Dipping my toes into Napoleonics

So, I attached enough of the strips of infantry I had remaining from last snip session to three more bases to complete my first unit of French line infantry. I have to say, all those tiny fighting men lined op look amazing: that is the feeling I was looking for at this scale!

I mentioned last time I wasn’t too happy with how the universal glue adhered to the flock and glimmered through. So this time, I used the universal glue just for the center of the base: to attach the strips of infantry and to flock the area between them. I then used wood glue on the edges to get a good amount of flock there.

The idea was nice, but in practice it just became a bit messy. I used a brush to put the wood glue on, but also managed to scrape of the flock that was on there already…

I think that flock density now looks a bit better, but I’m not sure whether this amount of faff is really worth it. I might try wood glue only next!

Here is the same unit in the other formations (in addition to column above) that the rules from Napoleonic Wargaming allow, respectively: line (+ line Lloyd), square and column of route. About the column of route: I called it ‘column of line’ last time because I didn’t have to book close. Oops. However, like I mentioned last time, you can see that the officer indicates the direction in which the unit is moving.

Now, up next are some cossacks. I decided that I’m going to alternate between line infantry and other units, so that I’m not endlessly snipping shoulder-to-shoulder infantrymen.

The cossacks that Peter’s Paper Boys supplies are either in red or in blue. This confused me, since I’m an utter novice in Napoleonic uniforming. A question to the COG/OTTer hivemind supplied me with:

1. A handy link about cossacks during the Napoleonic wars. This informed me that there was a Lifeguard Cossack Regiment, which apparently wore red and was considered an elite unit.
2. The knowledge that Peter’s Paper Boys “work on the red versus blue army principle where units and duplicates are concerned. For larger battles yellow. White and green are sometimes added.” (@avernos).

Now, the rules in Napoleonic Wargaming do not differentiate between different kinds of cossacks, but I do like the idea of a bit of variation. I will therefore include one unit of red and one of blue.