A battalion of French

These 16 figures seemed to take ages to paint, and not just because I was doing a bit here and there in between other painting. The problem with them was that I had to keep revisiting colours. So after painting white trousers, I then had to paint the roll on the knapsack grey and go back and paint the straps white, only to then need to paint the cuffs and collar red and then paint the piping white again. I need to really think through the order that I paint the various colours.
I'm also not sure about the final effect. I should have gone with black or dark grey under the white, as the light grey doesn't bring out the details enough. See what you think:

Advancing in attack column

From the other side

And in line formation

They just don't seem to pop, for some reason. I'm sure the British will, but these guys don't. I'll use London grey as the base coat for the white and be much more picky when highlighting the detail with the next unit. Not that I'll be getting to them anytime soon - far too much else to paint at the moment. The Peninsular War is the 2019 project, I just did these chaps as a trial.

Nate

Some painting

It has been a while since I posted, but I have managed to get some painting done in that time. First up, some Imperials for Craig's Star Wars Legion force, led by Darth Vader himself.

Bringing out the red reflection from the lightsaber on Darth's skirt.

The whole force so far. Craig bought two core sets, so I have this much again to paint for the Imperials.

Some extras for the Featherstone ACW project. Here we have Louisiana Tigers, Hampton's Legion, the 1st Virginia cavalry and dismounted Texan cavalry.

On the other side of the board we have the 112th Illinois Mounted rifles, 5th New York Zouaves, 4th Michigan Zouaves, and the 112th dismounted.

Also getting some love is the Great War collection. I'm just plodding through with a few bases at a time, in between other things.

A couple of Peter Pig Ironclads for the planned American Civil War campaign.

Mike's warband for Burrows and Badgers. Hopefully we'll have a game soon.

Battle scene between Mike's critters and my Wild Beasts. I love these figures!

So plenty of painting being done. The ACW forces are looking quite complete. There are 4 battalions of infantry, 2 mounted and dismounted cavalry and some siege guns etc left to do, and then I can start to look at my planned Chickatachee river campaign. I did manage to have another game with the Featherstone style rules and ironed out a couple of kinks. Troops no longer test morale from firing. I figured it was unnecessary. A good general will pull back his troops to try to rally their fighting spirit rather than lose his whole Brigade.

Played on a 3'x 3' table this was scenario 28 from One Hour Wargames. The Union forces had to take the church with 4 units. The Confederates on the hill could only activate one unit and could not activate another until the first  had been destroyed. The other two Confederate units were defending the Church.

The first unit activated was the 1st Virginia cavalry. They had enough move to charge straight into the 100th Pennsylvania, and beating them in combat they rolled a 1 for morale and ran off the board. Not a good start for the Union.

The 17th Michigan turned to face the cavalry while the 5th New York Zouaves and 29th Massachusetts moved on the Church. 

The cavalry were forced to fall back.

The 1st Virginia dismounted and in the ensuing firefight the boys from Michigan rolled a 1 for morale, which saw them rout off the board. This was when I realised that it was silly testing the morale from firing alone. The next round saw the Louisiana Tigers and the 1st Virginia catch the 29th Massachusetts in a crossfire, and they were whittled down. The Zouaves managed to assault the Church, held by the 3rd Arkansas, and were repulsed, heading off in a disorderly rout.

'Come on boys, lets get out of here!' The Brigade failed its morale (unsurprisingly).

'We seen them off but good!'

The Texan Brigade didn't even need to get off the hill.

I'm hoping that a couple of changes that I've made will make some of the events in this battle a little less likely. I've mentioned removing testing morale from firing, the other thing I've done is give infantry an even better factor against cavalry to represent shooting them off even if they don't get a chance for a long range volley first. Unless being hit in the flank (and admittedly that is what happened in this game), cavalry should have very limited prospects when charging into solid, fresh infantry.

Nate