From Curt: 3mm Napoleonic Portuguese Infantry (50 Points)

Hi Folks,

A wee entry from me today, quite literally.

Here are five brigades of 3mm Napoleonic Portuguese infantry. 

These are 3mm Napoleonics from Pico Armor (sourced from Oddzial Osmy out of Poland). The figures are based on 2" x 1.75" MDF bases with a 3mm thickness and rounded corners. The thickness is to allow players to pick them up easily and the rounded corners is simply because I like the look of them (it gives the finished product kind of a wargaming chit appearance).

The common base size for 'Blucher' is a 3" frontage, but I've decided to go with 2" as it allows for very large battles to be played on the 8 x 5 surface which we typically use. To provide a bit more perspective, using my base scale each inch equates to 150 yards, so one square foot on the tabletop is equal to about a square mile. Utilizing this scale allows us to recreate sprawling actions like Wagram or Vitoria on a single tabletop.

Examples of various unit types, left to right: French foot artillery, infantry and heavy cavalry

For my way of thinking, painting these figures requires a fairly minimalist approach to maintain a basic level of detail to communicate what the figures are supposed to be. For the infantry, I base everything up, texture the base and then prime the whole thing black. From that I drybrush everything a light grey and then start applying saturated colours. 

The way I see it is that these figures should simply convey their primary features, first most being their national uniform colour, with only a nod to other physical elements (namely face, hands, trousers, shako and bayonet), otherwise you can easily get drawn into the rabbit-hole of trying to paint fine details which will never be appreciated when they are seen en mass - in fact I find that too much painted detail can make the figure too 'busy', detracting from conveying the main uniform colour: French should primarily be blue, British red, Austrians white, etc. I think of these bases almost as boardgame chits, perhaps more like  three dimensional playing tokens.

Examples of three British infantry brigades moving through a Spanish hill town.

Perceptive readers will have noticed that, since I base and prime everything from the start, I don't worry about painting the middle ranks or any inward-facing detail. In this scale I only paint the front of the front rank, the rear of the rear rank and the top of their heads and shoulders. Early on, I discovered that after painting every figure, the interior facing detail is completely lost once the strips of figures are based up. A complete waste of time and effort. So now I just paint the perimeter of the formations and I find that you can't tell the difference between the 'all-figure-detail' bases and those which are more minimalist . 

The basework is drybrushed two tones of brown with a khaki highlight. I then use a semi-opaque green tinted model railway emulsion to provide a base tone for the light scatter of flock I apply later. I'll often use a brown ink wash to make 'tracks' behind the formations, showing where they have trampled through the terrain. I then paint a mark on the front center which is used in the rules for purposes of line of sight and measurement (it is red here for the Portuguese, but would be blue for the French, white for the Austrians, etc.). Finally, I print off a 3.5mm label and affix it to the rear corner of the base (these are so we can use roster sheets for all the unit information).

As to points. For a benchmark we typically award 12 points for 3mm figures based on 60mm x 30mm bases, but as these bases are a bit smaller (aprox 50mm x 30mm) I suggest pitching them at 10 points each.

Thanks for dropping in!

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You know this scale has been whispering to me for some time now, and you're not helping me resist temptation. I was admiring some similar 2mm stuff in WSS Magazine recently and my wife looked over my shoulder and muttered something derogatory about my mental health!! Doesn't she know it's my eyesight she should be worrying about? 

These bases are absolutely beautiful work. I always love the attention you lavish on the groundwork, and I guess it's even more important in a scale this small. If I were wearing a hat right now, I'd take it off to you. 

Lee