From PaulO'G: Vive La Garde! (200 points)

G'day all, its great to be back for my 10th Challenge! This year my target is a curiously specific 603 points, which is what I need to get me to 8,000 lifetime points.

"Mon dieu! Tre magnifique!" say the swooning Mesdemoiselles!

My Season 14 opening salvo is the start of my new Crimean War project. I'm starting with a French Brigade, and the Grenadier Garde is up first! As a larger, well equipped battalion it musters 36 Guardsmen and Officers. 

Allons enfants de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé !

Why the red bases you might ask? Because they will serve on Mars for our Space 1889 VSF campaign first - obvious really! Once thats done I'll redo the bases for a more routine deployment to the Crimea.

Their features are wonderfully sculpted - doing them some measure of justice was a challenge!

Models are by Great War Miniatures, distributed via Northstar. Painted in classic triad style - no speed/contrast paints were harmed in the making of this unit. I also discovered a new technique for painting small buttons - a toothpick! (Thanks for the tip John, and for the emergency flag resupply!)

A Brigade Commander's view of their march to Victory!

So off the mark with a 36 figure mini-bomb @ 5 points each, plus 20 points for shelving in the History section. While these are the first Guard figs I've painted for any era, I understand they are not be the only French Grenadiers likely to be posted today - hopefully they pass muster! :-)

From Millsy: A French guardsman is impressive in any setting Paul, be it terrestrial or otherwise! I'm sure these fine fellows will do sterling service wherever they may fight, even lightyears from home.

The greatcoats are presumably for night operations as they'd be a serious hazard in the heat of Martian day! Lovely work on the red/blue combo which works really well with the bases. It is almost a shame to think they'll be repainted eventually as they really do look great.

200 points to kick start your challenge!

From GregB - A Heavy Cavalry Hero for Glorantha (30 points)

General de Bonnemains - 28mm figure from Eagles of Empire.

Greetings all! Work has been pretty busy for the past couple of weeks - which is nice, it funds new hobby purchases! But it also slows down the painting pace...that said, I was still determined to come up with some kind of submission this week, and I thought visiting another Challenge Quadrant planet might help. I started on Istvaan V, and looking at my collection and set of projects, an opportunity presented itself to visit the neighbouring world of Glorantha. The theme for this planet calls for "heroes", and with this in mind, I present General de Bonnemains, who led the 2nd Reserve Cavalry Division during the battle of  Froschwiller on August 6, 1870. This is a 28mm metal figure from "Eagles of Empire".

The Battle of Froschwiller was a major engagement that occurred early in the Franco-Prussian War. The Prussian coalition was advancing across the border, and Marshal MacMahon, commander of the Army of Alsace, was preparing for a defensive battle, having found an ideal position along the Sauer river. Orders to concentrate had been issued - the 1st Corps was already in place, and he was waiting for 5th and 7th Corps to join them. The Prussian side had similar notions, their III Army also planning to gather its strength before commencing a grand battle. Two armies faced each other warily across the Sauer valley, near the towns of Froschwiller and Worth. 

The plan was to wait until ready. But plans often don't work - and for the French in 1870 they, like, never worked. On August 6th, the pickets on both sides started to engage. Escalation followed. Artillery was committed. Troops were sent forward to deal with that. Maybe best to secure a town, you know, just to be sure? Can't allow that, right? 

Before long, the elements of the Prussian III Army were getting stuck in. The Bavarians led the way on the right flank, and the Prussians committed to follow their allies. Through the day, the French fought valiantly - 1st Corps containing some of the very top units in the French Army. MacMahon waited for help to arrive, but it never showed. As his lines buckled, he needed to buy time...and he bought that time with the lives of the reserve cavalry. General de Bonnemains led the charge, four regiments of Cuirassiers, the cream of the Second Empire's heavy cavalry. The odds were long, but the safety and glory of France were at stake. 

A very dramatic pose by the sculptor, perfect for the subject.

It was not to be...the rock-paper-scissors era of infantry lines and squares holding against the heavy cavalry were gone. The French Cuirassiers went forward, and were shot to pieces by the Prussians, armed with breech-loading rifles, backed by steel-breech-loading artillery, these glorious French cavalrymen never had a hope. In particularly tragic sequence, 700 Cuirassiers were caught in the village of Morsbronn and massacred in a matter of minutes.

The sacrifice of the heavy cavalry bought time for Marshal MacMahon to pull his shattered forces from the battlefield and fall back - many of these troops would meet their ultimate fate at Sedan some weeks later.

A white horse, perfect to lead a glorious charge!

I have not been able to track down whether General de Bonnemains survived this battle or whether he was one of the casualties of the fighting that day - apologies for the sloppy research! But I had purchased this character figure from "Eagles of Empire" - purveyors of beautiful 28mm metal figures for the period, and a quite interesting set of skirmish-type rules for the setting. He had been sitting, primed, for months, since he had arrived in the summer...a perfect target for an Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge submission! I thought he would make a fine submission for "Glorantha".

The "Eagles of Empire" sculpts are tall, lean and lovely - with one challenge in this case. The sword was bent during shipping, and I could not, no matter what I tried, get it sorted. It is tragic for this figure to defend the honour of France with a bent sword...but hey, things went really bad in 1870 for them, right?

So, for points, we have a mounted 28mm figure, and a planet bonus - should net 30 points. Thanks for reading, and I hope to have more to share next week!

______________________________________

What a fabulous figure for Glorantha, Greg. There is something terribly tragic, yet somehow romantic about the French series catastrophes of the Franco-Prussian War. They tried so valiantly, but they experienced such incredible hubris during those campaigns that is makes your eyes water, especially when one realizes that the FPW largely paved the way to the rise of Prussian/German militarism and creates an inexorable path to the First World War. In this light, the bent sword is somehow perfect for this figure. Well done dude.

- Curt

From SidneyR: Paris Nightwatch 1622 (Caprica) (140 points)

Owing to various work-and-life-related 'bumps in the road', this sadly is only my second post of the Challenge.  But I've tried to assemble a fairly disparate collection of figures as some form of ambushing party, all of which are inspired by the ambush-y treachery of the planet of Caprica.

First of all, though, I need to get there.  Enter (stage left) a swashbuckling lady with a fancy  sword, accompanying (or being pestered by) a dubious night-stalker of the Paris alleyways.  

She's a really nice and versatile swashbuckling female figure from Brigade Games, in 28mm.  The male figure is from Midlam Miniatures in the UK, also in 28mm.  I had fun painting his skin in a unhealthy pallor, based on a purple base coat.  Plenty of opportunities arise with a figure like this in a game - Has he been over-doing the mercury powder?  Or is there a hint of plague about Monsieur Descartes?  Or... maybe he's just a cultist of Slaanesh...

Next, there are some more 28mm figures from my forces for “...with Flashing Blades”, a set of rules set in the historical Paris of 1622, which is very much inspired by Dumas’ novels of “The Three Musketeers”. During the course of last summer and autumn I painted forces for the Musketeers themselves and the Cardinal’s Guards. 

So what was left for the ‘Paris Collection’ (... see what I did there!...) was this group of figures which I have painted for use as the Paris Nightwatch.

There are ten figures for the Nightwatch in various stages of patrolling, guarding, commanding, directing and promenading - all with a suitably martial air (regardless of their actual ability). I tried to collect the figures as a group which would fit together well and could form a small detachment to prevent law-breaking, fisticuffs and general mayhem breaking out in the fair city of Paris.

The figures are collected from various ranges, mainly from Wargames Foundry’s ECW range which fit together perfectly, size-wise, with the Brigade Games musketeers and Cardinal's Guard. I converted some of the figures, adding green-stuff feather, and lace - but nothing too dramatic.  The fashionable Dalmatian is a hound produced by Simon Chick, which he kindly sent to me after the Salute show in 2018.  Of course, this shamelessly plays to our dear Snow-Lord’s love of dogs, but also reflects the seventeenth century fashion for Dalmatians in 1622 Paris (true...fact-checked!!...).

As for painting, I have again left the bases as plain as possible to allow the figures to be used in any environment, urban or rural. I painted the colours of the figures in muted tones - trying to distinguish the Nightwatch from the red of the Cardinal’s Guard and the blue of the Musketeers. I thought browns and greys would make good Nightwatch colours, and also added some green which might look suitably faded and worn on the table.

I also painted up a collection of ECW 'doctors' which can serve as medical practitioners in our games.  I have no idea if these chaps have any medical training, but that musket ball is in the patient's leg....somewhere.  Maybe one more poke around with the chirurgeon's knife will find it!

I added a head-swap for the 'helping' figure, and added some Green-Stuff feathers to his hat (the head being from Bicorne Miniatures).

I added a few small "terrain" bases as well.  I needed some for a game, but I wonder if they really qualify as Challenge XII-worthy "terrain" according to our scoring system?  There's a Hovels barrel with a cockerel (Parisian, of course), some hens and some bottles of Medoc in various stages of consumption.  And there's some scratch-built hay-piles and/or dung-heaps for Characters and citizens to jump, fall and slip into.  

And, because I'm British, and our culture celebrates the hilarity of people treading in horse poo, I made up some small piles of horse manure to add to the table as a "random event".  No sniggering at the back, please, ladies and gentlemen.

So, with the points:

20 for Caprica, and 20 for the female swashbuckler to get me there = 40 points

15 x 28mm figures = 75 points

One Dalmatian = 2 points (not 101 points, obviously)

Bits of scratch-built terrain, including fluffy chickens, noisy cockerel, bottles and a barrel = 20 points all-in?

Which, with a slight squint at the terrain point-age, would give the entry a total = 137 points

********

Great to have the opportunity to enjoy more of your outstanding brushwork Sidney! All of this is amazingly well done, as we have come to expect from you, and the lovely figures are accompanied by entertaining text and explanations. 

 

There are a lot great figures here, but my favourite has to be the purple-tinged fellow, with unhealthy intentions to likely match an unhealthy internal condition...much as I can see him causing problems in Paris, your mention of Slaanesh makes me nostalgic for the lost "Old World" of Warhammer Fantasy Battle (even though I know that is not the intent of this lot overall)...and he looks like he would fit right in that setting too. Great work. 

It is irritating when one-to-one scale gets in the way of the work we wish to do on the more important scales. My dogs always help me keep things in perspective, and so even though you were pandering to the Snow Lord (wisely), the effect of including the dog (fact-checked!) on me is inspiring such as to force me to include a few extra bonus points, and round things up to 140 points. Cheers.

GregB

From GregB - French Zouaves in 28mm for 1870 (122 points)

French Zouaves for the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Figures from Wargames Foundry.

Every edition of the Painting Challenge brings forward some kind of unique, cool sub-themes. In this edition, I have loved all of the Zouaves. There have been Papal Zouaves. There have been Beetroot Zouaves (!) How do you top Beetroot Zouaves? Well, I can't...but I can offer my own contribution to the Zouave vibe - here is a unit of French Zouaves for the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. These are 28mm metal figures from Wargames Foundry. 

The figures out front are used to denote skirmishers/mixed order on the table.

I just love the Franco-Prussian War setting. The uniforms are just glorious! And among the glorious uniforms, the Zouaves stand supreme! I had been "saving" these figures for years, telling myself that I needed to paint up a suitable amount of "regular" troops and cavalry before "rewarding" my brushes with the chance to paint Zouaves. With those Prussian Dragoons out of the way, I figured the time had come!

You can see some of the nice detail on the packs of the troops in the main formation.

These are based for games of "Black Powder" - 20 figures in the bulk of the unit, and the four individually based figures are used to denote skirmishers, or the unit fighting in a mixed formation. The flag is courtesy of Maverick - the first flags I have found on the market for the French in this period.

The Zouaves bring their deadly Chassepot rifles to bear...

These sculpts (by the Perry brothers) are very nice, although old. But the way Foundry packs these figures is a touch infuriating - the poses are at once consistent and yet many details too varied. For example, some have packs, others don't. Some have turbans, others don't. Some are wearing the "caban", and others are not, and all of this variance is found in a single eight-figure package. So if you are looking for a certain consistency among the figures you might use to make a unit, you can only use a few of them. This is...very annoying. I'm still irritated that they don't all have turbans...but then to do that I would have needed to buy another five packs of the Zouaves...enough is enough!

These sculpts are older, but wow, they are a treat to paint.

Another odd oversight in this old Wargames Foundry range is the lack of a standard bearer in the command pack - this was addressed by using a standard bearer from an ACW Zouave command blister, and a spare French Imperial Eagle standard.

The full unit, ready for the table.

These were a great treat to paint - I love Zouaves! And the best part is that you don't need to go fishing around looking for battles where they participated. The Zouave regiments were stuck in from the outset, and fought very hard for the French Empire (and the subsequent Republic!) against the Prussian forces.

For scoring purposes we have 24 different 28mm figures here, which should be good for 120 points! Thanks for reading - hope to have something more next week!  

________________________

Magnificent work, mon ami! Gosh, I love me a fez almost as much as a czapka. Why don't we wear these today! They are fabulous - just add a set of earflaps for the Canadian winters and we're a go. :)  I'm stoked to see you return to this project as it reminds me of our visit to Les Invalides in 2010, where we spent a wonderful afternoon, slack-jawed, admiring the many exhibits, including those of the FPW. While there may be a little inconsistency in the headgear and accoutrements, these are still glorious figures to behold. I love the punchy reds and blues that you've used for this unit, and I appreciate the extra work you put in for the standard bearer (reflected in a couple extra points). I think that for the next unit that you do, we need an accompanying shot of the army as it stands. 

- Curt

From SidneyR: Gendarmerie de France - for "The Guardroom" (260 points)

 

"Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them

Printing their proud hoofs in the receiving earth"

Henry V, Act 1, Prologue

"Liberated from the mud and the damp of a Flanders winter, on firm ground and in good weather, His Majesty's cavalry is unsurpassed.  Yet many things can conspire to thwart their time of Glory.  For the true art of fighting with cavaliers is not in using them, as much as deploying them where they cause the most distress to His Majesty's enemies."

From the letters and diaries of the Marquis de Montchevreuil, 

Grand Écuyer to His Highness The King of France, French Flanders, 1688

My submission for "The Guardroom" is two companies of the Gendarmerie de France - the Gendarmes d'Orleans and the Gendarmes de Berry.  The Gendarmerie were the inheritors of the mantle of France's aristocratic noble cavalry of the Hundred Years War and the Italian Wars of the sixteenth century.  By 1688, there were sixteen companies of Gendarmes which could be fielded by Louis XIV, comprising an elite cavalry brigade which could either be attached to the Royal Guard, the Maison du Roi, or deployed in their own right. 

Service as an officer in the Gendarmes was something of a status symbol for young French noblemen.  To have a noble family tree was a condition for all officers, and it was helpful for both sergeants and troopers to posses the sniff of nobility when applying to join a company.  One historian has written that service in the Gendarmerie was a "refuge of that part of the very numerous nobility that did not have enough [financial] means to buy or upkeep a regiment".  In other words, young noblemen, out to prove themselves, desperate for Glory, and prickly about their family provenance and standing.  Oh Lord, what can go wrong?

Oh, and these lads are all French.  

I mean, someone pass me the popcorn and watch the spectacle unfurl...

I can't wait to get the formations here onto the wargames table and watch the, near inevitable,  chaos ensue.  

I painted up the Gendarmes d'Orleans and the Gendarmes de Berry, using the colour prints from Rene Chatrand's volume "The Armies and Wars of the Sun King 1643-1715 (Volume 2: The Cavalry of Louis XIV)".  Rene writes at some length about the Gendarmerie (and his book is generally a great read about the Sun King's cavalry), noting their many battlefield triumphs and exemplary bravery.  Other historians, such as Professor David Parrott give a more prosaic appraisal of how difficult the Gendarmerie could be for any general to control.  

The figures are 28mm cavalry form Wargames Foundry.  I added lots of green-stuff feathers on the hats, and green-stuff lace on almost every shoulder.  I swapped the Officers' arms for rather dashing sword arms and added some longer coats on a couple of the figures.  So, some conversion work, but not too much.

The flags are from GMB Designs, and the nice finials are from Flags of War (in a splendid fleur-de-lis and cravat fashion, as was accurate for 1688).

Painting noble officers for the late seventeenth century is always a challenge (no pun intended!).  I tried not to go over the top, but had some fun trying to paint in the officers' slightly dodgy teeth.  Being a nobleman, even in the Gendarmerie de France, didn't guarantee perfect dentistry, I'm sure!

Of course, being destined for service against the enemies of France in my ludicrously self-indulgent alt-historical campaign for the Free-City of Laarden in 1688, I created a Collectible Character Card for the Gendarmeries to add to the growing set for Challenge XI.

As for the points - there's 24 cavalry, at 10 points each (240 points), and an extra 20 points for "The Guardroom), giving a total of 240 points.  I've not added points for the standards and green stuff, and other stuff, as I am sure the minions would tall me I'm wrong!

******* 

From GregB - 10mm FPW French Line Infantry and Officers (40 points)

10mm French troops, ready for battle in 1870!

Hi everyone - sorry to be a long time between submissions, but work has been keeping me busy (which is a good thing). I am still painting stuff, but the whole take-photos-and-share part has had to take a back seat for the past several days. So I'll try and catch up a bit with this little submission! Here are more 10mm figures for the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. We have 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...

This will be fairly modest in terms of points - 30 foot figures and four mounted figures, all in 10mm, which should work out to 38 points. Still well-short of my goal, but hopefully I can still find time to get more done before the end of this edition of the Painting Challenge looms. Cheers everyone, and thanks for reading!