From JohnM: 1/55émé Régiment de Ligne (116 Points)

This is the first Napoleonic infantry unit I have painted since last year's Challenge and my god, I had forgotten how difficult painting Napoleonic's is. I just checked and I think this is the 80th Napoleonic battalion I have painted over the last 7 years.

Here we have a pre-Bardin uniformed unit from Crusader Miniatures, these are the only Napoleonic figures they sell which is a pity as they are nicely sculpted and well cast. Very similar to Foundry, I think in pose, but a little larger thus fitting much better with Calpe, Front Rank and Perry lines. I think the mounted officer is from Warlord Games, but I am not absolutely sure.

These 28 mm troops will join my French Order of Battle as the 1/55e. This completes Quiot's 1st Division at Waterloo. They join Jérome Bonaparte's 6th Division, as well as the 13e Régiment de Légère (3rd Division). I think that maybe 24 French regular infantry battalions are enough. I will paint one more Garde battalion to complete Petit's Brigade of the Imperial Guard but that is it for the French blue!

But back to painting Napoleonics, when I started I had no idea what I was doing, I got better after awhile and by last year I had evolved a method of painting thin shades over a white undercoat, applying AP Dark and then finishing with some highlights. It was pretty happy with this method as it produced good looking war games standard troops in a fairly quick time.

The unfortunate bit of course is over the last two years I have started to paint mostly skirmish figures and when having to paint only 30-40 figures for an army, I started to spend much more time on each figure using various shades and highlights. I still used AP as it gives a nice hard coat but I would not shake the tin, so the polyurethane was essentially minimally tinted. I found it pretty hard to go back with these troops. I noticed I was painting much more detail etc etc. They are still not great but they took a lot more work.

The dreaded close up with all the warts!

I have also made some major changes in basing. I was finding storage increasingly difficult and damaging to the troops. I have finally settled on some high grade cardboard 2" high filing drawers, they are quite nice and sturdy, but the troops were moving about in them when a moved the box. A couple of years ago we had a Napoleonic game with Curt and he had brought some of his own troops which were based on low profile metal bases. I really liked how they looked, but maybe it was Curt's painting. With these I can glue in a magnetized sheet in the file drawer and viola the metal bases would stop moving. I really like the low profile over the 3 mm Litko plywood bases.

I have stuck with 40x40mm bases (although Curt tried to persuade me otherwise), but am now going with 4 figures to a base, so essentially 6 bases for a regular battalion rather then the 4 I had been previously using. My friend Iannick, with whom I have played most of my Napoleonics, recently switched to this convention, so I said why not. I have to admit though I somehow doubt whether I will ever get those 79 battalions re-based!

From Curt:

Eighty Napoleonic units in 7 years?! Wow. That is an amazing achievement in of itself John. I knew you had a good sized collection but not THAT large. Fantastic. 

These fellows look marvelous John. I've always had a soft spot for the pre-Bardin uniform and you've done all those tails, turnbacks and waistcoats great justice. I think you'll like the steel bases in the long run (I like the low-profile they afford as well) - just be sure to sand down the edges a bit so they're not so sharp. 

Hey, general question to all who use his stuff: Has anybody been able to get an order filled recently from The Flag Dude? Greg and I have tried these past few months and have had no luck at all. I hope nothing is wrong...

Again, wonderful  work John.

PS: The mounted officer is from Perry Miniatures I believe.