From Mark B: At Mudry’s Mesa with 6mm Napoleonics (178 Points)

Arriving in Mudry’s Mesa by balloon has given me a taste for air travel but I think I have thrown my pursuers for a little while! Now to get ahead of the game for a decent sized posting for once!

The pillaging if the island continues. For this challenge I’m providing something new and shiny. Indeed these arrived in the post the day after the challenge started. I’m running a Lard day in Southampton in March and am running a Napoleonic kriegspiel. Instead of boring counters each side will have 6mm figures representing the troops in their command. I’m deliberately posting up only some if what I’ve painted just to give you a taste of it and disguise the actual historic scenario that we are running. Suffice to say that I think it will provide challenges for both the French and their opponents.

The figures are based on 15mm squares with their respective national flags on them for ease of identification. Each base has a name label printed in font 6! The figures are the very nice MDF figures by Commission Miniatures. They are obviously slightly 2D but are very cheap, easy to identify and paint and captured the toy soldier feel I wanted these to have rather than a more realistic unit marker as they will be placed on one of 6 maps in various different rooms. Shown here are French, Austrians and the start of a Russian force... like I say... there are others but you won’t get the grand reveal of the scenario and the full forces until later!

Up first is part of the French army. An infantry battalion, a few dragoons and hussars along with some guns.

These are some of the infantry. I like the way you can distinguish between the elite companies and the ligne. 

Next are the Austrians! Plenty of them! Including a few Hungarians and grenzers  along with a horde of dragoons and Cuirassiers.

The top down picture was more to show how the flags for the bases works and to give you an idea of how they look on a practice kriegspiel map we made. 

The final picture is of Kutusov’s finest Russian musketeers. There’s quite a few more of these still to go along with a few other notable surprises I’m going to keep hidden until after the game is played out. The Russians are my current favourites and I’m looking forward to finishing a few other foreign allies for the French too. 

That’s all I’m prepared to reveal for now. Boney has his spies everywhere! I’ve got plans for British, Spanish and Portuguese too. Maybe you will see these before the challenge is over?

So that’s a total of:

8 guns and 16 crew : 16 points

62 cavalry : 62 points

140 infantry : 70 points

Mesa challenge complete : 30 points

Grand total : 178 points

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Well Mark, you continue your very own "march to the sea" across Challenge Island! These figures are interesting and unique, another example of the cool and different things we get to enjoy as we move through the Painting Challenge. Your event looks to be an interesting one, and I'm already trying to puzzle out which campaign you are looking to run for the players.

Thanks for sharing these cool figures with us. 178 points for you!

GregB