All Glossed and Awaiting Flags. . .

 

A nice, shiny, and cheery unit of toy soldiers ready to take the field.

Not yet affixed to their permanent bases, but here they are!  My version of the Schaumburg-Lippe-Bückeburg Infantry.  Flags are pending of course given our recent and ongoing internet issues here in The Grand Duchy, which have thrown my cordless printer out of sync, so I have not yet printed the flags to overpaint in my 'paint by numbers' way.  Shortly, I hope. 

As for the unit shown above, I painted them based on three sources: Mollo, Kronoskaf, and Digby Smith, so their appearance, while in the ballpark, is not quite identical to any of the three references noted.  I am not sure if I should put all three NCOs in the third rank, or place one of them at the far right of the line looking along the three companies to check their alignment.  What do you think?

As always, the figures are not perfect, but this unit is one of the nicer bunch of line infantry I've painted in some time nevertheless.  They will certainly do at arm's length.  The mid-blue, scarlet, and white highlights atop dark blue, dark red, and light gray respectively turned out reasonably well I think.  

As a reminder, my unit organizations generally follow those laid out in Charge! Or How to Play Wargames although my cavalry squadrons are 14 in strength rather that Young's and Lawford's eight or nine.  Likewise, I use Peter Gilder's base dimensions from In the Grand Manner, which for close order line infantry are 60mm x 40mm for a group of eight figures.  

Figure density on this sized base is perhaps a bit open for close order mid-18th century infantry with the Minden 1/56 miniatures, but that's a compromise I can live with.  Some wargamers prefer 45mm wide bases, but ah, well.  Variety is the spice of life as they say.

Young and Lawford suggest a three-company organization for a regiment of line infantry.  Each company consists of 16 privates, an officer, NCO, and drummer along with a small regimental staff.  A rather large footprint on the tabletop when deployed in line as the ruler in the photo illustrates.

Ok, enough prattle!  Time to do something about the flags now.

-- Stokes

 

A Painting P.S.

The above figures were painted with a combination of old Ral Partha dark blue from the 1990s (Yes, really!) and more recent Citadel acrylic hobby paints, cheap craft paints frm my local arts and crafts big box store, Winsor & Newton alkyd oil fleshtone, and finished with 2.5-ish  coats of Liquitex acrylic gloss.  

I tend to prefer a base color with one highlight rather than a triad of color or something even more complicated.  A single highlight gives the figures a bit more depth without straying into the realm of overly colorful hyperbole.  

The absolute base coat beneath everything else was, this time, a healthy dose of light gray mixed in with white acrylic gesso.  When I can, I try to reduce the number of steps by incorporating the base into the overall color scheme.  In this instance, since the breeches and waistcoats are nominally white, it seemed like a sound idea to provide a good light gray base on which to add the white washes later.  

Incidentally, everything covered the light gray base coat well, even the fleshtone, so this is a trick I'll file away and use again the next time I paint a unit that wears a large amount of white clothing.  Painting, as always, is an endlessly fascinating exercise in which you modify your technique each time as you discover new things, finding what works best, and what does not for a particular batch of figures.  

It's certainly one of the many interesting facets of the wargaming hobby that has piqued my interest for a long, long time now.