Saturday, 11 May 2019

My new French Napoleonic army

Evening all. I told you all last month that I had signed up for Britcon this year and that I may be borrowing models, as I have no Napoleonic era models of my own. Well, in the last couple of weeks I've bought and started painting a box of the Perry's plastic French line infantry.

The box is great value! 42 hard plastics, which are pretty good quality, for £20. They're super easy to assemble and I'm finding them crazy easy to paint too. I really never thought Napoleonic soldiers of any nation would be easy to paint!

The event at Britcon is a doubles event, where each player brings 55 points to the table. This will mean each individual player will only have a few officers and a handful of men, which should lead to small characterful forces and interesting engagements!

My force is going to centre around a couple of groups of French grenadiers from a regular line regiment supported by a couple of groups of voltigeurs. I then have a few units I can swap in for each engagement; another group of voltigeurs for fighting through villages or dense terrain, a group of elite polish lancers for open tables with scope for outflanking, and a cannon for attacking or defending a fixed position.

Please don't hate me, but I must admit that I have enlisted my brother to help me get my force together! He said he wanted to paint some lancers so they will stay his models and he'll just lend them to me for the event, but he's also painted a cannon and crew and some voltigeurs for me. To be honest, he's doing the bulk. It is for the greater good though as we'll then combine to have a reasonable French peninsula army between us.

I feel that the French infantry I'm painting are so easy, I may buy another box in the not so distant future and really bulk out my own force!

For most people this post probably feels like a horrendously boring subject, but I'm enjoying painting models again and the game system is so good I can't wait to play again. It's a vicious cycle!