A Foray into Napoleonic Wargaming

Progress on regular line infantry has been good, with a dozen of the lads ready for basing. I’m aiming to get the other half of the regiment painted for the end of the month.

I’ve also been planning how to approach painting tartan for the highlanders, as I’ll be tackling them once I’ve finished the line regiment. I’m going to have two highland regiments, The Black Watch (42nd regiment) and the Gordon Highlanders (92nd regiment). Before attempting the kilts on the models, I painted a quick trial on paper (also to act as a memory aid). Basically I want to achieve a relatively good approximation of the tartan that isn’t too time consuming or fiddly that works at 15mm scale.

For the Black Watch I think I’m going to omit the lighter Prussian Blue squares, and retain them for the Gordon Highlanders.

A summary of my intended paint schemes:

• Both patterns start the same way, with a base of Dark Prussian Blue.
• Next a grid of German Camo Extra Dark Green. Two horizontal lines will be appropriate for the scale of the models.
• At the intersection of the dark green lines, paint a square (more likely a blob) of Flat Green.
• At this point the patterns diverge. For the Black Watch a thin line of Dark Prussian Blue is painted over the green grid.
• A square (blob) of Prussian Blue is added between the green grid for the Gordons.
• A thin line of Sun Yellow is painted over the green grid.

Hopefully it will look good on the models.

A short first post to summarise where my collection stands at present.

I spent a little time last year planning on what exactly I wanted to collect, being drawn the most towards collecting a Peninsula British force. There are a large number of different mini ranges for Napoleonics in 15mm. After a lot of looking at various blogs and websites, I decided to use models that are more 18mm rather than ‘true’ 15mm, as I liked the variety and quality of minis at that size.

My first models were some British line infantry from Campaign Game Miniatures, painted as the 61st South Gloucestershire regiment. The flag came from GMB flags.

I was pretty pleased how they turned out, especially as a learning process on painting models at this scale.

I then had a slight digression away from British infantry after grabbing some French Cuirassiers from ebay. The models were again CGM, and were mainly an experiment in how best to tackle the horses. Again, quite pleased with the end results.

After the cavalry I returned to British infantry, this time trying my hand at some skirmishing riflemen. Figures are CGM once more. The green jackets came out a little brighter than intended, but I was happy with the finished look.

That takes me up to where I am at present. I’m currently working on a second British line regiment (24^th Warwickshire Regiment of Foot), with two lots of Highlanders to follow. I struggle with batch painting huge numbers at one time, finding it a little dispiriting even if there are greater times efficiencies. I have settled on tackling about 12 figures at a time as a balance I’m happy with.  I’ve adopted a campaign look for the infantry with mixed colours for the trousers, with helps with mixing up the batch painting further.

I’m aiming to post at least monthly updates to document the slow building of my collection.