6MMRPC week 2: Mustering the troops (Russian Napoleonics)

I was planning on posting later in the week, but some sympathy pains with David's dark ages assembly (spider web of history) made me want to share my own plastic muster.

I recently ordered and received a bunch of Perry miniatures Napoleonic Russians. Doug (Dots of Paint - lots of great eye candy photos here) has been working on a convention ruleset with Seth (no idea if he has a blog) for fast play Napoleonics. I've posted a number of game reports, and it's great fun (and the model count is relatively low). The next big target is Borodino and he's mesmerized a few of us to create a few corp.
Sounds like madness, no?

In this ruleset a division is on a single base. So a corp is only around 4-6 bases, each of which has about 10 figs. My figs to the right are actually an infantry corp (1 jaeger, 1 line, 2 grenadier, 1 artillery), and a cav corp (1 dragoon, 1 cuirassier). The cav units take 3 guys each.

 Cutting and trimming of flash took up the last few days of hobby time. The plastics are mostly 2 part figs (there are a bunch of head options). A great review of the box is here.

The metal figs are very nice. It's always slightly disappointing comparing the rounded details of plastics to metals.

The cannon is a licorne (unicorn) which is a weird Russian howitzer/cannon hybrid. I don't think it was super successful. I was hoping it'd look a bit more distinctive but it should be more obvious at this scale, than the 15mm scale most of my (unpainted) naps figs are at.

 I recently managed to get my airbrush working (which involved putting together an air supply). My friend Ryan swears by airbrush priming now so I thought I'd give it a go.

I usually prime black, and decided to try a grey to see if I end up with brighter models. This grey is lighter than what I expected. I think my eye was tricked by the black label on the bottle bringing the colour down. Now that I look at the bottom of the bottle I guess it's correct.....still, hoping for a bit darker. I may have experiment mixing in some black next time......terrifying stuff to a neophyte. 


Priming by airbrush SEEMS to take much longer. I suppose you end up with more control and it's easier to rehit the spots you miss though. A few of the other advantages are much less stink (A huge perk when you live with a significant other) and you can proceed with painting almost immediately. The paint seems to be dry minutes after hitting the model. There may be some off gassing occuring, so I'd wait a bit longer, but certainly not the hours it takes for regular primer to dry and stop stinking.