Friday 26 February 2021

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!

35 comments:

  1. Seems like it's French hour here on the blog. Very well done my friend! As you probably know by now I really love this "little" project of yours and admittedly it's getting harder and harder to resist the urge with every submission by you. Still, where are the Bavarians?

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    1. Despite the obvious lack of Bavarians I'll throw in 2 extra points for the flag.

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    2. Haha! Thanks Nick! I will work to address my lack of Bavarian output before this edition of the Challenge concludes...

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    3. Excellent! Make sure I‘m the minion of the day though 😉

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  2. Beautiful looking units Greg. Your base work is top notch here, which is something I’ve been struggling with a bit with my 10mm figures. Any secrets or hints that yo7 can share, I don’t want t9 make my units look like there are wading through Elephant grass or a field of boulders.

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    1. It's drybrushed Liquitex Peter, the same stuff I use and the same stuff I keep telling you to get. :)

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    2. Thanks Peter! As Curt says, dry brushed Liquitex. It is then augmented with tufts and other bits, and I sometimes trim those with scissors.

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    3. Great that is what I use on my 28s I was a little leery using it on the smaller figures.

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  3. Lovely stuff Greg, I do appreciate the "everybody is a Zouave" look the French had from this period right into WWI.

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  4. The French line do look fabulous, well done.
    Everytime I see this project, I end up browsing the Pendraken website. Interestingly, they are only about 30 minutes by car from where my parents live. Hmm, Id be supporting a local business in my honetown...

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    1. Thanks Stuart! They say it is best to "shop local" when you can :)

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  5. More excellently executed infantry and cavalry. You’re dead right about the uniforms looking absolutely spiffing and I’m sure they’ll look great on the tabletop at this scale. Bet they’d look grand at 6mm too if you were tempted ;)

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    1. Cheers Jamie! I am managing to avoid 6mm...for now...but 15mm...hmmm

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  6. Great stuff Greg -- and echo the comments on the basing -- I'm inspired to consider Pendraken for my next Impetus ancients project their stuff looks first rate and I've enjoyed my foray into 10mm so far

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    1. Thanks Simon! I would love to see some 10mm Impetus stuff from you!

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  7. Splendid, the 19th century is easily my favourite period and your figures are an inspiration! Very well done indeed! I'll stick to my 6mm though. For now at least ;-).

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  8. Really excellent set of figures. Love these!

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  9. Gorgeous looking Franco Prussian war French! You do this period so well, in any scale!
    Best Iain

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  10. These are rather nuce looking figures Greg! 10/10

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    1. Cheers Ray! Sorry they can't be used for Donnybrook...

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  11. These look fabulous - hard to believe they're tiny 10mm. Super work Greg.

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  12. As always, incredibly splendid work there.

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  13. Fantastic, I love your work in small scales.

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  14. These do look rather lovely Greg!

    Christopher

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