From SamuliS: Saxon Cavalry ready to defect from the First French Empire (104 points)

Finally kicking off this painting challenge from my side as well! Back after a few years hiatus to what I think is my 11th challenge after first participating in 2013! And the first entry now is actually part of a project that I started in the 2015-16 challenge so more or less a ten year anniversary for this!

Starting off the challenge this year is a selection of Napoleonics to wrap up my Saxon army for the 1813 campaign. We were originally planning to play the campaign starting around 2016-17, but after years of heavy Napoleonics gaming we started to move to other interests and the army newer saw the gaming table and some units were left unpainted. Moving forward quite a few years there has now been a renewed interest in Napoleonics at the club with a lot of fresh faces so I decided to dig up the remaining miniatures and paint up a few additional units. Nice change of pace as well to return to 18mm scale as I haven't painted smaller scale in several years despite it once being my main scale with Napoleonics, Flames of War and Team Yankee making up much of my gaming. Miniatures are mostly AB Figures 15/18mm Napoleonics and I suspect at least some of the command figures are Campaign Game Miniatures.

Fitting nicely with the Empire theme as the First French Empire was really on it's last legs in 1813 and throughout the campaigns the disillusioned Saxons (as well as some other French allies) started defecting to the Allies speeding up the crumbling of Napoleons forces. The Leib Kürassiere painted here were the last Saxons to desert Napoleon after the Battle of Leipzig signaling the end of Saxonys alliance with France.

 

 

Unit sizes are quite small as with the ruleset we are now using the units are smaller than we used to play with. Personally I'm not the biggest fan as I like the spectacle of massive amounts of minis on the table when playing big battles with larger units, but it has definitely helped get a lot of newer players into Napoleonics as you don't need to paint hundreds of minis to field a Division of your own. And for me of course it helped speed up the process of painting the missing cavalry units into the army. I'll get around to bringing the unit sizes up to the same as the rest of my collection at some point, but for now I'm all set for 1813. 

 Leib Kürassiere

Prinz Clemens Regiment

 

 Hussars

 

16 cavalry figures in 18mm scale coming in at around 64 points  with another 50 added for the Empire theme.

Next up some Fantasy minis with a return to The Old World! 

 It is great to have you back with us Samuli and with such nice and crisply painted Saxons indeed. These do look the part and I really like your colourchoices. Do have a great Challenge and can't wait to see those Fantasy miniatures!

 

Cheers Sander 

From SanderS: Saxons and Stompy Robots! (330 points)

Hoi,

Last week I missed my posting window because I was busy painting up this lot! We'll start off with some more Big Stompy Robots for the Side Duel okay? As I really love Battletech I have quite a few different factions. One of those is my FedCom Aragon Borderers regiment. The colour scheme for these involves a lot of blue and to make it a bit more interesting I included some white panels. 

Next up are some of my 1:72 plastics. These are early Napoleonic Saxons in their spiffing white uniforms. I painted up a brigade as that's pretty much all the Saxon infantry I have to compliment my early war Prussian army. 

Points wise this is rather a nice amount for the leaderboard: there's the 8 mechs at 5 points each counting up to 40 points. The 3 regiments of 24 figures each in 20mm/ 1:72 is 288 points unless I am mistaken, which makes the total a whopping 328 points this week. Pretty much the closest I will be getting to a points bomb this Challenge I guess. Off to painting contributions for the circles of Hell now!

Cheers everyone!

________________________

Holy smokes, this is quite the bomb, Sander! I always enjoy your Battletech entries as they are so wonderfully clean and colourful. I really like the saturated blue you've used and I think your choice of a few white contrasting armoured panels is spot-on. They look terrific. The same goes for your Napoleonic  Saxons. Very spiffing and tidy work here. I love the early war uniforms with the bicorne - everything is better with a bicorne, I say. The only thing better is a czapska, but I digress.

328 points? Lets round it up to 330 to include the brave banners (and because it rolls off the tongue better).

- Curt & Huck

From RichardM - Napoleonic Saxon Artillery and Italian Cavalry 6mm Adler - 125 points

This time I have some more of the Adler Napoleonic project as I finish out nations.  

First up is some Italian Cavalry.  Two regiments of Cacciatore a Cavallo (their version of Chasseurs) and one of Dragoons - specifically the Reggimento Dragoni ‘Regina'.  I selected  the Regina Dragoons as I am bored with green facings and these guys had pink - as if I'll see them on a table ;).

I have used French Chasseurs and Dragoons which aren't exactly correct but as Adler make no Italian specific figures and I won't tell anyone that they're wrong, I think I am in the clear.

Then I have the artillery and some limber teams to support my 29 Battalions of Saxon Infantry already painted.

Points

Cavalry - 3 regiments of 20 figures - 60 points

Limber teams - 4 of 4 mounted and 1 limber  - 20 points

Artillery - 15 bases of 4 figures and one gun - 45 points

From Millsy: Great looking Saxons and Italians Richard! There's very little difference in the uniforms between most French and Italian troops even at 28mm so at this scale I can't imagine even the most dedicated rivet counter being able to call out what's wrong. The pick for me are the Chasseurs with their lovely purple facing colours but they're all wonderful. You must be able to put on some seriously large battles with so many battalions.