Three rounds a minute in any weather

Introducing Lieutenant Arthur Quid and his band of merry men.

I’m supposed to be getting on with my line troops but they’re pretty mind numbing so I’ll save them for when I’ve got motivation.

In the interests of a quick win I finished the crew of my light gun.

Painting the blue jackets was a bit of a change and the gold lacing looks good.

Definitely not my best work and I’m not blown away by the sculpts frankly – it’s a mix of early war crew from Eagle miniatures (Sorry I misremembered!) Wargame Foundry and Warlord Games peninsular British crew.

You can see I’ve mixed sets of crew up because I have half of my crew bracing for fire while the other half are waiting for reloading.

I’ve got another gun to paint and the rest of these artillery crewmen so they’ll end up in the right sets again eventually.

If I was having a do-over I’d just get the Victrix box with 3 guns and 15 men.

My first group of skirmishers done.

I’m getting my process down for painting these redcoats now.

I really like these front rank figures, massive hands though.

After a very enjoyable Clotted Lard in Exeter this past weekend I’ve brought my peninsular war British back to the front of the paint table.

Following the tradition of leader followed by his command I’ve started with this really nice flank company officer from Front Rank. He’s available as part of the six-figure flank company command advancing.

Very similar approach to my other officer and importantly he’s waving his hat around. There’s a definite theme when it comes to this army.

He also has the most hilarious expression, like he’s seen a ghost or, perhaps, a French column coming out of the smoke.

Based the first formation. I’ve got a mix of play sand, some basing grit and a few shades of flock in there. The base mix looks much more flock-heavy than it’s actually come out, probably because the sand is so fine.

I’ll see how the effect works out but it’s a bit light-looking for my tastes. In this period of the war this regiment fought in Portugal and Northern Spain so they should actually have more green on there.

What I might do is get some darker static grass and apply some liberally later on in bulk to the whole force. I’ve got a bit of fine green flock that might be a good idea to mix in with the batch (the flock I normally use is quite chunky really)

Grouped up and bleached by the relentless power of the sun like this the differences between the two groups are minimised which is a relief, I wasn’t looking forward to redoing all that white on the first group.

I did originally flock the the single-figure tray (I’m using different outer diameters for my leader statuses) but it looked absolutely dreadful, like honestly terrible. Instead I think I’ll keep it black and paint it with a status level indicator or something similar; after all it’s a gaming aid rather than a base.

Finally! After a few stop-start painting sessions and general toddlers stopping play I’ve managed to get my first two groups of line sorted.

They’re ‘tabletop quality’ in that I’ve not bothered with much in the way of highlighting or fine detail work but as a block of troops they look decent.

The second group have come out better than the first- I made the mistake of trying to paint white directly on the red of the jacket. With the second group I used the same buff colour as the trousers to base the white parts. When I painted over them they came up much more cleanly (plenty of brush errors in there though, certainly not my finest work!)

Ironically though, the plumes are better on the first group.

I’ll probably have to go back over the white on the first group because up close they do look much worse, but at a distance it’s not too noticable. After a while the line troops will end up mixed and matched anyway so they’ll blend in.

These figures will all look a lot better when they’re based too. I’ve got to decide exactly how I’m going to do it for this army and then I can get this first batch sorted. I’m thinking sand, flock and a smidge of static grass.

Next I think I’ll treat myself to paint another leader followed by his command, possibly I’ll do some flank company skirmishers next.

My first napoleonic miniature painted!

It’s been a ridiculousy busy few weeks so this is the first mini I’ve painted in nearly a month.

Named by a member of the Sharp Practice Facebook group. Cheers!

I’ve been pretty enamoured with Sharp Practice since I saw the Let’s Plays. Thanks to TFL’s healthy approach to social media, podcasts and now video it seems like a great time to take the plunge.

After picking up a copy of the rules and cards on eBay (sorry lads) and a set of tokens, poker chips, and The Compleat Fondler supplement from TFL direct I started obsessing over exactly what I was going to be putting together for a force.

Growing up with Sharpe and Hornblower the Peninsular War is a straightforward place to start.

I did some research into my local regiment – the 32nd Regiment of Foot (Cornwall). It’s been a pretty intense process shall we say. There’s always something to learn and sources can be pretty scattered. It’s especially tough if you’re not a military buff!

The regiment were in the peninsula though the early stages of the war through Portugal and up to the retreat to Corunna in 1809.

The 32nd didn’t return to Spain until 1812, in the meantime they went on the Walcheren Expedition in the Netherlands where many of the men contracted malaria and in 1810 they were posted to Ireland.

It’s the early war period following the first invasion of Portugal that I’ve chosen to model my force on.

1808-1809 covers two contrasting situations in the war. For most of 1808 Spain was still an ally of France, however Napoleon had his suspicions and by the beginning of 1809 had encircled and captured Madrid and occupied Spain.

In terms of scenarios that gives me a lot of flexibility and a Spanish force would be useful for both sides of the conflict.

Shout out to the 32nd Regiment of Foot reenactors for helping me with my research on the right colour trousers(!) and the various Too Fat Lardies forum & mailing list members that have helped me to stop panicking and buy some figures!

It’s a bit of an iffy photograph but here’s a rough breakdown of my ridiculously over the top British starter force.

From Perry:

3x mounted colonels in bicorns

I will only be using one of these at a time I’d expect to represent my highest-status leader in a game.

2x British Line Infantry boxes + 2 extra sprues of riflemen

This has worked out to 12 flank company and 48 centre company figures arranged in 2 groups of flank skirmishers and 6 groups of line.

From the riflemen in the box and the additional sprues purchased I’ve got 12 riflemen in two groups.

From Warlord Games:

1x peninsular war british foot artillery 6pdr

Warlord games had a free postage thing on so I picked up an artillery piece. Complete impulse buy.

From Front Rank:

I’ve been quite taken with Front Rank’s figures, they’ve got a really nice selection.

Set of flank company command. The perry box doesn’t have options for a full set of flank company so there’s no flank company officers available (they wore stovepipe shakos much earlier.) – half of these are just in a pile because I really wanted a sergeant and an officer, but never say never!

6x flank company firing. An extra group of flank company skirmishers.

Rifleman officer and sergeant (Sharpe and Harper, how could I not!)

Infantry officer waving his bicorn.

A foot artillery officer and extra crewman – Sharp Practice specifies five crew to one gun but they tend to come in fours.

From Wargames Foundry:

1x 9pdr gun

Set of foot artillery crew w/ officer

OK this one was a total impulse buy, but while I was asking for recommendations for single crew members I was sent to Wargames Foundry and I really liked this set. At least I now have support options around the artillery.

The rulebook’s most basic starter force for the British in the peninsular is five groups of centre company and one group of flank company skirmishers, so I think that’s covered.