Painting Challenge Submission 14 - 10mm French Infantry and Command for FPW

10mm French troops, ready for battle in 1870!

Another submission to Curt's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge - we have more 10mm figures for the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Here is a unit of French line infantry, and some command bases with mounted figures. These are all 10mm figures from Pendraken.

Typical of my project so far - three bases to form an infantry unit.

The uniform of the French Infantry from the era of the second empire is just so fun to paint, a real "clincher" for my interest in the period and wish to game it. All the regiments with baggy red pants and kepis and epaulettes...just so cool. It is not a circumstance where you paint many units with "OK" uniforms to get to the cool ones...this is the uniform of the basic lignard, and it is already awesome (meaning the elite units are thus even more awesome). It is a lot of fun to paint.

So much lovely detail on these castings from Pendraken.

And it shows up so nicely, even in 10mm (although of course I am biased), because the sculpts from Pendraken are top-shelf, cunningly crafted and well-cast so there are details to work with, even at a relatively small scale.

Column formation to move forward...hope no Prussian artillery is nearby!

The infantry here would represent a Regiment for rules such as "Black Powder" and "1871", but of course such rules can scale up or down as you like, depending on the nature of the battle and scenario one wishes to play.  

Mounted officers - I initially intend to use them as brigade commanders, but these can be used for all sorts of purposes.

The command bases are similar - the bases with a single mounted officer are meant to represent brigade commanders for "1871", which the base with the two mounted figures would be a division commander. I placed a Cuirassier on the base as I intended this specific one for command of a French cavalry division - but again many different rules allow for many different command bases in different ways - for my part, the more figures on the base, the more senior the commanders.

Two figures on the command base, to represent a more senior level of command - a cavalry officer, with the Cuirassier to keep an eye on things...

The end of the Challenge is looming, and I find I'm still well-short of my goal. Hopefully I can still find time to get more done before the end of the Challenge in March. Stay safe everyone, and happy painting!