Napoleonic Young Guard Artillery

 Wheeling out the big guns with this one. French Young Guard Artillery (AB) with 12 pounders (Blue Moon). Looking a bit more blue in the photos compared to on the table. These 12lb guns from Blue Moon are big. They really make the 6lb guns look like pea shooters.

Bavarian 15mm Napoleonic Artillery

 I had these figures knocking around for a while (25 years). Decided to get them painted up with some guns from Warrior Miniatures. The Essex figures always paint up easily. Maybe proportionally they are quite stocky, but I do enjoy the ease. Clear details, clean casts etc.

French Old Guard Grenadiers

 I think the manufacturing composition of anyone’s French Old Guard tells a lot about when they first got into Napoleonics! For me my figures are Essex first generation. This means I think they are dating back to around 1989? I decided to tidy a little bit of the old paint job (level of repaint was entirely dependent on my enthusiasm level) and a rebase. I thought these figures were going to look odd next to the newer 15mm/18mm figures, and to be honest they do. But I like them. Even though they are really short for Old Guard Grenadiers, they look more like a bantam regiment for those undersized for the main regiment. But I’m keeping them.

French Line Regiment

 I meant to post pictures of this Regiment a while ago. It’s the sister regiment to the other Essex one I posted a few months back. This regiment has 3 battalions, the third being the Essex French line in overcoats (“mostly”, also some odd left overs were drafted in, otherwise due to pack quantity constraints there would have been even more for the spares box)!! 

I thought the photos were pretty much the same as before so I jazzed things up by putting them walking through my small town building arrangement. I also focussed on the chaps in overcoats as these have some nice variety in the poses (unlike the bread and butter line infantry marching not in an over coat). Again Essex are so straight forward to clean and paint. Their stocky frames and stubby bayonets will still outlast any AB figure on the table, but they will never look as good! 

I regret to say they found no house with the kerb appeal they were looking for.

French Cassion

 This is a Blue Moon 18mm French Cassion with a Eureka Miniatures horse team. The Eureka figures have some great personality. 

French Line Regiment

 This is a fairly generic French line regiment I Painted about a little while ago. It has a sister regiment that consists of another three battalions that I will put in the next post. All the figures are Essex. I still find these figures a nice easy paint. Very little cleaning and clearly defined detail. The folds in the uniforms make it easy to layer colour contrasts too. I understand some people don’t like proportions, but the stocky build and solid short bayonets make them good for handling. Plus I still have a fondness for them as they were my first 15mm figures I bought and painted 33 years ago.

Russian 15mm Napoleonic Artillery -

I have been wanting to make a manufacturer comparison on Russian Napoleonic artillery for some time. When I started building my current Russian army I already had a few Essex guns laying around. But I knew I was going to need a lot more guns but found it difficult to get a feel of which to go with.

I am no expert in Russian Napoleonic Artillery. I have to admit I don’t know the actual dimensions of the different guns (height of wheels etc) so this comparison is much more based on the look on the table and mix with the figures. 

I have taken 4 manufacturers for this comparison Blue Moon, AB, Essex and Warrior. 

I first did some rough measuring of the different parts:

 

This gives a rough idea of the differences, but to really get a feel of what a difference of 3mm means in reality I took a series of photos. I have used an AB Russian Artilleryman as the guide in each photo. This keeps each photo pretty much in proportion.

(The view from above shows the gun mounted on a 40mmx40mm base.)

Blue Moon

Firstly, the Blue Moon piece is a pretty big gun barrel, it dominates all the others in terms of size. However, the carriage is not as large as the Essex one. The Blue Moon carriage seems to have captured the distinct Russian carriage look (compared to the French hockey stick look, the Russian seems to be straighter and less bent at the end). The Blue Moon gun captures this look quite well. The wheels have good sculpting to represent the metal work on the wheel rims too. Overall I like the Blue Moon guns. On the downside there is no riveting detail or sculpting to represent the elevator apparatus for the barrel. 

Essex

I notice that Essex miniatures sometimes get a hard time on line. Maybe because these were my go to figures 35 years ago I still have a soft spot for them. Their figures are always clean sculpts and the bayonets are small but are not going anywhere, even after handing. If only my AB Russian infantry were the same! Merely sneezing could see an entire battalion looking like rifleman. The Russian artillery piece I am comparing is actually their 12pdr. This is partly as I have had this model for over 30 years and it looked similar in size to the 6pdr Blue Moon one I had bought. The barrel is a little shorter and the detail is suffering as my example involves a number of layers of repainting. The carriage is more "Russian" like than the Blue Moon one, but it flares more when viewed from above, more like the French Gribeauval guns. The wheels have a some sculpting of the metal work around the wheels but not as defined as the Blue Moon gun, but it does have some simple depressions to represent the riveting.   

 

Warrior

Warrior miniatures are company from Glasgow and I think been around for 40 years, I am sure I bought some figures from them in the 1980's. Their site has some interesting models on it, unfortunately they dont have pictures of the whole range so it is hard to determine what all the figures are like. I think they are also on the real "15mm" size. However I was drawn to their artillery pieces as they looked pretty good on the website and I wanted to see how they sized up. The carriage is Russian in look, very little hockey stick curving at the end. The carriage is also a good size, smaller than the Blue Moon one, but larger than the AB one. The barrel is the only standout negative, it is the smallest one looked at. Dimensionally not far off the AB one, but as it lacks dome detailing of reinforcement rings, it seems to look more like 4pdr rather than a 6pdr. The carriage also has no flaring at the end which oddly seems to make it look a little too straight compared to the others. It does however come with a ram rod sculpted on the side that adds a nice detail and overall you could probably get away with blending this one in. Also the gun is a really nice clean sculpt, hardly any flash or misalignment on the wheels (a big relief).

 

AB

The AB gun has by far the most detailing. Rivets, sculpted elevator, accurate metal work all over it. But the carriage is the smallest of the four. The carriage also seems to lack that Russian look, from the side it really looks French (but I'm no expert). It is also probably the easiest to get the figures around if you basing on 40mmx40mm.

 

Overall you could say all four are good, depends what aspect you are keenest on. If cost is a driver then there are also some big differences. (time of writing 26/04/21)

The Blue Moon gun works out at £2.67 per gun (based on a £16 pack of 6)

The Essex gun comes in at a rather hefty £3.50

The Warrior gun is an amazing 63p (based on a £2.50 pack of 4)

The AB gun is £2.70

 

The Blue Moon guns can also be frustrating as you will need to buy the howitzers (Unicorn) guns also in a pack of 6. This is okay if you need 3 batteries, but adds to the cost if the howitzers just end up at the bottom of the lead pile.

For me, I am using mostly Blue Moon (you can get a good discount if bought at shows). I am also using the Warrior guns to represent abandoned artillery pieces (as all my guns are glued on the bases). At 63p a gun you cannot go wrong and John at Warrior is really helpful.  

French Guard Marines

Well this is a colourful lot! I had been dreading painting these as I knew it was going to have to be careful slow job. In reality it was a careful slow job. I wasn’t sure how orange to go on the trimmings for these, but the majority of sources were saying “orange”. They also are shown in illustrations with braid on the trousers at the front. I skipped this as I thought I would not get it done well and sometimes less is more. When it comes to flags it seems that there are plenty of options. 19th century witnesses seemed to have claimed to have seen all manner of configurations. I went with the eagle and a flag from Maverick Models that had cool looking anchor on it. Stuart Wilson of Maverick Models was really helpful and offers the flag in any size you want. I think I should have gone a bit smaller than the 15mm height I ordered. I think it’s more pennant style. I also went for the “effect” flag style, on reflection I think the plain would have been better, but this is personal taste. 

Buildings

 I get inundated with questions on what scenic building ranges are best with 15mm figures. Actually I have never once been asked that, but if your reading this far you must be at least mildly curious. I have just finished a Warbases 10mm Mini Hammer building. I dropped down to 10mm for the buildings as the 15mm seemed to just dwarf the figures. After visiting the Harry Potter studios and seeing how they shrunk the Dursley’s home and Hogwarts, I thought if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me. So I tried it out and liked the look. I felt the clusters of building better represented the small towns and hamlets of the Napoleonic battlefield, but I understand some people will always prefer a more in scale building. 

The building I finished is the 10mm Raleigh house. It was pretty easy to build, but some care should be taken with the windows, they are very finely detailed and do not enjoy rigorous dry brushing. The building is actually from the mini hammer fantasy range so I was worried it would look too fantastical, but I think the look fitted. The overhang was pretty big but this can be softened with the use of a few chopped matchsticks as beams. I also added a wood store and some handrails on the steps. I also use wooden flat toothpicks as they are a good size and easy to cut (you have to find ones with really bad product reviews, they are better when they come in differing sizes with little point on them. Bamboo ones are hard to cut and regular for my purposes). Then a chopped up skewer for logs. Finally I added tiles from the Warbases tile sheets. They are a special request and I was very happy they obliged to make them in 15mm scale. The roof that comes with the building does not have too much texture to it so might be a struggle to make it ‘pop’. 

French Napoleonic Hussars

 A hefty slab of a regiment this one, 32 figures in total. Now why 32? Well it’s a long story dating back over 30 years. Before the internet ordering via Mail was a real hassle. Popping to the local Wargames shop was a lost easier. Problem with the shop popping was that it was like lottery. I wanted some French light cavalry and the shop had plenty of elite company hussars and not many packs of the regular ones. Because of the imbalance they were never painted and sat packed away for 30 years. When I looked over them again I decided to order more of them to balance the elite company felllas out. I should have made two units but decided to just base them up as a mammoth 32 figure unit. The elite company is still too large but I no longer care, it’s not keeping me up at night for some reason (although the wrong shoulder strap colours on my Russians would drive me nuts still). I also replaced the swords with some flattened wire. These are not great but are nice and robust. There also a figure in there from  http://warriorminiatures.com/ . It’s from the Gallia Little Gems range and is the Chasseurs a Chevalier officer (the chap on the horse rearing up). Warrior also do some nice guns that I will try do some more detailed post about at some point (very reasonably priced and a nice fit for 6lb guns).

Russian Guard Horse Artillery

Current project is a small group (3 guns, 12 crew) of Russian Guard Horse Artillery. It should probably still be larger but I cannot bring myself to cut up more figures for the headwear (still traumatised with the 12 I’ve done). The guns are AB for this unit which are a bit smaller than the Blue Moon guns I have been using. Unit came out okay, a bit of squeeze fitting them all on. The guy on the end with the ram rod looks like he is ether giving the end of the Unicorn gun a last minute polish or is trying to get the end shot off for a laugh.

Russian Forge and Apothecary Wagons

 Some more Russian wagon train additions. Wagons are Blue Moon, horses Eureka SYW and the seated chaps modified CGM. Probably a couple of things wrong with these, firstly I don’t think they rode on these wagons in this way and secondly have no idea about the uniforms. But, pretty sure that from time to time the wagon train drivers would shake things up and maybe get a rest on the wagons.....

Russian Horse Artillery

 Russian AB horse artillery with Blue Moon 6lb guns. 

Painting Russian Infantry

 I find the thought unlikely that anyone would like to use the same colours that I used for my Russians. I have found sources like Loki’s Great Ball, Napoleonics in Miniatures, JJs Wargames and McPhees Miniature Men invaluable for helping me with painting information (links below). That I thought you never know. Maybe just maybe, someone has hit rock bottom in Russian napoleonic infantry paint selection, comes across this site and thinks, I cannot look no further, this will do me. 

The paints I use are all Vallejo apart from the use of DarkStar paints “Pewter”. Dark Star do a really nice metallic paint and it’s available from SNM Stuff, https://www.snmstuff.co.uk/. I  use Pewter for the canteen thing on the backpack as it helps it sparkle a bit. The other note on this paint guide is that apart from the musket I use no other metallic paint. Instead I use Beige Brown then Ochre Yellow for the gold/brass fittings. The Ochre Yellow had a good pigment content and helps for the buttons, badges and  chinstrap to stand out. Maybe the most controversial part is the green for the uniform. I start off pretty dark green, the Luftwaffe green at this scale is not a big step up but starts to give some levelling up. The final green looks really bright on the palette, but it dries darker. It should used for top highlights and helps the green pop a little. 

French Line Horse Artillery

Two batteries of French Line Horse Artillery from Campaign Game Miniatures. Figures never need much cleaning up and CGM offer quite a few ranges that others don’t cater for in 15mm. These are in the later Bardin regulation uniform. The guns are also CGM and pretty good value at 2 for around €3.22 (at time of writing 15.01.21).