Waterloo Project: Leading the herd?

Apologies for the lack of blogging. I'm facing the wargamer-blogger's dilemma: do I spend time on blogging or painting figures? With the Waterloo game deadlines looming I have been very busy with the latter, and I still owe the world posts on the last Waterloo 1:3 rules test game and lots on my creation of the terrain for our 1:100 Waterloo games scheduled for two weekends in June which has taken me most of March and April.

But for now, the humorous nature of this mass production figure painting at 1:3 scale struck me as worthy of some fun photos.

A squadron the French 2nd regiment of Dragoons I'm currently working on in readiness for a saunter up Mont Saint Jean. These are four boxes of Perry plastic cavalry stuck together en masse. However, for some reason, I think because the horses and saddlecloths are different to the troopers', I stuck the officers to the horses but left all the rank and file nags without riders for undercoating.  To make them easier to handle I stuck all the horses to the final bases before painting.

I used a couple of different colour spray paints to do the undercoat and then, no fancy oils but a variety of Citadel washes and thinned paints at random. Then similar treatment with a variety of colours for drybrushing. The aim being to produce a look of natural randomness within the chestnut/bay range for the whole lot.. Finally white blazes, stockings, etc, and hooves where necessary. I keep Henry Hyde's wonderfully succinct guide to horse painting next to my desk (see page 245 of  "The Wargaming Compendium") as it is an extremely useful reference. One officer and two trumpeters horses are greys.

I've done a number of spare horses and rides as casualties.

It wasn't till I'd finished them (excepting the Army Painter Quickshade when the whole figure is together ) that I realised I had produced an effect unknown to me in 40 plus years of figure painting - that the officers look as if they are leading a herd of riderless horses.  It's 52 horse figures and I'd never painted so many in one batch before.  The riders are well on the way to completion now so another squadron will soon take its place on the shelf.

And I never followed up my post on KGL Hussars with photos of my second squadron.  So here are two shots from our test game in March. In all we will have three squadrons like this on the day.

These are also Perry plastic made from several boxes kindly discounted to the project by James Fergusson
napoleonicwargamesblog  and painted by me. Status markers by  wargamer-aide-de-camp

And now to encourage me to finish them here's a view of a companion squadron of  Dragoons following up the Cuirassiers in our March test game.  With promised collaboration from other members of our Waterloo project syndicate I'm expecting to field about 160 Dragoons for our La Haye Sainte endeavour.

Now the expert is still frantically at work, coincidentally on a similar task. Kevin East has just sent me two photos of his latest work in progress.  48 Perry metal French Cuirassiers for a squadron of the 1st Regiment.

As for me, back to the brushes.....