British Napoleonic Infantry

These have been painted for a while (since January), just waiting to be photographed. These were for an event in January (i.e. before COVID-19 stopped all such shenanigans), where we played a Blucher campaign of the 100 days. I was assigned the British/Allied Reserve Corps, which was 7 bases of British and Brunswicker infantry. This might not sound like much, but the bases used were 60x90mm. These are pretty big bases (about 2.4″ by 3.6″), each with between 40-64 figures on them. I think that ends up as 352 figures on my 7 bases. No matter how you slice it up this is a bit of work (even if you’re only spending 20-30s on each figure).

We start with some standard British Line infantry. The figures I’m using are by Baccus, and are great little figures. My basing starts with 2 ranks of 8 miniatures on a 40x20mm base. The first rank contains a command element in the middle (which will eventually get little flags) with the rest of the base made up with marching line. Both types of miniature come in the one Baccus pack in almost the right ratio for what I’m doing.

British Napoleonic Infantry 1British Napoleonic Infantry 2

Along with the formed infantry like above, I also used Skirmishers, instead now based only 4 to a 40x20mm base (this helps to drop the figure count, and also I like how they look). To make a full base I take 4 of these little bases and put them together on a sabot that holds them together (thanks to Olympian Games for cutting these for me from 2mm plywood).

British Napoleonic Infantry 3British Napoleonic Infantry 4

Unfortunately the Baccus miniatures are packaged for 60mm wide basing, which means there are 5 normal 20mm wide strips of figures for each single command strip. However, my basing uses 1 command and 3 normal for each base. This means I have a bunch of non-command strips extra. I’ve taken to putting 4 of these on a base to make non-command stands. These will fill out more bases, possibly by dropping the skirmishers and just all formed infantry. You can see the 3 types of bases I’ve got so far below.

British Napoleonic Infantry 5

As well as the standard pant wearing infantry, I’ve also got a bunch of kilt wearers (or highlanders as they’re better known). These represent the more elite units, because it’s the Napoleonic era and the sillier your hat/clothing the better you were at war stuff.

British Napoleonic Infantry 6

As you can see from the picture below, it’s not super obvious, but you can tell.

British Napoleonic Infantry 7

Not all my troops were British, though. I had the Brunswick troops. These guys wore black from head to toe, and so were a little easier to paint (those white crosses are tough on the British). I don’t have any skirmishers for these guys, I am thinking of picking some up and fleshing out how many Brunswick bases I can get together.

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British Napoleonic Infantry 9

The colour difference makes these stand out much more.

British Napoleonic Infantry 10

Individually, these miniatures don’t look great. They’re 6-7mm tall and so there’s not the details on the figures. Nor is it possible to paint and get everything perfectly right. I used my macro lens to get some close up pictures of each type of base and you will see what I mean. The particular Baccus miniatures I used were BR Line Infantry: NBR14 & NBR16, BR Highlander: NBR12 & NBR13, Brunswick Line: NBU03

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British Napoleonic Infantry 12
British Napoleonic Infantry 8
British Napoleonic Infantry 14
British Napoleonic Infantry 15

That’s not to say these aren’t great and detailed miniatures. Because they are – you have to remember the head on these guys is less than 1mm tall. Each miniature is about the height of a cooked piece of rice. You can only see these details because of how large the lens can make these appear. Where they look best is massed together, and this is where 6mm shines. The individual imperfections disappear and you just see a mass of unit of troops together on the board.

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The Monday Knights are a gaming group based in Melbourne Australia.  We are happy to play just about any game at any time.

We meet every Monday night at the Auburn Bowls club in Hawthorn East, Victoria, from 6pm onwards.

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