French Revolution Diorama Finished

 

The project I wanted to work on for so long is now complete. The set always looked like fun and it is unique. It took me a bit longer than I expected to finish it than I anticipated but I'm happy with the overall results.

While browsing online for how others painted their Parisian mob and guillotine crew, I noticed a lot of bland colors. I really wanted to avoid that as being more of a fashion epicenter of Europe, I would expect more color. Given the uniforms of the time, this seemed like a good idea.

One figure that gave me pause was the man here in white. I couldn't figure out what to do with him with regards to painting. It does appear the sculptor's intent was to show the man without a jacket and with the white linen undershirt. It might have been boring but it had to be that way.

 The yellow dress on the lady on the platform draws the eyes to the center of the spectacle.

All the Eureka miniatures of this set were very nicely cast. All details were clear and little mould lines could be found.

The platform on the guillotine set is actual wood while the rest of the set is white metal. I did a medium brown followed by Vallejo Iraqi Sand dry brushing to get the color up to match the wood. I like how it came out and wasn't as complicated as I would have initially thought.

I used similar dry brushing on the bases of the figures. Using 1"diameter wood bases, I used Liquitex light modelling paste to even out the base of the figure with the wooden base. That also added texture which was good for dry brushing colors to match where these figures would be standing.

The corpse wagon has a couple of headless nobles in the back as the driver smokes a pipe. 

For the guillotine, I was unsure how blood should be added around it. I thought of finding a few ISIS videos for seeing how much blood spurting should occur, but searching for such videos would probably insure I make some special list. I think I got it about right.

A better overall picture of the entire set.

A lot of character went into the sculpting of the mob for this set. I chose not to rush through it even though this was certainly a diversion for any productive painting for the gaming table.

Maybe one day I'll find a scenario to use it in for a skirmish game.

28mm French Revolution Parisian Backdrop: Review

 While I was preoccupied by my Bavarian town project, I happened to be contacted by Denise, the talented terrain painter who had painted my Spanish Peninsular buildings. Not knowing when I might be able to get to this myself, I was happy to let her tackle this side project for me. I thought I would write a post about her work and the resin piece itself.

So this is a set from Eureka Miniatures intended for the French guillotine set (which I'm painting currently). This is a two piece set that simply sit adjacent to each other and form a 90 degree angle. My intent is simply a diorama piece for display.

Denise was able to capture a good natural look to the masonry. A natural appearance is what I had wanted. I asked for a realistic effect that was not going to be stark or cartoonish, like Games Workshop style of painting does. Since this is for a historical themed diorama, it needed to look the part.

Subtle shadowing is evident in the coloring of the masonry and the roofing shingles. The wood has a natural weathered look, as one would expect for wood exposed to the elements. Given the right photographic set up, this might look more like a photograph of a real building in an old section of Paris than a model. The painting was done perfectly for what I had asked for.

And here are the two pieces laying flat upon the Novus Designs Belgain cobble stone mat. If you enjoy beautiful terrain as much as I do and you're too busy painting figures and think you want some inspiration to fight over beautiful terrain, why not send Denise an email? steg2@aol.com If you want to see some of her other additional work and you have Instagram, you can find her under "terraingallerypainting".

Flintloque Catalucian Guerilla Cavalry

One of my final units for this force was a guerrilla cavalry unit. One of the nice features in Flintloque is the ability of the Catalucian Guerrillas to alter some of their stats by subtracting from one category and adding to another. The cavalry is a bit limited in this sense in that they have no shooting stats to deduct some points to add to the melee factor. This might seem a bit disadvantageous, but their stats are quite good considering what they're representing.

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In my first battle with them, they were the big show stopper. I kept them in reserve for a grand opportunity to pounce on an enemy when they weren't expecting it. Some Ferach line infantry turned a flank to these guerrillas thinking the forest would prevent a charge. Forming into column and then using a melee card for the charge bonus in distance and +3 to the melee factor, the Ferach troops were smacked around thoroughly and tossed back. The Ferach dragoon unit that came up suffered similar results with a minor melee card they were routed and then practically finished off by some artillery as they ran. The guerrilla cavalry's stats are quite similar to the enemies they would commonly encounter. No need to adjust their stats, they're quite good as is.

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I decided on a basic brown uniform and catching the eye with a nice yellow that is repeated on the hat, cuffs and trouser stripes along the outer seam. The unicorn was the portion I simply had to reject on the Alternative Armies website. White? Elves on unicorns is hard enough to swallow, but at least dark elves riding dark unicorns isn't so silly. I did them with pure black and heavy highlighting of grey to give it more depth. Considering the alternative, I believe it came out nicely.

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Perhaps in spring I'll work on a final line unit and use up some of the spare figures I have on hand. With my son being born a couple of months ago, painting and free time ain't what it used to be. In the next post I'll show off some 15mm AB French I've been painting to replace the Old Glory infantry units.

Flintloque Catalucians Finished

So after a few months of work, I've gotten through these units and finished up the basing. Seen here are a heavy and medium gun along with limbers. Limbers in this game are not necessary and due to their scale, only have two horses rather than the larger teams that would exist in real life. In any event, such details add to the game.



The line unit, pictured again with the general, but with finished bases. I may raise a second line battalion, however their tactical worth is of little value even if they are cheap point wise.



The first guerrilla unit seen here. In this game, the guerrillas are better than the line units and you can adjust certain stats by taking away from some categories and adding to others. Perhaps a scenario might make you desire to have better shooters than melee troops, then these stats can be adjusted to a degree. Seeing how they are skirmishers, enhancing their shooting abilities would be a wise idea in most cases.



The final unit that will be added in the near future will be a guerrilla cavalry unit when I get around to ordering a couple of more blisters to fill out the unit. Considering how small our games are, I won't need anything more than that to field a complete force for our 1,000-1,500pt games.

Napoleonic Fantasy: Flintloque

[My daughter reluctantly holds a stand of some guerrillas who she thinks are mad at her because of their mean faces]

For those who may not have known, some wiley Scots with a very unusual sense of humor created a fantasy line centered around the Napoleonic Wars. Their real introduction came around the skirmish version known as Flintloque and then expanded into larger battles called Slaughterloo. The Elves are French and Dark Elves are Spanish, otters are the Ottomans, dogs are the Austrians, ogres are Confederation of the Rhine, undead are Russians, English and Irish are Orcs (most fitting of all), Portuguese as goblins, the Scots are rats and Italians are toads. Leave anyone out?

So many, many years ago as a child, I played a demo game set up at a game shop. Richard Sharpe was there as Richard Sharke and the game was fun, if somewhat hard to take in visually. It doesn't play like fantasy, so other than some odd looking creatures wearing coats with turnbacks and shakos, it plays like a Napoleonic game. I had purchased the Ferach and Toadini (French and Italians in our thinking) and ended up painting them and trading them off several years later.

That friend I traded them to, had added to his collection troops for every one of the nations now. His only hole in his collection was the Catalucian Dark Elves. Having painted many Spanish in 15mm, painting some 28mm ones wasn't much of a stretch. Since they were free to me if I painted them, I've been working on filling out this force and painting it all up.



I went ahead and decided to paint the line troops according to the army book's depiction rather in the later British supplied blue of the 1812 uniforms. The guerrillas didn't have any real uniform but I used a lot of blue as many of the militias were fond of it. Alternative Armies only made one general figure for this line named Don Juan.

I bought a couple of packs to bulk up the guerrilla units as they are better than the line units. The artillerymen, guns & limbers are still on the painting table. Cavalry will be last. I will wait to do all the grass on the stands when everything is painted up. The line units are a maximum of 20 figures, light/guerrilla infantry are 12 figures and the cavalry as 10 figures. The goal is 2 line, two guerrilla units, 2 guns & limbers and 1 guerrilla cavalry unit. I'm about half way there now. I may even be able to get them on the table for a game by spring.

http://www.alternative-armies.com/