Third Painting Challenge Submission - 28mm Franco-Prussian War French Command

Assorted French command bases in 28mm for the Franco-Prussian War. All figures from Wargames Foundry.

Happy New Year! For my third entry to Curt's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, my brushes return again to a familiar theme and setting - the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.  These are 28mm figures from Wargames Foundry, mounted to represent commanders in games such as "Black Powder".

As with my Prussian command bases, there are two different levels of command represented here.  The bases with two figures will represent "brigade" commanders (again, "brigade" used in the sense of the Black Powder rules, as opposed to commanders of a specific actual brigade), officers with a sub-command of several units, while the base with three figures will represent an overall command for the whole French force on the table.

French officers on foot ponder developments on the battlefield...

There is a bit more variability to the French officer figures in the Foundry Franco-Prussian War collection - some senior commanders on foot, and one courier-type mounted, and one large selection of different poses in the senior command vignette.  This entry gives a flavour of these different options.

Without mounted commanders, there was a lot of extra room on the base, so I went nuts filling it up with grass tufts from Tajima - I love those things...

One "brigade" command features two senior officers on foot - while the regalia of the French senior command from the period was quite flashy, I mostly just bodged it so it looked good from a foot or so away on the table.

"Take this message to the Marshal!"

The second "brigade" command features a pair of flashy Hussars in their sexy bearskin head gear. They are a set, with the fellow on foot handing a note off to the ADC on the horse.  They were a little tricky to line up on the round base, so the hand-off looks a little awkward. But when it comes to this period, however, I kind of like that these French command figures give an aura of unease...

The message says "Why the f*** are we just standing here while the Prussians march all around us?"

That is because the performance of the French senior command during the Franco-Prussian War was utterly abysmal, hapless at best and incompetent at worst.  The French soldiers fought bravely. But through poor communication, indecision, indolence, and astonishing idiocy, the senior command group of the French managed to seize defeat from the jaws of victory on a number of key occasions. More than any other factor (and there were many), the performance of the French senior officers led to the envelopment and destruction of the French Imperial Army at the hands of the Prussians in the summer of 1870.

"J'ai aucune idee..." the command mantra for the French in 1870. 

And this is why I find the third portion of this entry, the French senior command base, to be so fun, because the sculpting (by the amazing Perry brothers, of course) is just brilliant.  There is a French Marshal, sitting to the corner of a bench, rubbing his forehead in confusion. A second ADC has no idea what to make of things either, while a third ADC just leans on the table and wonders how the first two ever got promoted...

Simply marvellous sculpting from the Perrys as usual - so much character in these figures, really amazing. 

Everyone is stumped by developments on the battlefield...

I continue to really enjoy painting this period, scale and setting.  Hopefully this edition of the Painting Challenge will bring me closer to my goals on this project - it's been great so far.  While the number of figures isn't large, things like command bases or (ugh) artillery are the things that are important to round out collections for games like "Black Powder" - but these are things I often find I never get around to.  So it's great that I now have a useful number of command sets for both sides.

In terms of points for the Challenge, this netted another 44 toward my goal of 1200 points of painted work.  In terms of my 28mm Franco-Prussian project, well, it is another step toward that goal of a Black Powder game sometime in 2019!