I took last week off for a short winter holiday in Dorset and batteries refreshed, here I am, back in the mood for more French Foreign Legion. Actually, my enthusiasm for the period has been reinvigorated with some holiday reading. Conquest of the Sahara by Douglas Porch is an excellent book that paints a vivid picture of the landscape, the people within it and the wonderfully ridiculous and haphazard colonial ambitions of the French Third Republic.
This week I have a unit of Mounted Legionaries, looking very hot in their dark blue greatcoats. Once again these are Blue Moon 15mm sold by Old Glory.
The first mounted troops allowed for faster travel and gave the Legion a chance to finally engage with agile Arab horsemen. Initially, every man had a horse but these were soon changed to Mules (with better endurance, if slower than horses) with one mule between two legionnaires. On the march, one man would ride while the other trotted alongside. They would swap positions every hour and this enabled the mounted companies to cover much more ground.
For reasons that elude me, I couldn’t get a proper Matt finish with my usual spray varnish so I ended up giving them another coat of Galaria Matt Varnish by Winsor & Newton. I don’t often use a brush-on varnish (I've had a few bad results in the past) but this stuff is very good and finally achieved the result I had been looking for.
Points:
9x15mm Cavalry = 36 Points
From DaveD
Still the desert goodness continues . good to hear your holiday did you some good !
Nice work Lee, they look very snazzy, the Galeria varnish is my goto varnish, it works wonders and you can blob it all over the figure and it still come out perfick everytime!
ReplyDeleteGreat to see more from the Sahara Lee. Your army looks great but needs more camels.
ReplyDeleteWell its funny you should mention that... two packs of Camels and their riders just arrived from Old Glory yesterday. I wasn't sure I would get them in time but they arrived quickly and I will get started on them this weekend. I still have some other little bits for the project but overall I'm really very happy with what I have got done.
DeleteThanks to RayR (and a 'helpful' suggestion) I also have a final bit of whimsey to finish the project on in the last week. I won't give it away, but it involves some very fiddly conversion work on a 15mm figure - utter madness!
Doing things at Rays urging? Is that wise?
DeleteSniggers
DeleteVery nice, Lee! :)
ReplyDeleteGreat looking mounted infantry!
ReplyDeleteBest Iain
Those are great well done
ReplyDeleteAwesome Lee!
ReplyDeleteNice to hear good news of your vacation and varnish troubles. Good looking and sweating legionnaires!
ReplyDeleteHi Lee:
ReplyDeleteSplendid, I'd never heard of mounted Legion troops until now. I get the impression they fought as mounted infantry rather than proper cavalry? Really love the way you've been digging into this period for this year's Challenge.
Cheers, MikeP
The 1:2 mule ratio is interesting!
ReplyDelete