Encore Avec Les 10mm French

Another small batch of 10mm reinforcements for the French of 1870.

 

Nothing too original or surprising in this post - here are yet more 10mm French infantry for the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. The castings are from Pendraken. There are three bases of regular line infantry, and a single base of Chasseurs. 

Lovely castings from Pendraken, as always.

 

While these figures could work for a wide assortment of rules, I am currently working with 1 base = 1 battalion in mind for these 10mm figures, so this post includes enough figures to add another full line regiment and chasseur battalion to my French collection for the period. With that said, many rules are flexible when it comes to their unit scales, so this could just as easily be said to represent a line infantry battalion and a couple of companies of chasseurs...all depending of your flavour of game and scenario.

Chasseurs to the front!

 

Each division in the French Imperial Army of the era (before everything fell apart after Sedan) included a single battalion of Chasseurs, along with two brigades of infantry, each with (usually) two regiments of line infantry. 

The French Chasseur uniform - blue, trimmed with yellow - not as flashy, but still sharp!

 

The Chasseurs had different uniforms from their colleagues in the line regiments - no red baggy pants for them. Instead, they wore closer fitting blue trousers, matching the blue on their tunic and their kepi. The uniforms were piped in yellow, and they had green epaulets. Not quite as striking as the regulation uniform of the line troops, but still sharp, in my opinion!

View from the rear, showing the excellent detail on the packs of the French line infantry.

Ready to defend the Empire! Vive l'Empereur!

 

My 10mm French collection is growing at a slow-but-steady pace...now up to six regiments of infantry and two battalions of Chasseurs. Watch for more as the long winter of COVID looms...I may need a short break from the recent run of 10mm work, but overall, there are some big battles I would love to play with the group one day, and that will call for a lot more posts like this. Thanks for reading, I hope you are staying safe and sane, wherever you are!   

French Reinforcements for 10mm Franco-Prussian War

French reinforcements - 10mm line infantry (front) and Zouaves (rear) - ready for action! Figures from Pendraken.

 

Some more 10mm Franco-Prussian War work to share. This has been a fun project to come back to this year, but much of my work in this setting and scale has been focused on the Prussian forces and their allies. It is time to get some more French troops on to the table! So here are two units of French infantry in 10mm - a unit of regular line infantry, and unit a Zouaves. The figures are from Pendraken.

The line infantry prepare to bring their deadly Chasspot rifles to bear on the invader.

The close up is a little blurry...sorry...but as you see, 100% fantastic sculpts and casting from Pendraken.

Vive la France!

 

I have said it before, and I will say it again...the uniforms from the French army of this period are just magnificent, no matter what scale of miniature you are working with, and the castings from Pendraken are just tremendous quality. 

There are different rules which can be used, so the unit representations can scale up or down...in my case, I hope to use each base to represent one battalion, so the three bases together would comprise an individual regiment. 

Profile view of the Zouaves - love the baggy pants and fez!

 

Even in 10mm, the fantastical uniforms of the French Zouaves really pop - I just love them. There were a few regiments of Zouaves in Patrice MacMahon's I Corps, which was stationed in Alsace at the outset of the Franco-Prussian war in the summer of 1870. Thus Zouaves and Turcos are notable in some of the preliminary engagements of the war which were fought in that region. 

 

Another view of the Zouaves.

 

My 10mm collection to this point has focused on preparing for the Battle of Wissembourg, one of the very first battles in the Franco-Prussian War. The French were caught by surprise and heavily outnumbered in that engagement - therefore my 10mm forces contain very few French units (as opposed to two divisions of Prussians and a division of Bavarians). The two units of infantry seen here thus represent a substantial reinforcement for the French!

 

As the COVID situation continues to swirl, I really have no idea when or how I will get these on to the table, but my interest in the period remains undimmed, and I have some more French units lined up in the painting queue...even if it has to be over Zoom, we'll try some kind of game at some point. In the meantime, I hope you are somewhere safe, and able to stay healthy and sane and stocked up on hobby projects. 

Thanks for reading!

Some Small Figures, A Big Move

10mm Prussian Infantry from Pendraken.

 

It has been a few weeks since I have posted anything, so good to get back into a bit of the blogging and painting pace a bit with this entry. These are 10mm Prussian infantry for the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. The figures and flags are from Pendraken, purveyor of top-shelf 10mm figures. 

 

Prendraken make fantastic castings for this scale.

 

Most of the figures are wearing their coats, but two of bases feature infantry with the coats rolled around their chests, an image from the war that is more common. If you stare closely (sorry about the crappy photos), you will see I painted coloured facings on some of the coats. Ooops! Not sure what I was thinking there...anyway, it adds a little variety and once a whole bunch of these fellows are out on the table you don't really notice anyway. 

These two bases in the forefront feature Prussian infantry wearing their coats wrapped around their chests...the rest in the background have the troops wearing their coats.

 

These bases are useful for all sorts of rules, from the utterly perplexing "Polemos", to the excellent "1870" to the tried-and-tested "Black Powder". The base could represent anything from a couple of companies to a regiment, depending on the level and scale of battle one is looking to represent on the table. For my initial 10mm battles I will be looking to use each base as a single battalion of infantry, so a regiment would, on average, be comprised of three bases. But over time I hope to try different rules and different battles. It will be fun to experiment!

The Prussian "needle rifles" will be ready for action!

I have now painted enough 10mm Franco-Prussian stuff for a small game - specifically, the Battle of Wissembourg. Who knows when we will get a chance to play it? The public health restrictions related to COVID continue to increase in many areas of North American, including Winnipeg. But there is one additional wrinkle...that would be the reason my painting progress has been so non-existant for the past several weeks. This photo should explain it:

Thanks for everything, Winnipeg!

Yes, I have moved - or, as I believe they say in the UK (and possible elsewhere), "moved house". The reasons are good ones, linked to a career opportunity at my firm. After having lived my whole life in Winnipeg, this summer we put our house on the market, bought a new house in Ontario, and then prepared for the move, which took place at the end of September. 

Moving is a very stressful experience - I don't know anyone who ever enjoyed it. Moving a long distance is particularly stressful, and I must say coping with the clowns and cretins at the moving company, the various and sundry contractors, lawyers and other nonsense has been particularly trying. We are only now just starting to get our heads above water again, settling in to our new house - and I have been able to find some time to paint! We love our new house and new location very much, but wow...this has been hard.

And, of course, none of this is good for the hobby collection/hoard. Like many gamers, I have access to an assortment of foam trays and containers to allow for the safe transport of quite a few figures over to another house or location for a game. But there was no way I would ever have enough of that stuff to move all of my collection at the same time - and as it was, email inquiries out to various suppliers were for nought, as many are either disrupted by COVID or simply don't reply to emails (step up, KR Multi-case). Things had to happened so fast - and, because of COVID, kind of had to happen very fast - that 1-to-1 scale sadly needed to take priority, and many, many hard hobby decisions were made. On the plus side, many items from my collection made their way to new homes with friends, which is great - if stuff has to go, best for it to go to a good home :) I need to recognize and thank Byron, Dallas and Mike for their help this summer as I made crash preparations to get the house ready for the market and the collection as transportable as it could be...

 

And of course the cretins at the moving company made it difficult. I packed things up with as much care as I could, but they found ways to damage them regardless, tilting and tossing assorted boxes marked "fragile", knocking over a pile of boxes filled with my 28mm Franco-Prussian War collection, which I had PUT ASIDE so I could move them myself...they didn't even make it safely out of the basement! Sigh...

Anyway, the unpacking is now underway, and I will continue to make repairs where I can as I settle into the new house. I will very much miss my gaming friends - I am SO glad we managed to cram one more game in during the relative COVID respite in late summer. But I will be back in Winnipeg often to visit - and the web is a great tool to stay connected and stay in touch, and I will lean on it very much to do so. 

So thanks everyone - stay safe, stay healthy and stay sane!  

More 10mm FPW - Prussian Artillery

10mm Prussian artillery, ready for battle - models and figures from Pendraken.

Some more FPW progress to share - a bunch of 10mm Prussian artillery pieces and crews.  There are two Krupp "4 pounder" guns, and six Krupp "6 pounder" guns. The guns and figures are all from the excellent Pendraken. It's a Prussian artillery park!

Divisional guns - Krupp "4 pounders" - there were four batteries equipping each Prussian division.

The steel breech-loading artillery of the Prussian army hit very hard during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. The artillery was far from the only reason the French lost, but it was a major difference on the battlefield and, as you might expect, accounted for a significant proportion of French battlefield losses. I use air quotes around the "poundage" of the guns as I believe this rating was a theoretical one, the supposed size of roundshot that might fit in the barrel. The actual shells fired by these guns were heavier, had a much better range and hit harder than the equivalent roundshot. Bruce Weigle has an excellent overview of the artillery and firearms from the war in his rulebooks, which are 150% worth buying even if you never intend to play the games...

The BIG GUNS...Krupp "6 pounders", six batteries in a Prussian corps' artillery reserve.

It will be a tough thing for the French player if/when this lot deploys on the table...

The "4 pounders" were divisional guns for the Prussians, with four batteries equipping each division. The "6 pounders" were corps-level reserve guns, with six batteries available to each corps.

Another view showing the great details on the models and castings - Pendraken is fantastic.

Painting artillery is always tricky. Curt summed it up well for me with two words - "spoked wheels".  He is right, that is probably the worst part, but just in general I struggle to paint artillery and crews from any "black powder" era. I'm just not very confident about what the guns themselves "looked" like, or any of the equipment that went with them.  These were no exception, so it's great to have them out of the way, a nice mental hurdle to have overcome. 

I don't enjoy painting artillery, so it's great to get this bunch of it finished!

This lot will round out the artillery contingent for the Prussian side of the Wissembourg OOB - the German allies will have 18 batteries of artillery they can bring to bear on the poor French! My brushes now must turn to Prussian infantry and a few more command models in order for me to finally reach my goal of completing all of the models necessary for the battle in 10mm. I suspect, however, that there may be a diversion to different subjects along the way before progress on my 10mm FPW project resumes...

10mm Bavarian Infantry for FPW

Here come the Bavarians! 10mm castings and flag from Pendraken.

More 10mm Franco-Prussian war figures have come off of the painting desk recently.  This post shows five bases of Bavarian infantry - the castings are all from Pendraken. Not much to say beyond repeating what I have said before - 10mm is great, and Pendraken provides the best 10mm stuff I have come across.

Close up of the Jagers.

Another view of the Jagers...great castings.

There are four bases of regular Bavarian infantry, and one base of Jagers.  The Pendraken castings are all outstanding, but I was particularly blown away from the Jagers, which somehow managed to have the marksmanship cords and plume on the helmets on 10mm castings. My brush skills were not the strongest in terms of picking out those details, but wow - just great stuff.

For my initial attempt at "1871", each base will represent a battalion. But of course you can scale things up and down, depending on the scenario, and what rules are in use.

View of the regular infantry from the rear.

As with all of my recent 10mm FPW work, these figures are part of the build up to do the Battle of Wissembourg - some day when we can get together to have a game.  A division of Bavarians took part in that engagement, and with this lot completed I have now finished painting the initial Bavarian contingent in the OOB for that scenario.

The final bits of the Bavarian contingent for the battle of Wissembourg.

The entire Bavarian division awaits orders while massed on my shelf...

The French are already completed, and now that the Bavarians are finished, it is time to focus on finishing the rest of the Prussian contingent for the game. That will involve another eight batteries of artillery, a few more command bases, and another 12 or so infantry bases.  This will take some time to finish, particularly as I still get distracted by other projects and scales, but the Quarantine Challenge is helping me to focus, that's for sure!

Thanks for looking everyone - I hope you are safe and healthy, wherever you are.

Some More 10mm Bavarians and Prussians for FPW

10mm Bavarians and Prussians for the Franco-Prussian War. Figures from Pendraken.

After a round of science fiction painting, my brushes have gone back to historical subjects.  Here are more 10mm castings for the Franco-Prussian War.  There are an assortment of Bavarians - infantry, officers and artillery, and some Prussian Dragoons.  These 10mm figures are all from Pendraken, purveyor of the finest 10mm figures I have ever come across!

Bavarian infantry regiment - I went with yellow facings on these fellows.

Pendraken sculpts are fun to paint.

View from the rear of the line...

When I love a period or a setting, I am apt to start painting it in multiple scales. Yes, I know this is bonkers...but what can I say? I love the 28mm figures because you can enjoy the many fine details on the lovely uniforms of the period.  But there are limits to 28mm when it comes to playing out the battles of the period - they were large, corps-level battles and I'll never have enough 28mm figures, table space or time to run something like Spicheren, Froschwiller or Gravelotte-St. Privat. To play even portions of those engagements, I'll need a collection of smaller figures so the gang can try out some of these bigger scraps.

Bavarian artillery - Krupp 4-pounders, steel breech-loading pieces that greatly outgunned the French artillery.

Another view of the gunners.

Different rules can give you different options in terms of table representation with these smaller figures.  I really want to try the "1871" rules by Bruce Weigle, and these rules have some flexibility in terms of unit scale/representation, but for the basic level, the figures you see in the photos here would provide one regiment of Bavarian infantry (with each stand representing a battalion), four batteries of Bavarian Krupp 4-pound guns, a Bavarian brigade commander (single mounted officer on a base), a Bavarian division commander (two mounted offers on single base) and a Prussian dragoon regiment (each base representing about two squadrons of cavalry).

These figures could be used for rules systems too of course - certainly "Black Powder" is almost infinitely flexible, and could be used for figures at this scale. These figures could also work for "Polemos", the rules from 6mm figure manufacturer Baccus. 

Prussian dragoons.

Even in 10mm, the Hussars are the glamour-boys of the cavalry arm, with their lovely finery and silk-bagged head gear.

I struggle to paint artillery in any scale, it's always a big stumbling block for me, so it's particularly great to get this group of batteries out of the way.  These four batteries will provide a divisions' worth of guns to my initial Bavarian contingent.

Bavarian command bases.

The single officer will lead a brigade, while the stand with two figures will serve as a division commander.

I started messing around with Pendraken's 10mm range a couple of years ago, and I was blown away by the quality and completeness of their offering.  I've been puttering away at a 10mm collection ever since! I have one specific battle in mind to start - the Battle of Wissembourg.  Using the level of representation described above for the , I have calculated I will need 88 different bases all in, including all of the infantry, cavalry, artillery and officers.  This is for one of the smallest battles of the war (at least for the "Imperial Phase") - and still that's a fair amount of kit to get painted.

I just need to paint these figures, and I can run my first 10mm battle...hoping to get through these during the Quarantine Challenge.

Those kinds of goals can seem so far away. And yet...progress has been made over time! In fact, I'm almost sort-of within striking distance, so I am going to try to do that during our quarantine period of the next few weeks. Of course, I'll be my own worst enemy as I will suddenly feel like painting more Titans or panzers or FPW stuff in another scale or who-knows-what else at any given moment...but hopefully I'll be able to stage the Battle of Wissembourg in 10mm by June. And, of course, I hope we could actually get together for a game in June...

Thanks for looking and visiting - hope you are having a good, safe and healthy day, wherever you are!

Final Painting Challenge Submission - 10mm FPW Bavarians

10mm Bavarians for the Franco-Prussian War. Figures from Pendraken.

The tenth edition of Curt's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge has concluded. I had big plans to finish AHPC X with a bang, some big-time entries but world events have not cooperated, as work has been a bit of a scramble running into the final hours of the Painting Challenge (it ended at midnight last Friday).  But I did manage to finish these little fellows - these are 10mm Bavarians for the Franco-Prussian War.  The figures (and flag) are all from the excellent Pendraken.

The sculpts from Pendraken are really incredible...I just can say enough good things about them - I wish I had ordered more before the government "shut" the borders...

Infantry in cornflower blue tunics. You can't miss the Bavarians!

When war broke out between France and Prussia in the summer of 1870, the Kingdom of Bavaria sent a major contingent to join the forces of Prussia and the North German Confederation.  From the initial battle at Wissembourg through the seige of Paris and many battles against the stubborn French Republican regime which replaced the fallen government of Napoleon III, the Bavarians played a major role in the Franco-Prussian War.

Command group in the middle...depending on the system, each base could represent one battalion from the regiment...or the three bases together could represent one battalion...all depends on the rules.

In terms of approaching ways to game this period in any scale, I would like to start out "small". The Battle Wissembourg fits that bill, in the sense that it was one of the smaller encounters in the War.  It was also one of the first battles. A division (and more) of Bavarians were part of that engagement. These figures are meant to represent part of that force, representing a regiment of infantry and a regiment of cheveauxleger cavalry.  There are two individually-based mounted officers as well to represent relevant layers of command, depending on the rules system being used.

Chevauxlegers - Bavarian "light" cavalry.

The Battle of Wissembourg saw an understrength French division hold off elements of one Bavarian and two Prussian corps for the better part of a day.  Had any of the nearby French forces come marching to the sound of the guns, the engagement may have turned out differently, but the lethargy shown by the French command would turn out be the rule, not the exception, in the summer of 1870...

Again, these could represent one regiment, two regiments...it all depends on the rules being used.

There are several different sets of rules for gaming the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 at larger scales.  I am hoping to use the "1871" rules, and will probably also try "Black Powder", and maybe even "Polemos".  It will still be some time before we get to the table, as even the "small" Battle of Wissembourg still calls for something like 44 bases of infantry, nine bases of cavalry and 21 bases of artillery...the war in 1870 was short, but the battles were big!

Mounted officers to serve as command markers.

The Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge was a lot of fun - I should not here that moth Mike F and Byron M also participated, painting lots of really cool stuff.  I encourage everyone to head over to the AHPC Blog and scroll through the entries to check out their work!

Certainly current events may now allow for more time to paint, even though the crippled economy may not allow for much money to buy paints or figures (not that I "need" any more figures)...I'm fortunate enough that my job is still holding up for now.  But I know Thousands and thousands of others are not so lucky, so I hope everyone out there can stay healthy and safe, and I hope our collective governments get their sh*t together in time.

Cheers, and stay tuned for more "social distancing" painting efforts...  

A Few More 10mm Prussians

10mm Prussian infantry for the Franco-Prussian War.  Castings and flag from Pendraken.

Well, the summer is almost finished - although we're getting some AMAZING late summer weather, yay! The work pace usually picks up here after Labour Day, and this year has been no exception.  While work has been busier, the painting pace has slowed, and this month I have been trying to knock off a couple of "pending" items that have been sitting around primed since the spring.  Up first were some 10mm Prussian infantry for the Franco-Prussian War.  These sculpts are from Pendraken.

These fellows are wearing their long coats, so not quite as colourful.

These are part of an slow-but-still-moving-forward effort to run some games using Bruce Weigle's "1871" fast-play grand tactical rules. In this case, each base here would represent a battalion of infantry, and so together the three bases would represent a Prussian infantry regiment.  "1871" can be scaled up or down too, so different permutations are possible - and of course relatively scale/basing agnostic rules systems such as "Black Powder" will work for these figures as well, but for now the goal with these is to play an "1871" game in its basic scale using 10mm figures.

Nice sculpts for 10mm - Pendraken are top-shelf!

I continue to be blown away by how much fun 10mm sized figures are, as well as by the sculpting and casting quality I see in the figures from Pendraken.  They are excellent, a lot of fun to work with and paint.

Ready to advance!

Of course, when looking to play "grand tactical", you are looking towards some larger engagements, and the Franco-Prussian War, even in the relatively short "Imperial Phase", had some very large battles, so this is still pretty slow going - particularly when you add in a lack of focus on my part! But I'm taking a patient approach with this effort...a few bases here and there between 30k things or who-knows-what-else...we'll get to try "1871" eventually :)

Thanks for visiting, I hope you are enjoying the last few days of the summer too!

Up next, more 10mm...but a rather different setting...

10mm FPW Again...This Time, French Hussars

10mm French Hussars for the Franco-Prussian War - figures from Pendraken.

More "small" progress from the painting table, a continued theme from recent posts - 10mm Franco-Prussian War figures.  These are French Hussars from the Franco-Prussian War, and as before, these are castings from Pendraken - and they are amazing quality sculpts and castings.

Lots of character and detail on these little fellows - fun to paint!

There are a number of different gaming options out there for this period, but consistent with my recent 10mm output for the period, these are intended for use with Bruce Weigle's "1871" rules. Each base would represent two squadrons of cavalry, so the two bases together would represent a French cavalry regiment in the game.

A charge in line...

These little fellows are wearing the light blue coats, kepis and red pants of the newer Hussar uniform that was still in the process of being issued in 1870.  Even though they are small little guys, the level of detail on the sculpts is incredible, and I love how Pendraken have given them an animated, dramatic look - charging forward, sabres drawn, for the glory of the French Empire (and, later, the French Republic).

Another view of the detail...

If you are curious about 10mm, you should give Pendraken a try...I'm blown away by the quality.

Together with the Chasseurs and Dragoons, I have close to a division's worth of French cavalry ready for a game of "1871".  But there is always more to do...I still need to get many more Prussians, and some Bavarians, painted up before we try these rules.  Summer is approaching (on the calendar, if not in the climate), so hopefully my summer painting will bring some more progress to share on more of these little fellows.

French mobilization continues in 10mm...

Thanks for visiting the Blog, have a great day!

A Few More 10mm FPW French Fellows

10mm Franco-Prussian War castings from Pendraken.

Not too much painting happening these days, but I'm chipping away here and there at a "small" project - 10mm Franco-Prussian War.  These are castings from Pendraken, and they are really quite amazing - very small, of course, but sculpted in cunning fashion so as to give you little bits of detail here and there to jump on to.

While these figures might ultimately accommodate a number of different rules, I am aiming to use them for Bruce Weigle's "1871" grand tactical rules.  In this case, each base of infantry would represent one battalion, and each base of cavalry would represent two squadrons/half regiment of horsemen.  So the three bases of infantry would represent an infantry regiment, and the two bases of horse would represent a cavalry regiment, etc. By using this sort of scale, it will be possible to play some of the large battles from the Franco-Prussian war - or at least, large parts of them.

The Pendraken figures have cast flags on them...I thought this was a terrible idea - and to Pendraken's credit, you can order separate flag bearers with empty poles and then use paper flags - but the scale is small, and as flags go, the French one is pretty straightforward...my free-hand is nothing to write home about, but I'm starting to like the look of the painted flags in the small scale.

So there are three bases of French line infantry:

In any scale, those Second Empire french uniforms are just lovely.

Ready for a charge after softening up the Prussians with Chassepot fire...

Incredible detail for 10mm castings!

And two bases of Chasseurs a Cheval:

Charge!

Love the animation in these little sculpts!

Again, amazing details for 10mm castings.

Still not enough 10mm chaps painted for a game as yet, but getting there slowly-but-surely. Watch this space for more progress (I hope!). Thanks for visiting, and have a great day.