Italian Wars Stradiots

My first unit for the Italian Wars in a few years.  These are 4 light cavalry Stradiots using TAG miniatures in 28mm.

The horses have been painted with the oil wipe method as I have used in the past, which I like as it gives good depth to the colour and does not require much thought to get the highlights and shading in the correct places. As it is messy and takes some time to dry, it is not something that I want to do on 4 horses alone so there are another 8 (2 units of light cavalry) mounted crossbowmen that were done at the same time - the crossbowmen need to be painted.

A Sassanid General and Drummer

Continuing with the Sassanid army I have just completed this command / vignette base with a Sassanid General and his Drummer overlooking the troops as they prepare for battle.  

The figures are from the great range produced by Aventine and the shield transfer is from LBMS.

Start of something Sasanid

Painting all the Adler Napoleonics will involve 10,000+ figures over the next 18 months.  So I also need a 'sanity' project to help with burnout and to not lose touch with different painting techniques.

I have had these Sassanids for about three years waiting for the right moment. Having started to read Adrian Goldsworthy's book "Rome and Persia", I got the itch and so the moment had arrived.

Like all my Ancients armies, these are based for the Impetus rules. The first two units are a heavy foot unit of Levy spearmen and some archers. Basing is pretty simple with just a layer of AK Interactive Dry Ground Terrain Paste which has then had a light drybrush and some tufts applied.

These miniatures are 28mm from Gripping Beast. The army will also include figures from Aventine and A&A Miniatures.

Oh it's been a while!! (But there are photos of painted miniatures)

I haven't posted anything on here for almost a year, primarily because I have been painting thousands of Adler Napoleonic figures. If you've seen some of the older posts on here you'll know that they are aprox 8mm in height.

While I have been painting them and putting them on plywood bases, I have not done any 'basing' with them as I could not make up my mind what looked best. Bit stupid really when you consider that they are bloody small.

So I did not feel that there was any point in putting up images of (very small) based but unfinished units.

Along the way, one thing that I firmly landed on was that the basing material / ground cover needed to be relatively light in colour as I think that makes a big difference to the unit's visibility on the table top as well as allowing the paint job to be more visible.

At Cancon this year, I saw a basing paste that I thought might wok - and bought a pot to test. I had also seen a great post from a guy on Facebook by the name of Ricky Bell who gave a 'recipe' for a mixture of Javis flocks that looked pretty good to me. So a few weeks ago I painted up a few units and tried it out. I am very pleased with the outcome. The real test will come when I do some artillery bases and limbers this week.

So, with that decision made, expect to see many many more posts about the Napoleonic project over the coming 18 months because ......

I have been collecting these Napoleonic figures from Adler since 1994. While I have approximately half of my figures painted - there are also another half unpainted and they were intended to be a project that I would work on for years and years.

So to my horror, a few weeks ago I received a message from Leon who owns Adler saying that he is planning to shut down production of the 6mm lines. However, very generously he is allowing existing customers to continue to purchase through to June 2025 so as to be able to finish collections off.

After some hand wringing, I decided I'd better make a concerted effort to get as much completed as possible so that I could identify any gaps that needed to be filled.

Taking photos presents a slight quandery - they need to be close to see the little buggers - but get too close and you see all the shortcuts taken to paint a 6mm figure.

These Wurttemburgers supported Napoleon in the 1809, 1812, 1813 and 1814 campaigns. In most cases I have used the 1809 uniforms.

Firstly a group shot.

First up are the Wurttemburg Jäger zu Pferd Regiments - two regiments each of 24 figures in four squadrons.

Next are two Chevauxleger Regiments, again each regiment consists of four squadrons of six figures.

Then we have the Wurttemburg Light Battalions with their snazzy red plumes and blue lapels and turnbacks.

These took some work. The stock figures do not have a plume - but I wanted the dress uniform because (especially at 6mm) it looks good on the table. So, into each shako I drilled a small hole, glued a piece of brass wire and dipped that into the neck of a bottle of Vallejo Plasttic Putty to give some volume to the plumes. In addition, while not really visible on the photos (and certainly not on the table) each shako has a green fabric trim around it at the midpoint. While these are moulded onto the figures, they are meant to be piped in white on the edges. While it would have looked good, my sanity is worth more - so they just have the green fabric painted.

And finally we have the Milan Battalion which served with the French. I wanted this as I thought the light blue jacket looked good.