Post a Comment On: Fawcett Avenue Conscripts

[Image]

Well, I have been off for a couple of weeks on a wonderful trip to France. We got back on Saturday night (although it felt like Sunday afternoon) and thanks to the fog of jet lag, I was able to finish off the ground work and complete my Grenzer unit, part of the Napoleonic Challenge.

[Image]

This unit is another big sucker - 38 foot troops and one mounted officer. The models are all Foundry castings. Foundry does not make command for Grenzer units beyond the chap in the bicorne hat, so I bodged by painting up some later period Hungarians in Shakos with Grenzer type colours. That provided a musician, standard carrier, an additional foot officer and a mounted officer. The Shakos of the Hungarian impostors look a little different, and I was guessing when painting some of the officers, but overall the uniforms are not that different and in the end I'm pleased with the effect.

[Image]

The "advance" pose, with the musket held to the front and the bayonets sticking off to the side, made basing this unit a little trickier than that stolid "march attack" poses of the Austrian line units I have painted. The Grenzers ended up a little more ragged, but not too much, and I think it still suits their character well.

Up next is some artillery. I'm going to paint two six-pounder guns with some crew. The challenge only calls for a single gun, but two guns will make it closer to a half-battery needed for some other rules, and I am thinking doing two guns can't be much more of a burden than one gun.

It will be a challenge as I see the f***ing clowns at Foundry did not include key components in the cannon pack - specifically the axles to hold the wheels on the gun carriages. So I'll have to improvise a bit there. But watch for more progress over the coming month.

It's too bad the painting challenge kicked in for October - since I started this project in July, I have painted 114 25mm foot castings as well as three mounted officers. Not too bad a rate of progress.

I will also be diverting a bit toward finishing off the infantry component for my 40k Elysians - there is a squad of guys with shotguns waiting to be painted, and I need to add a few more odds and ends like troops, advisors, a commissar etc. to round out command squads needed for an Imperial Guard force. I am also going to add some punch by painting up missile launcher teams. I don't know if I will add them to the squads, or keep them as a separate heavy weapon section of three teams, but I'll figure that out later. I will try and get these done for October, as well as the Austrian artillery. Should be fun.