Four new Regiments

Since my last post I have been able to complete 4 new Regiments. 2 of them are cavalry and 2 of them are infantry. These four regiments complete the Middle Guard 1st Division and the Light Cavalry 1st Division of the Imperial Guard.

First up is the 1st and 2nd Regiments of Middle Guard Chassuers. This is as far as I can go in terms of infantry at this point. I have another 2 regiments of Grenadiers that I can make, the only problem is that they are not prepared. The other thing I need to figure out is how I want to make the Young Guard. I have some ideas but no firm solution at this point.
 

Second on the list of completed regiments is the 1st and 2nd Chassuers a Cheval of the Guard. These are the last two Light Cavalry regiments that I can make for the Guard at the moment. I have plans to add two other Guard Lancer regiments that I read about recently and a regiment of Mamelukes( if I can ever find a good figure for them) to form a 2nd Light Cavalry Division. But that will have to come later.

1st Reg of Guard Chasseurs a Cheval

2ndt Reg of Guard Chasseurs a Cheval

The completed 1st Light Cav Division

With the completing of these two regiments I have officially completed stage "1" of my current plans. This does not mean that I am done with the Guard as there is still a lot to do. What I can do as soon as I have a chance to prepare more regiments is 2 regiments of Dragoons, 2 more Grenadier regiments, and more Guard Artillery.

Here is a look at what has been done so far.

The Imperial Guard as it stands now is 4 regiments of infantry, 6 regiments of cavalry, and 2 horse artillery batteries. Plus commanders for the entire force.

As of right now I have turned all my attention (sort of) onto the development of the II Corps for the French army. I have started work on the commanders as that is where I normally get bogged down at.
At the moment I can paint 6 regiments of infantry and all the cavalry for the II Corps. That is a total of ten regiments. The only problem is that will I more than likely finish painting these troops before I have a chance to go home and prepare more figures for painting. Thus leaving me with no 6mm figures to paint.

In other news I have finally started painting my Corax figure. Not sure when he will be done. Black is a weird color to work with.

Another piece of news. I have added an OOB at the bottom of my blog page. It is not very in depth( only down to Division level) but it will allow anyone watching what I am doing to see what I have done, what I am working on, and what is to come. As a note I do not have all the figures to complete what is listed there.

Time to play again

I have decided that if at all possible I am going to dedicate a couple of hours in the morning on Saturdays to doing something involving my 6mm Napoleonics. Recently I went ahead and bought 2 6ft x 4ft strips of green cloth($10 on sale at a local craft shop) to be used as ground cover for my terrain, instead of using the woodland camo cloth I was using.  Green is defiantly better. I have also decided to start trying out my hand at recreating historical battlefields. As a result of this attempt I have realized that I need to get more hills. I ended up using all the material I had for hills on a few small sections. I also need to figure out trees, buildings, bridges, and some form of a swap. I have just to make pond, lake, and wider river sections at this moment.

For this Saturday morning carpet day I also decided to try the addition of smoke on the battle field through the use of modified cotton balls.

A French division is having it out with an Austrian division.

I am not sure what other people think but I like the effect. The other thing I am going to start tinkering with is changes in perspective.

The idea is to use my 28mm Napoleonics to add a different view of the battle to my pictures. This is the first time I have done this and I have not seen other people do it. It is therefore going to take some practice to get it down right.

On to the main event of this post. Only a couple of regiments have been added since the last time I did this. I probably will not do it again until I get more work done on my to paint list. Also I am going to be moving sometime soon, so that is going to cause problems.

The Imperial Guard.

My Dragoon division.

Russians trying to force a river crossing.

French attempting a flanking maneuver run into an Austrian covering force.

A view down the length of the battle field.

Russian Cavalry reserve.

Cavalry engagement.

Allied extreme left.

 The Imperial Guard.  

Lancers and Plans

The first thing I would like to talk about is the regiments I have finished as of late. I have just finished the 1st and 2nd Regiments of Lancers for the Imperial Guard. More specifically the "Polish" (1st Reg) and the "Red" (2nd) Lancer regiments. They are the first part of the Imperial Guard 1st Light Cav Division.

The Polish Lancers

The Red Lancers

I am now currently working on the Middle Guard 1st Division. Like the Old Guard Division it will be comprised of 2 regiments of infantry.


The second thing I wanted to talk about was what my plans are. I know that they have been changing a lot as of late so I have been trying to nail down what I am doing over the next year. With the current semester nearing completion my thoughts have started turning towards what I am going to be painting during the summer. In order to firm out my painting schedule I needed to take stock of what I have finished and what I have available to paint. The results were kind of stunning.

What has been painted 
I have painted a total of 28 infantry regiments, 31 cavalry regiments, and 24 guns with their accompanying crew. Not to mention 21 divisional commanders, 5 corps commanders, and 3 army commander. Plus additional skirmishers seen on several regimental bases.

What has not been painted
Unpainted I have 61 infantry regiments, 47 cavalry regiments, and 28 guns. With those numbers comes a bunch of additional command stands and skirmisher stands.

Totals
Just for fun I decided to come up with some figure totals for everything I have bought from Baccus 6mm.

Infantry Total = 4272 figures (plus a few hundred for skirmishers).
Cavalry Total = 1404 figures.
Gun Total = 52 guns and 208 crew (does not include limbers).
Commanders = may be 100 figures.

Grand Total = 5884 figures and 52 guns (does not include limbers, skirmishers, or commanders).

That is quite the haul for only having made 3 orders to Baccus 6mm. And even though I cannot recall the cost for all these figures I assure you it is not possible to get this many figures in any other scale for what I have paid so far.

The Plan
With this information in hand I think I have finally firmed out what I will attempt to do over the rest of this year.

1st) Through the rest of this semester I will finish all the prepared Imperial Guard regiments I have.

2nd) Depending on when I finish the Guard I will then proceed to begin the French II Corp and take it to completion. Finishing any Guard infantry regiments I can along the way. I hope to finish the French II Corps some time early in the Summer. This means a total of 16 infantry regiments, 4 cavalry regiments, 3 light artillery batteries, 4 division commanders, and 1 corps commander. I already have 1 heavy artillery battery, 1 horse artillery battery and 1 divisional commander finished.

3rd) After the French II Corps is done I am going to tackle and finish the French II and IV Cavalry Corps. These two corps only need 4 additional regiments each plus 2 division commander (one for each) and 1 corps commander.. While I am doing this I will also try and complete all Guard Cavalry I can.

4th) When all this is complete I plan on making a big drive into the Allied forces. Either Russians or Austrians. Not sure which. The Prussian are once again put on hold, which is not so bad because I only have a few of them.

Ultimately I hope to have 2 French Army Corps, 2 French Cavalry Corps, a sizable portion of the Imperial Guard, and possibly two Allied Corps done by the end of the year.

Terrain's Effect on a Battlefield

The last time I went flying I made a few remarks on how the quality of the photos taken were not really that great because of my lack of terrain. Well that has been an issue that has been bothering me ever since then. Very recently I was poking around the Baccus forums and happened to come across a post on making cheap and easy hedges for 6mm miniatures. After reading the post I decided that I was going to begin looking for cheap and easy ways to bring my battlefields to life. I am not going to go into the hedges but I will go into what I am poking around with for creating C&E (Cheap and Easy); roads (paved and dirt), rivers, streams, hills, and anything else I can find a good substitute for. If you want to see what I am talking about with the hedges go HERE. Other wise keep reading to see what I am up to, plus to look at some of my latest pictures.

Two batteries stationed in a hedge grove.

The first thing any wargamer needs in a place to fight his (or her) battles on. Most people use tables with stunning details. And honestly I have seen some awesome tables that make me drool buckets however, I am a realist. I am in college, living the space saving life. So instead of a table I make use of the floor. But unless you live in a place with green carpet you are going to need to a gaming mat. However those usually cost about $30. Solution go to your local craft shop and find a bolt of the right green color cloth and have them cut you the sizes you want. Simple, way cheaper, and easier to do. As you can see from my pictures I have a camo color cloth at the moments, I intend to get a few green ones sometime later.

Over view of my latest escapade.

Besides a gaming mat and a place to play on, the next thing needed is terrain. So far I have managed to hit on what I think will be a pretty good idea for hills, dirt roads, paved roads, rivers, and streams. My next focus is on bridges, fords, towns, farms, and buildings. For this post however I will just show I what I have come up with.

There for in all of my searching for C&E terrain I came across this stuff called "Foamies". Basically it is sheets of foam ranging from 3mm thick to 2mm thick. It comes in lots of different colors and for my purposes I chose Green for hills, Brown for dirt roads, Blue for rivers, and Gray for paved roads. The stuff is easy to cut (I just used scissors) and you do not have to worry about deforming the stuff because it is already pretty flexible. Biggest bonus is, it is dirt cheap. The above picture is maybe $10 worth of the stuff. How you want to cut it is dealers choice, my only advice is save your scraps. I found in the hour I spent cutting what I wanted, that I ended up using almost all my scraps for one thing or another.

Massed Allied Cav on a hill

Austrian Inf crossing a stream a bridge and fords

Austrian column on the move

Russian Light Cav crosses the ford and begins to tangle with French Light Cav

Russian Artillery pounds the French

The Russian front line on the move

Austrian Light Cav tries to flank the French left

Wide shot of the Allies

French heavy Cav on the move

A new French Cav Corps commander

French 2nd Div on the move

French meeting the Russian advance

French Center

Napoleon with his Old Guard

French right flank

A French Div deploys to meet the Austrian advance

A Grand Battery pounds away

A few other things I am going to look into. Cotton balls for smoke and I need to figure something out for trees. The other problem I am having is 6mm houses from Baccus are going to be too big for the scale of battles I am going for here. So I need to find another way of handling towns. I may have to go with the bridges from Baccus though, unless I can find a better way of doing bridges.

Center of the battlefield

French rear

The biggest change I noticed from adding even this cheap terrain was the inclusion of a sense of order to my battlefields. Formations now have a purpose and troops a have obstacles to surmount on the way to the enemy. I look forward to seeing how much more terrain I can come up with in the near future.

A Matter of Perspective

A little while ago I finished my two regiments of the Old Guard Grenadiers for my 28mm Napoleonic line. Additionally I also completed in the 6mm range the two regiments of Old Guard Grenadiers . And I thought to myself "wouldn't it be cool to see them in comparison".  Well here they are.

The Breakdown 
Both the 28mm and 6mm Old Guard regiments have the same number of figures (96 total each). However the time to paint is way different. It took me about 8 hours to paint all 96 6mm figures compared with the 96+ hours to paint all 96 28mm figures. This does not even include the time for the basing them all(which I have never timed myself on). What about price? Not including paint, bases and basing material, which would be more expensive for the 28mm figures, the cost of the 6mm figures was about $8 for all 96 figures. For the 28mm figures the cost was about $70 for all 96 figures. The price break down per figure comes out to be $.08 per 6mm figure and $.73 per 28mm figure. So for the $70 it would take for 96 28mm figures, I could get about 875 6mm figures!!! That is about 18 regiments of 6mm figures. Net result? It is way cheaper, less time consuming, and easier( YES easier) to paint 6mm figures.