Silver Bayonet

On the Silver Bayonet Facebook Group Page someone has put a fairly clever Excell sheet together to record your units’ details. It helped me begin to create names and character traits for my warband. I hit my bits box first and threw together these minis and primed them, but they’ve only assumed their roles as I understood creating a list better.

I am torn between fun, convenience and cost. I have a box of Victrix 1807 to 1812 French infantry, but the gorgeous metal  sapper and Heavy Cavalry minis in the NorthStar French unit box are really tempting. I love to kitbash, but I am not sure I have enough bits to get the results if I want to replicate these great models.

Well at least the colours are decided. I like the Ultramarine Blue Contrast Paint for the uniform with a Macragge Blue highlight. (With a heavier highlight on the French zombies.) The Mephiston Red seems fine to me. The Snakebite Leather Contrast on the pack goes down well. The Retributor Armour Gold looks brassy enough to me. I chose to keep the trousers closer to a Morghast Bone than the Matt White of the straps and tunic.

I figured that the zombies are clinging to their muskets just because of their training becoming second nature and it being as inherent as walking and saying brains for them. I assume that the colour of their tunic has lost its meaning though, so that the revenants only look to the living as food and trivialities of nationality are forgotten.

As with the British, I started by painting a living French Infantryman and getting my colours decided and then went in and changed it slightly to reflect the decay of a zombie.

If anyone would like to correct me on uniform colouring it would be massively appreciated. If anything is glaringly wrong I would appreciate the correction and advice.

As the game rules stipulated, particular years of fighting have no bearing. When we fight in scenarios it doesn’t tell us the location in the world or date, so regiments location during the wars and uniform fashions throughout the period don’t worry me overly. The Silver Bayonet squads could be in their own uniform of course and that makes that element even easier to rationalize in my head.

“Was this a statue? Those flowers are long out of season… Curious… We should investigate those holes… Private Craven?! Stick your hand in there…”

This was an attempt to use a kids toy packaging as a mold. It was a cheap robot type thing and I hoped it would come out looking like a wrecked robot as a Sci-Fi terrain piece. It ended up looking too undefined to resemble anything hi-tech even if it was rusted up.

So I looked at it again with Silver Bayonet eyes and figured it could be an ancient Easter Island type statue to a long forgotten God and somewhere you might find occult types lurking.

As the game feels more about clues than dragging loot around it seems more fun to make this a point of interest.

I had already painted 3 or four Napoleonic miniatures as a trial run for Sharp Practice armies I intended to start. I had also primed a few more in Army Painter Skeleton Bone, but never got around to painting them. These initial primed models were Warlord Games sprues from one of their sprue sales a few years ago. Even though as a rule I very rarely change anything once a prime coat is down I decided to kit bash some zombies from these built models.

The additional zombie parts are from a bits box, comprising mostly of Mantic Games fantasy range parts. Most got fresh Mantic zombie or ghoul hands on their arm free of the musket. I cut off the shakos and the heads on most of the started models, added the undead heads and often popped a shako back on top.

I think I may need more, but will check to see if they are mostly armed with muskets or whether it will be more balanced if some just have improvised weapons. Plus I will check the scenarios for how many the likely headcount of zombies might be.

I used Fleshtearer Red Contrast for the uniform coat, continued a pattern of using Averland Sunset yellow cuffs like I had for some fully painted infantry I had. I used Mephiston Red as a highlight. The mini looked too much like the regular infantry I had already painted and I remember from reading my Sharpe books that the colour would often fade and the dye run until the army looked almost pink at times, so I added some watered down Wraithbone here and there to show some age and weathering. The British regulars white trousers and clay piping  had been been built up from the Skeleton Bone Primer to a bright Army Painter Matt White with dust around the ankles, so for the revenants I only used Wraithbone as the closest to white it was taken. I imagine that the bed roll / blanket once on campaign could end up being a variety of colours, so I kept the zombie rolls an Agrax and Skeleton Bone finish to again separate them a bit from the regulars.