April update - Austrian Cannon

April was another very lacklustre month. I managed to pull my thumb out and finish banging out some cannon at the end of the month.

These are from frontrank and there is a heap of crew to paint up as well (primed only). 4 foot cannon, and 2 horse (with the funny benches).

I possibly ended up using an overly dark ochre colour, but I'm sure campaigning is a grubby business.















I also got around to cutting up a bunch of dowel as measuring sticks for General du Corp. The long sticks are for artillery (how fitting), medium command, small movement. I ended up with a single stick from Doug which is astonishingly smooth compared to my own. I do wonder if thats the wonders of people using/holding/fiddling with them till they smooth, or if I just ended up with crappy wood and paint.


 The last addition to the painted pile is some old GW oil drums. I *didn't* actually paint these myself. I someone managed to convince my buddy Garret to do so. I suppose that's ALMOST like painting it myself (he said lying to himself). Garret did a great job weathering these and used some colours I wouldn't have selected myself. I quite like that aspect and can appreciate why some hobbyists swap painting squads with their buddies.

Front Rank Russian Jaegers (28mm Napoleonics)

The last of the group of front rank Russians I recently completed. I've previously painted up the Perry version of skirmishing jaegers, and I didn't want to duplicate what I had. I also was intrigued by the musician with the french horn/cornet. Apparently these instruments were not very popular with light troops and often 'lost' quickly.

The posture of these guys are pretty fun. Again, you get a lot of choice from the front rank website. The faces look a bit muddy in these pictures, and the pants might be a tad muddy, but generally I'm pleased with how this base turned out.

Front Rank Russian Pavlov Grenadier (28mm Napoleonics)

Another 28mm offering set up for Doug's General du Corp fast play convention game. This project was a temporary casualty from the move but I've managed to finish it off. I'm quite pleased the with quality of the front rank miniatures. They cleaned up nicely and were very easy to order (and choose the exact poses!). My old mistake was a typo that got me some more infantry instead of riders for the horses I bought. Ooops.

Like most napoleonics the details of what colours to use are quite confusing as it covers a period of 10 (or more) years, with numerous organizational changes. In this case the flag was most confusing (yellow or orange seemed to be the real question). I ended up printing off a flag from the interwebz, and then going over it with some paint to enrichen the colour and cover up some of the pixellation. This was mostly driven by the ink jet starting to get clogged and running slow on certain shades. I'm pleased with how it turned out. 

My one complaint/criticism is that the standard bearer only came with a metal rod, so there was no device on the top. I tried sculpting one in green stuff, but it's a bit large/bodgy which will be much more noticeable when with other standard bearers.

Front Rank Russian Horse Artillery (28mm Napoleonics)

At last I've managed to finish off these figs. They were 'under way' when I totally fell off the 6mmrpc wagon as I geared up to move. It's great to be getting some painting done again, though still a bit challenging with all the time demands of living in a new town/home/job.

There seems to be a curious absence of Russian horse artillery produced by the big players (Victrix, Perrys, Warlord) so when I finally found a producer, I snapped up 2 sets. The guns are actually from my box of warlord russian artillery, as I felt a smaller calibre made more sense for the horse. The foot ended up with a big cannons that I also ordered from Front rank.

Overall the castings were varied, easy to clean, and seem pretty crisp. Fun figs to paint up actually, and having a distinct set of headgear will attract some attention I'm sure.