should get finished off tomorrow, then we'll see what else I get done. Maybe some more Portuguese... the rankers were really quick to paint up.

Questions, comments and criticisms are always welcomed and appreciated. Thanks for looking!

-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

New Naps, and a Review

My big shipment of 15mm Heritage minis came in today! Yay! Unfortunately they came in one big bundle, so I had to sort them out and put them in baggies based on my limited expertise. Here's what I got:

-36 Russian Infantry
-28 French Infantry
-22 French Artillerists
-11 French Hussars
-4 French Curassiers
-4 Landswehr/Militia
-2 Dismounted and 1 Mounted Mystery "Imperial Guard" (They have bearskins...)
-And 2 very lost Peninsular British Infantrymen

A total of 110 minis for less than $30!

First impressions:

Scaleability: These dudes are TINY, true 15mm figures. My AB Brits and French dwarf them, and so will the officers and guns that I bought from AB today to go with them. I will have to put them on slightly thicker bases to compensate for the height difference.

Quality: The casting quality varies from pretty good to just passable. I'll have trouble painting some of the figures, but overall it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Price: I can't beat the price, less than $0.28 a figure, including the cavalry. Especially considering these guys are out of production sculpts.

Overall: Not too bad, considering what I paid for them. They will make good fillers for units and won't look out of place if set by themselves. It will take a little bit of devious trickery on my part to get them to jive with the bigger AB figures, but I do enjoy a challenge. :)

I'll take pictures of them tonight, after my afternoon final.

More updates:

I finished the last two stands of U.S. Marines over the weekend, and I finished another stand of French on Tuesday. I'll post pictures of them tonight with those of my order.

Also, some more eBay victories: Battle Honours Portuguese Command and Minifigs British in March Attack pose. Currently I've got a bid up for 50 Old Glory British.

I purchased a few more AB figures today as well to go with my new minis, including some command figures for my new Russians, some cannons for my French artillerists and some Portugese infantry for my incoming Portuguese to command.

Well, that's it for now. Pics tonight after I slog through my engineering final. Ugh...

-Chuck