Napoleon in Egypt – Expédition Baïonnette en Argent

These dangerous creatures have the body of either a lion or leopard but with a long, snake-like head, which writhes and twists with strangely hypnotic movements.

One of new monsters for the Egyptian supplement, the Serpopard has a very characterful sculpt via Northstar. I had a bit of fun trying out a spot pattern, which I’m pretty happy with. Probably should have consulted with a reference picture of big cat patterns first, but why worry too much for a mythical beast?

A couple more swarm bases to join the rats, this time scarab beetles.

These come from Northstar, originally part of their Frostgrave range I think. Still, they look the part as generic large bugs.

The Silver Bayonet: Egypt book arrived this week, along with a few of the new monsters from Northstar.

Whilst the beasties are joining my painting queue, I thought I’d put together a French unit from the models I have painted in this project.

As arranged from left to right in the image above –

• There is a Grenadier from the 88eme demi brigade;
• A Doctor from the recently established Egyptian Institute of Arts and Sciences;
• Another Grenadier, this time from the 85eme demi brigade
• A Supernatural Natural Investigator, also from the Institute, but shunned for his less reputable academic studies;
• The Officer, hailing from the 15eme dragoons;
• A Sailor, left ashore after the Battle of the Nile wrecked the French navy;
• A dragoon trooper from the 15eme, following his officer;
• Finally, a mounted/dismounted trooper from the Dromedary Corps.

The dragoon trooper will represent a Soldier, whilst the dromedary trooper will be a Light Cavalryman.

Really happy at the colourful attire sported by this lot.

Continuing to bulid my bestiary with a couple of rat swarms from Midlam Miniatures.

Time for the first of the monsters and supernatural horrors that will plague the French. The obvious starting point is with a mummy.

This model is from Midlam Miniatures, and I just loved the sculpt and the slight departure from the traditional Holywood-look mummy. It does stand pretty tall though, and absolutely towers over the 28mm French, which is absolutely fine with me – a suitably imposing horror.

Really quick and simple painting here. Base coat of Vallejo Buff, wash with Vallejo Sepia wash, drybrushed with Buff, and then a lighter drybrush with Vallejo Ivory. It won’t win any prizes, but I’m happy at how fast it was to finish.

Seeing the pre-orders and teasers for the upcoming release of the Silver Bayonet Egypt prompted me to take a break from Spring Cleaning and return to this project.

These are French line grenadiers wearing Kleber ordnance, a pair from the 88eme demi-brigade and a pair from the 85eme. Rather than the usual blue jackets, the Kleber ordnance is much more colourful. The 88eme had violet jackets with green cuffs and blue collars, whilst the 85eme had brown jackets with yellow cuffs and red collars. Other demi-brigades had red, green or sky-blue jackets. Essentially, the Kleber ordnance is perfect for something like the Silver Bayonet as your basic soldiers can all have distinctively coloured uniforms whilst still satisfying any button counting tendencies.

Dismounted French Dragoons are next to join my Armée d’Orient. I liked the idea of maybe using these as the standard ‘Soldier’ troop type for Silver Bayonet units, with the leader a potential Officer figure.

These have been painted in the colours of the 15e Regiment of Dragoons. Napoleonic French Dragoon regiments were grouped by facing colours, with slight differences between regiments as to whether collars, cuffs, lapels, lacing etc. appeared in green or their regimental colour (image below for thise with the interest in such detail). The 15e were a pink faced regiment, and thanks to the long gloves worn by the models, I didn’t have to worry about remembering the green cuffs. I stuck with green coats, although there are records of lack of supplies meaning many ended up dressed in undyed cloth.

Besides having fun painting the poppy pink, another reason for painting these as the 15e was their long boots, a uniform feature noted as being particular to that regiment (according to Perrys’ website anyway!). I went with a typical reversed colours for the trumpeter, although I’ve no idea if that is accurate.

All figures are again Paul Hicks sculpts sold by Brigade Games, with image backgrounds by John Hodgson via one of his backdrop books.

Three mounted troopers of the Dromedary Corps to go with their dismounted equivalents in the previous entry.

There’s lots of sources that depict the camel furniture in a wide variety of different colours, with the cloth hanging from the saddle in particular being illustrated in lots of colours and highly embroidered/decorated. I decided to be a bit restrained and went with the regimentally proscribed red cloth with white edging.