Wednesday, 19 July 2017

Napoleonic Russians

This week’s main focus has been the first of two regiments of cuirassiers for my Russian Napoleonic collection.

 

This regiment is the Gloukhov Regiment. The figures are Perry miniatures again, a mix of the charging with swords raised and shouldered figures. The horses are good solid beasts, as heavy cavalry horse ought to be.

 


To a some extent I was dreading these because of their white coats, and I sometime struggle with white, but I needn’t have feared. The fact that the blackened cuirass covers most of the torso dramatically reduces the amount of white that has to be painted – it limits the white it to the arms, coat tails and the gauntlets.

 



The dark blue facings on this regiment caused me some problems with the trumpeter as I have not done that great a job on the lace down his sleeves. Nonetheless I am quite pleased with the overall effect. They look suitably menacing.

 



Also completed this week is the third of the artillery batteries required for the army. In many 1812 formations the divisional artillery consisted of two field batteries and one position battery. By 1813 the number of batteries was generally reduced to two. The field batteries (and horse batteries for that matter) consisted of eight 6lb guns and  four 10lb howitzers. The position batteries contained the heavier 12lb guns and 20lb howitzers, in the same numbers as the light batteries. In my batteries I have used two models; one gun and one howitzer.

 



Again these are Perry miniatures and what wonderfully meaty guns these are. They really look the part of heavy guns.

 



I have one more battery to do for this army and it is a horse battery, which I have ordered from Front Rank – rather annoyingly I noted just after I had placed the order that the Perrys have horse artillery on the workbench! Oh well…

 

For now it is back to the second cuirassier regiment, the Ekaterinoslav regiment.

Posted by at
Labels:

14 comments:

  1. Phil19 July 2017 at 18:43

    Well done Mark, your Gloukhov Regiment is dynamic and beautiful...and these guns so impressive!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mark Strachan19 July 2017 at 19:01

      Thanks Phil. The Ekaterinoslav Regiment is shaping up to be even more impressive too.

      Delete
  2. Lawrence H19 July 2017 at 19:20

    Lovely work on these. Russian cuirassiers are amongst my favourite Napoleonic troops, and I have a couple of well-fed Front Rank regiments ahead of me.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mark Strachan19 July 2017 at 20:54

      I am half way through the Ekaterinoslav Regiment with yellow facings and saddlecloths. They are looking really impressive. Wouldn't it be a great thing to do a full division of five regiments? But I could never justify it!

      Delete
  3. rross19 July 2017 at 19:27

    Nice looking Russians Mark... maybe we need to add Napoleonic to the "to do" list for Tarawera 2018 - I have all those Austrians - now THAT army has a LOT of white coats!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mark Strachan19 July 2017 at 21:14

      Yes the Austrians and their white! I remember the white jackets of the 1866 Austrians...thankfully half of them have greatcoats!

      Delete
  4. caveadsum147119 July 2017 at 22:56

    Great looking cuirassiers, they look the part as does the heavy artillery which certainly does what it says on the tin!
    Best Iain

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mark Strachan20 July 2017 at 17:20

      Thanks Iain. I was particularly taken by the heavy guns. Can't wait to get them on a table now.

      Delete
  5. Jonathan Freitag20 July 2017 at 14:59

    Excellent work on your Russians, Mark! All are terrific but I especially like the cuirassiers and the lovely, rich browns of the horses.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mark Strachan20 July 2017 at 17:02

      Thank you Jonathan. I always like putting the larger part of my heavy cavalry on dark horses. It gives then a suitably sinister look, don't you think?

      Delete
  6. Chasseur21 July 2017 at 08:56

    Great job! I confess I take shouldered swords on metal models due to fear of damaging the swords on models where they are waving them about, but they do look good!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mark Strachan21 July 2017 at 11:14

      You are qumite right about the extended arms. i thought hard about this and figure that most of the damage occurs on the outer figures of each stand. It may not be evident in the images, but I have tried to put the figures least likely to damage through handling on the outer edges. Therevis still a risk though of them being dropped, but at least these are moulded arms and not glued on. I am well known for replacing broken swords with flattened steel pins from my wife's sewing kit!

      Delete
    2. Chasseur21 July 2017 at 19:59

      Ah yes good idea! Flattened steel pins sounds like a good idea too!

      Delete
    3. Mark Strachan21 July 2017 at 22:50

      Yes flatten them out, drill a .5mm hole 1.5mm deep, glue and back fill with green stuff. The finished result has the dual purpose of repairing the damaged sword and preventing people from picking them up incorrectly if they don't want to get stabbed! Years ago I visited Peter Gilder' wargames holiday centre and being a man skilled with a soldering iron he had replaced all the bayonets on his figures with pins. The players handled those units very carefully.

      Delete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)