Jumping back into Napoleonics

I picked up a pack of the Warlord Prussian Prussian Landwehr for £13 after some bargin hunting.

These are pretty early Warlord black powder kits from what I’ve read and you can tell, the plastics are OK.

Not upto more modern sculpting standards and the figures feel quite hunched on the shoulders. Detail is reasonable but fantastic for plastic.

The biggest let down is the metals, theres very little definition in the detail, paticualry the officers face, there also quite a bit shorter.

Overall not a great set but for £13 I cant complain that much

I picked up a pack of the Warlord Prussian Prussian Landwehr for £13 after some bargin hunting.

These are pretty early Warlord black powder kits from what I’ve read and you can tell, the plastics are OK.

Not upto more modern sculpting standards and the figures feel quite hunched on the shoulders. Detail is reasonable but fantastic for plastic.

The biggest let down is the metals, theres very little definition in the detail, paticualry the officers face, there also quite a bit shorter.

Overall not a great set but for £13 I cant complain that much

I spent a small amount of time highlighting after the shades, mainly focusing on some of the crossbelts where the shade was a little heavly and adding some skin highlights to make the faces stand out  abit more. Pretty happy with the effect especially given this is the frist unit I’ve “completed”.

I’ve decided to base infantry on 20mm per figure, using 4 figures to a base so 40mm when two ranks deep (2×2), which seems the standard for black powder, though I’ve seen people use 60x40mm bases with three figures wide.

I actually really liked the warlord bases, enough to order a few packs extra for future basing. They have a textured top while the bottom has small plastic bumps that raise the base slighlty off the surface and seem to work really well on neoprene matts. Either way being plastic there not as suspectable as warping as MDF.

After attaching the figures to bases I’ve added texture using  Vallego Dark Earth Texture, I’ve used this on the cavalry and think its looks paticually good for european mud having a darker tone. I’m a big fan of the vallejo textures, they give similar effects to some of the citadel range but are much more cost efficeint, a big tub of the stuff is about £9 for 200ml and it goes a long way.

To give it a bit more depth I’ll follow up with a wash of agrax earthshade or similar tone. Im going to create some sample bases for testing flocks and tuffs and the like. Currently i think the muddy look is very effective, it just needs greening up somewhat.

I managed to spend an evening finishing all the base coating and them moved on to some shades. I was a little torn on how to approach this so i decided to put it off, by shading the skin first. After that had dried I bit the bullet and went with a pretty heavy wash of our friend Agrax Earthshade.

I had consider using amry painter tone but in all honesty I have a spare bottle of Agrax and the tones are running low so that made my decision for me.

Shades used

Flesh – Reikland Fleshshade

Pretty much everything else – Agrax Earthshade

Im actually reasonably happy with the results. I had planned on a full phase highlighting but now im not so sure. Partly because theres so many to paint and secondly I dont think it needs it, ranked up these already look pretty effective.

Currently I’m planning on highlighting the face, crossbelts in offwhite to clean them up in addition to the strong colours red/green/yellow etc and ive also done a pass on the above units musket metals.

I think i’ll then leave it there and crack on with the next unit.

And to close this post off, heres the view i’ll probably see most of the time

Making and initial start basecoating some French Infantry. I’ve gone for the rag-tag unifrom look warlord did using a bix of colours for the greatcoats.

Greatcoats

• Grey – Vallejo London Grey
• Beige –  Vallejo German Cammo Beige
• Dark Brown- Vallejo Flat Brown (i think)
• Light Brown – Above brown mixed with some offwhite

Other Colours

• Packs – GW Contrast Snakebite Leather (i think)
• Red – Vallejo Dark Wermilion
• Yellow – Vallejo Flat Yellow
• Green – Vallejo Interediate Green
• Belts and straps – vallejo Offwhite
• Black – Either GW Contrast Black Templar or GW Corvus Black depending on area.
• Silver – Scale 75 rash Metal
• Bronze/Gold – GW Retibutor Armour
• Muskets – Scale 75 Brown Leather
• Flesh – Scale 75 Basic Flesh

Managed to complete the Horses for the Chasseurs a Cheval and made a start on the riders.

Undercoated in Scale 75 Instant Primer Ice Charm

Horse Flesh a Mix of

• Contrast Gore-Grunta Fur
• Contrast Cygore Brown or Wildwood (cant remember)
• Contrast Skeleton Horde
• Contrast Aggaros Dunes

To give some variation in shades ive given a few of these more that one coat

For the Tails and mains i manly mixed up the above with the addition of some black templar.

Leather is all back templar

Pack on horse is Waagh Flesh, im not super happy with the green but its what I had on hand, i gave it a shade of Coelia Greenshare to get something more like what i was after.

Sheepskin is Rakarth Flesh as that was the first color i spotted (this paint is terriable by the way and i nearly threw it out, split terriable and with solid lumps in it)

I then gave most of the horse and the sheepskin a wash in Armypaint soft tone 3-2 with mixing medium before a final Praxiti white drybrush on the sheepskins.

Just realised i need to do the gold/brass bucket on the front strap.

After a bit of browsing on ebay i spotted a brand new Waterloo – Black Powder 2nd edition Starter Set going for £30 (after a ebay discount voucher). Being a Yorkshireman I cant resist a good bargin so quickly picked it up.

The next day UPS dropped this box of plastic off.

In all thats

122 Infantry
12 Cavalry
1 Artillery Piece with 4 Crew

Thats signifiantly more minatures than I’ve painted in the last year.