It seems that as of late I have been doing more painting but haven’t reduced my lead pile at all since I have continued to buy more for myself and all the painting was done for friends! Both enjoyable none the less!
The current project was for my long time gaming buddy Stevie G and a couple of Napoleonic Cavalry units. Steve has a big Prussian force and recently picked up some Prussian “Towarczys” Lancers from Boki miniatures out in Estonia! They are some of those troops that are rare from a collector standpoint but look awesome on the battlefield.
They are going to make a fearsome looking unit on the battlefield! Makes me wish I had Prussians so I could keep them for myself!
The minis are well sculpted with lots of details and are both fun and easy to paint. The casting is a bit off requiring some work in cutting out bubbles and filling some poor cast areas. I believe the problem is that these are gravity cast and not done with a spin cast machine. Its just a small chore and not really a big deal. The minis do not come with horses or lances. Horses from either AB miniatures or 19th Century Miniatures work well, I used horses from Old Glory 15’s (19th Century Miniatures) and though a bit less beefy than the 19th century horses on average I think they work well as eastern European horses tended to be smaller than their western European cousins.
Next were the “lances”, they don’t come with any, not a problem for me as I replace ALL my flag poles, spears, and lances, on all my figures with STEEL! Over the years I have gotten pretty good at this and make some nice looking replacements. That how I got hooked into painting the figures by offering to make the lances and do the pennants for them as well.
Stevie G like I mentioned before is a long time gaming bud as well as the two of us being “grips” in the movie biz in Los Angeles. We have spent many a long day/night together on sets, Star Treks, Profiler, Charmed, and more, passing them time between shots talking miniatures (on Deep Space Nine we spent our lunch hours painting minis right on the set!) Steve has a heart of gold and has always jumped whole hog into any type of miniature wargaming that I dragged us into so the more I looked at the figures and worked on them the more I felt like going the whole way “prep to paint” with them. I felt it would be a great way to thank him for all the support and friendship over the years.
The first stage was cleaning and matching the horses and riders. I always carefully look at the riders pose and position, then select a horse that matches action wise. In other words don’t put a lance down charging figure on a horse that’s standing still! I also look at the figures and try to get as many varied poses in the unit and space repeated poses out to make them less obvious. Sometimes small mods can help with this, same rider different horses, bend a sword arm, cock a lance, and gently twist a head. Then since these riders and horses were from different manufactures I took time to cut and file both the back of the horse in the saddle area and the rider to get a good natural looking fit.
Hot gluing the figure to nails is something I started doing 30 years ago as an alternative to the common practice of gluing them to Popsicle sticks. A chunk of Styrofoam is used as a base…easy peazy!
I always assemble the figures into the unit and determine each figures position in the unit before painting. This can help give the finished unit a more cohesive fee. I might have a figure that is pointing complimented by selecting a figure that has his head looking in that direction, have charging or running figures on the same stand, charging figures in the front, etc.…
They were a lot of fun to paint and work on!
For a larger view just click on the picture!
Flags are something I added and perhaps were not historically carried but they look good and heck this is wargaming!
Unit colors were selected from text of one of Knotels prints from the excellent books by Elting on Napoleonic uniforms
I’m really happy with the way the poses came out. I think the units have a very dynamic feel, truly looking like they are just laying down their lances to begin a charge!
Black primed with Vallejo primer and ready for paint!
Those are not AB horses BTW – the bases are wrong. AB horses do not have a textured top to the bases.
You are probably right, Steve had gotten the horses and said they were AB…. when I was assembling them I remember thinking that they looked a lot like “old glory” horses, which in fact I think they are. Thanks for the point out so folks wont order AB thinking they will get these. Bottom line? they do not come with horses so get some you like!
PS. I have amended the post.