Painting Challenge Submission 11 - 10mm French Lancers for FPW

French Lancers in 10mm for the FPW - figures from Pendraken.

So I have been lazy when it comes to posting things on the blog - time to catch up a bit with more submissions from Curt's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge. This one contains more 10mm Franco-Prussian War figures - no surprise there. I have been on a bit of a roll with it, so I want to keep it going. These 10mm figures are meant to represent two regiments of French Line Lancers, ready to ride to glory in the summer of 1870. The castings are from Pendraken - as always, a joy to paint, but with one sort of mysterious feature, one which I could not quite bring out in the photos, but I will share a little more about below...

Beautiful sculpts as always from Pendraken - but take a really close look at the musician, if you can.

Cavalry was very important to the armies of 1870, but the era of cavalry regiments closing to contact and having a decisive impact on the battle itself was coming to an end. Of course, no point wasting you time advancing those views in the summer of 1870, right? These brave fellows will run down any enemies foolish enough to mess with Imperial France! What should they be scared of? A bunch of foot-sloggers with black powder muskets? No,...they have rifles you say? Breech-loading you say? How many shots per minute? Backed by breech-loading artillery? Well...I'm sure it will all work out in the end - debrouiller, as the French say. Instant glory awaits. You should charge that Prussian line right now.

Maybe check the musician in this photo? No...a bit blurry...

These are based for the "1871" game rules, where a single base represents two squadrons of cavalry or so, and two bases together represent a regiment. Of course, as with the infantry, the scale of the game can be increased or decreased, so different combinations are possible, but the intent for now is that these will represent two different regiments ready to fight in some of the early engagements near the French/Prussian border.

Yellow facings for this unit.

It was difficult to find clear uniform references for the Lancers in this period. The relevant Osprey book is a bit of a disappointment in this regard, so in the end I bodged it a bit. One of the regiments has yellow facings and collars, the other red...I think I ended up exaggerating the amount of colour on the facings, but it helps when the figures are in this scale.

To battle! Vive L'empereur!

Ok...so I mentioned at the outset there was something odd about the musicians. Can you spot it? Probably not...but each bugler is missing his right forearm - a flaw in the casting, I suppose. And pretty odd that both musicians had that issue. But you only get one bugler per pack, and I didn't want to order new packs of Lancers just to get more musicians...so the "ghost bugles" will help lead these riders to battle on the table!

Thanks for reading! Stand by for more Franco-Prussian War cavalry...stay safe and stay sane!