15mm French line battalion - Essex Miniatures.

This is the first French infantry battalion by Essex Miniatures. It's a  unit of the 100 days campaign period and only needs a suitable flag to complete it. I'm very pleased with the result, and the timing came in a round 6 hours for the full unit, including basing etc. As you can see I decided to go for 24 figures as giving a better representation of the six companies. Cracking little figures, crisp castings with loads of character. I like the fact that they are all basically a single pose, this appeals to me.

I'm not sure where this will lead to, I have found this very rewarding to be painting in a larger scale again and I'd like to think I will go forward with it. I must admit to having spent a bit of time recently looking back over 'stryker's' Hinton Hunt blog, including a download of the 'Muskets & Marshals' rules which look very good and I can see they would give just the kind of game I would enjoy. I won't get myself bogged down in long term plans at this stage, but rather just enjoy knocking out the battalions and see where it leads. I could certainly manage 1 x 24 figure unit per week. I like the approach of just painting units that appeal to me rather than setting out a target of x number of battalions for a specific battle, but all of the units will be based upon those present at Waterloo. As such I have chosen to designate these as the 45th Ligne and they will be fitted with the '1815' version flag. I wasn't initially sure about the 'hide' effect on the backpacks but it's growing on me now.