War of Liberation: 4/1° Fanteria di Linea, 2/4° Fanteria di Linea & 4/4° Fanteria di Linea

This week I managed to complete the Italian 1° Brigata 15° Divisione which served in Germany in 1813 under the command of Generale di Brigata Philippe André Martel (below)...

The 4/1° Fanteria di Linea and 2/4° Fanteria di Linea who were around 500 men each so I have represented them with three bases each...

The figures are all 6mm Grumbler Miniatures and are a joy to paint.

The 4/4° Fanteria di Linea had less than 500 men at this time so are represented by just two bases.

I also painted up a couple of bases of Volteggiatori to signify skirmish screens when deployed...

Next up is the 2° Brigata which is largely formed up of light infantry from the 1° Reggimento Fanteria Leggera so will make a nice contrast in their green uniforms.

War of Liberation: 3/1° Fanteria di Linea & 3/4° Fanteria di Linea

Hi, my name is Steve and I am a wargames butterfly... :D 

Yes, something new but I guess not a surprise. Whilst most of my gaming is 28mm I have a deep rooted love for 6mm as a scale, it makes games look like battles. So when Rob and a few others down BIG started dabbling in 6mm Napoleonics with Black Powder, it didn't take much for me to ping off an order to Grumbler Miniatures for some of their French. 

3/1° Fanteria di Linea in line

Initially I toyed with painting them up as French regiments from the 100 Days but in the end decided to slightly mirror my Sharp Practice efforts and paint them up as Kingdom of Italy troops, this time as units of Fontanelli's 15th Division in Germany in 1813 (though the bulk can be used for many campaigns such as Spain and Russia). The first are the 3/1° Fanteria di Linea and 3/1° Fanteria di Linea, the latter being an understrength battalion in 1813.

3/4° Fanteria di Linea in line

The miniatures are lovely, though I got a bit silly splitting four figure bases up to include the odd one or two greatcoated figure amongst the ranks of campaign dress(!), and in my opinion better proportioned than most other companies efforts (with their oversize heads).

3/1° Fanteria di Linea in attack column

Painting was pretty straightforward given the white Italian uniforms, this time using GW Contrast Apothecary White, which is really a pale grey that settles nicely in the recesses of a figure.

3/4° Fanteria di Linea in attack column

I had been pondering on basing 6mm for a while, static grass being generally too big and most flocks, well meh! However spotting what another gamer did on Facebook I've used Woodland Scenics Green Blend which I think looks pretty good.

On with the rest of the 1st Brigade now...

ACW: 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment

As I said in my last post the previews of Warlord Games "Epic" ACW Black Powder figures has certainly re-kindled my interest in the 'War Between the States' so I picked up a copy of Wargames Illustrated to get a free sprue and see how painting them went, and how they looked when finished.

There is lots of information about them online elsewhere so I won't go into detail but they are hard polystyrene plastic and measure 13.5mm foot to eye (they seem to work well with 12mm metal figures from what I've seen). Some people are calling them 15mm but that is foot to top of head and we don't measure figures like that so don't be fooled!

I decided to paint my five base regiment up as the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment as I'd just rewatched Glory before Xmas and felt like re-creating them in miniature.

Painting was largely a case of drybrushing over a black undercoat which took less than half an hour for the entire regiment, care taken not to get the lighter trouser blue on the dark blue jackets, and then picking out details such as belts, flesh and muskets. The flags are cut out of the Warlord advert in the current WI.

Overall they do look good en masse and I am certainly even more tempted by the starter set now...