More 10mm Napoleonics

For the first time in two months, I picked up a paint brush.  With the prep for the move, the move, unpacking from the move, getting into the new (hectic) job at work, and going on vacation, I just haven’t had time.

After the last play test of Look, Sarge, No Charts: Napoleonic Wars at a HAWKs club night, I wanted to make some changes to the base labels.  So yesterday, I relabeled all my French and Austrian figures.

New labels on the bases of French infantry
New labels on the bases of French infantry

The rules worked pretty well that night — even with folks who don’t like Napoleonics.  At Historicon, one of the players observed that for combat you wanted to roll high, but for morale you wanted to roll low.  I share that frustration with rules design.  The fact that sometimes you wanted high and sometimes low was a hold-over from an earlier morale and skirmisher concept for LSNC:NW.  I was able to reverse the morale number so that the best kind of troops have a morale of “1” for “first class troops.”  This made all aspects of LSNC:NW consistent — you always want to roll high.

(I just noticed that in the picture above, the are two “left side” bases and no “right side” base.  A battalion consists of two bases (a left and a right to get a complete label).  This allows Napoleonic battalions to be formed into column, line, and square.)

In the process of rebasing all these figures, I found that I have several battalions of Russian infantry.  I have based them, but I haven’t labeled them yet.

Early stages of 10mm French Legere
Early stages of 10mm French Legere

This weekend I also had a chance to start on some 10mm Old Glory French legere.  I am  painting four battalions of them.  The Old Glory 10mm figures come on the five-figure strips you see.  Six strips makes a battalion of infantry for countries that fought three ranks deep.  That’s 30 figures to a battalion.  At this point in the painting, you can see the black priming, blue uniforms, white belts and turnbacks, flesh on faces and hands, and brown muskets.  I hope to finish the shakos, including the yellow/green and red plumes before the end of the day.

I have been dreading painting 10mm Napoleonic figures, but in practice, it’s not as onerous as I thought it would be.

In rebasing, I discovered that I have just about two complete corps of French infantry, but I’m missing the light cavalry that would be in a corp.  This uses the 1806 order of battle for Davout (III Corps) and Lannes (V Corps).  I have a large corps of Austrians.  I’ve ordered some Grenzers and Jaegers to get the Austrians to a good state.  I have a bunch of unpainted Prussians to begin as well.

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