Elessar2590's Grande Armee Project

Wow three comments already and I haven’t even started uploading thanks for the amazing support guys.

I’ve started on the first Battalion. 28 Minis in total. My plan is to tackle this one unit at a time, batch painting with about four or five different colours of greatcoat to mix it up a little.

So each unit looks like this

LL FF FD BF FF GG
LL FF FO OF FF GG
LL                          LL

L = Light
F = Fusilier
G = Grenadier
D = Drummer
B = Banner
O = Officer

I’m going for a slightly different approach to basing these units in that there won’t be a “Command Base” with just Officers and Command figures on it. I don’t like command bases especially with a unit made up of an even number of bases. I find it makes the unit look a bit off-centre and jars me so I’ll have the command base split in half and added to the base beside it.

The Traditional unit is arranged like this. Notice it’s impossible to centre the command stand. Games like Land of the Free get around this by having an odd number of bases per unit but Napoleon at War uses 6 so that’s what I’ll stick with for now.

LL FF DB FF FF GG
LL FF OO FF FF GG
LL                          LL

As you can see Warlord Games really nailed it with their boxes. They come with 28 Figures all in marching poses all you need to do is attach the heads (which there are spares of more on that later) and the backpacks.

Another thing I like about the kit is that you get four extra Fusiliers per pack. Sure it doesn’t seem like much but keep in mind you only need 16 Fusiliers to make up a unit’s Centre Companies and they become extremely handy.

So out of two starter sets I managed to make the standard eight units of Infantry with 32 Fusiliers left over. Now I had the centre companies I just needed some Officers and some flank companies.

The Officers were easy enough to get, I have a lot of French Officers and Command figures spare from my “Sharp Practice” force so they filled that gap but where can I find minis to use as Flank Companies?

I mulled this one over until I spotted a box of Old Guard Grenadiers (Victrix) that a friend had given to me a few weeks earlier. The Guard carry the Briquette and are all in Greatcoats with Epaulets so headless they look exactly like Flank Company troops. Now remember earlier I mentioned how great it was that Warlord had a lot of spare heads on the sprues?

No?! Then pay more attention ahem.

I gave the Guardsmen in March Attack (Fancy way of saying “the guys holding the Muskets straight up in the air”) Flank Company Heads and built a few figures firing their muskets to use as skirmishers. I’ll have to pick up another box or two to give all the Battalions the proper number of skirmish bases plus come on like I could do a French Army without doing The Old Guard!

I picked out minis at random and base coated them with either Game Colour Khaki (Vallejo), German Fieldgrey WWII (Vallejo), Russ Grey (Games Workshop) or Macragge Blue (Games Workshop). I just picked some of the paints I had on hand that matched the real life colours.

Next I’ll give them another coat of the same colour just to get a good base down, then I’ll move onto the backpacks, cartidge boxes, bayonet scabbards and water bottles. They’re what I like to call “Blocks” because they’re easy to paint and if I screw up they’re easy to fix up. I’ll then work my way to what I call the “Straps” which is basically all the white belts, white slings, white straps or tassels/pom-poms. These are things that take a lot of patience and time. If you screw up the “Straps” it really stands out on the table.

Next Project Update entry will be the Battalion fully base coated and ready for a wash. My Digital Camera arrives Thursday (fingers crosses) so I’ll have some better pictures for you guys.