French cavalry for Tony and current state of the 6mm Crimean War collection.

 Had quite a busy week on the domestic front but managed to paint two more WSS cavalry regiments for Tony and finish off more 6mm basing, and also added another couple of French infantry battalions so not bad overall.

These two cavalry regiments represent the French units of Du Roi and Tarnault. Du Roi wear blue coats and as a 'Royal' regiment the trumpeter wears the Royal Livery. Tarnault wear off white  coats with the trumpeter in the Colonels livery decorated with white lace. They are of course Les Higgins castings with an Irregular officer and standard bearer, 20mm scale. You see them her awaiting their coat of glossy varnish as requested as I just need to do a final check over for things such as officers cuff details etc. Horses are a mix of dark browns again as requested with a few lighter highlights here and there.

Edited to add a few 'shiny shots' - officers cuff edges have had silver lace adding!

The 6mm Crimean war figures are coming on a treat now and I'm finally happy with the basing method! I'm regarding each base as a brigade now, represented by 72 infantry or 24 cavalry which gives a very pleasing mass effect. I still have a  couple of cavalry bases to do but otherwise all done now. I have a stock of Russian and British line infantry in the drawer but I'm just taking my time and of course prioritising the commission work. I'm finding the combination most enjoyable.

Looking ahead I have some lovely 20mm WW2 Soviet naval troops to paint for Alister. Around 75 figures with mixed equipment and poses, rifles, MG's, anti tank teams and mortar teams. They are wonderful little sculpts with lots of facial detail, from Grubby Tanks (link). I also have another 2 regiments of foot for Graham (56 Peter Pig figures) so will working them all together over the next 2 weeks. John also has another large box of figures on the way to me this week so February will be nice and busy!

I don't usually do politics here but..........

 It makes you proud to be British doesn't it!

20mm Russians & more rebasing!

End of another weeks painting and I have completed another of John's boxes. These 60 Russian Streltsy infantry will be heading home to Wales on Monday along with the dismounted Dragoons featured in last weeks post. Mostly by Strelets including some bonus figures and some Zvedza figures, all 1/72nd scale plastic John supplied lots of printed colour refences and requested units in Red, Green, Grey and Yellow tunics. Photos taken before my final check through and before the usual satin varnish. I think they will look very impressive on the table top and will be joining the Streltsy I painted previously. John tells me the next box is being sorted out to follow up! 

Next week I'll be painting 2 more WSS cavalry regiments for Tony, more lovely Les Higgins figures. I also have another 40 odd Russian Naval infantry (20mm WW2) on the way from Alister and a couple more 15mm ECW foot regiments from Graham so should all keep me busy.

Now I have to confess that having rebased all of the 6mm Crimean War figures (so far), that when I sat back and really looked at them I decided that the 3 deep basing style did not work for me! Ok, so a bit of time wasted but I really want to get this right and so off they all came again. To avoid the sticky mess caused by soaking I simply sliced into the MDF leaving just a thin layer which could then be easily bent to pop the strips off. This weekend I'm going to focus on getting them sorted onto the new bases. I have given this a lot of thought and decided to go for Brigade sized bases represented by 72 infantry and 24 cavalry to give a more massed affect, something that works well in this scale I think. I also really like the simple green colour which at the moment is grit and static grass texture free aside from the tile grouting which gives only a slight texture effect, I may well keep this as it sits very well on the green cloth. Below is what I have done so far, the bases are 2mm MDF (from Warbases) and 65mm x 45mm in size, so they sit comfortably in my 75mm square grid with space for a bit of terrain around them. I have to say I much prefer them like this so will keep going over the weekend. At the moment I have enough painted figures for 6 infantry brigades, 3 cavalry and 2 artillery per side, but I plan to keep building these up as ideally I'd like 10 infantry bases (720 figures) and 5 cavalry bases (120 figures) per side plus guns etc which could look quite impressive.

Lot's more dismounted Dragoons and 6mm's all rebased!

Kept myself busy since Christmas (in spite of a chest infection), painting more dismounted Dragoons for Old John. This continues the theme from the previous box where I got to select Dragoon units from the excellent reference book John sent me. What you see here are five units of French Dragoons and a unit of Portuguese Dragoons (in white tunics). The French were painted to match the four extra drummer figures I painted previously and the horse holder and horses also painted previously so all units will now comprise 8 Dragoons, 1 horse and 1 horse holder.

The figures are plastic by Strelets, an excellent set with realistic poses and accurate sculpts. I enjoyed painting them very much indeed and while red is the predominant colour of the tunics I tried to vary the shades slightly as per the book. 

48 figures (+ 4 drummers painted previously) and 4 standing horses. Noted the unpainted saddle and corrected!  Next are 60 Russian infantry armed with muskets and large axe, (Streltsy) for John in 4 units, each with different colour tunics.

I have also managed to rebase all of the Crimean war 6mm figures over the last couple of weeks on 50mm x 25mm MDF bases. I went with the 3 ranks this time as I wanted to give the impression of larger bodies of massed troops for use with DBN (DBC?) rules as well as on the C&C board and Portable wargame rules and this basing style suits all three sets of rules. I'm happy anyway with the overall look. I ran out of bases with two more Russian cavalry units left but have more on order. I still have plenty more figures to paint but for now I'm going to focus on the terrain.