Rude Scotsmen for Fran

Finally they're finished!

Here are the two Rude Scotsmen I painted for Fran. Please send me your address, mate!

The figures are from the excellent range of Westfalia Miniatures. They're sculpted by Paul Hicks and have an excellent amount of detail below and especially above the kilts.

As usual I painted them with Vallejo Model Colours but didn't deploy Armypainter Quickshade this time. Instead I tried to build up the colours in three stages from dark to light. Actually more work to do but for those excellent sculpts I enjoyed to spent more effords than for simple rank and file troops.

The base is prepared with my usual mix of sand and stones and painted with my usual earth tone. As little bonus I added an additional musket from a Perry plastic sprue. It just didn't make sense to me that one of the boys should taunt the enemy unarmed...

Although I'll be sending them to Fran gladly it's hard to say goodbye to the boys. Probably I'll have to order another set of them sooner or later.

Anyway I hope you like them. Actually they're some of the best results I was able to perdorm thus far...

Sledge for reatreat from Moscow "1812 - White Death"

As one of the final piece for our participation game at Tactica convention in Hamburg I assembled and painted a sledge. It shall represent a sledge which the Grande Armée seized during their retreat from Moscow in 1812. It’s drawn by a single horse and provides enough space for three or four soldiers or some goods. I decided to put a single French soldier in the sledge who is defending its load against some marauding Cossacks. Luckily he has a second loaded musket at his side…

The sledge model itself is a kit from small but excellent Westfalia Miniatures. Kawe and his fellows offer awesome and unique kits and figures for French, British, Russian and Saxon Napoleonic miniatures as well as some fine vehicle kits. The soldier on the coachman’s seat is a conversion from a Victrix plastic Old Guard grenadier. I removed the epaulettes and changed the had to have him represent a simple soldier from a line infantry regiment. The barrels are actually two halves of a Renedra plastic barrel and the blankets are made of soaked tissues. For painting I used Vallejo model colours as usual and prepared the base with corundum sand, some snow covered grass tufts by Mininatur and some cork bits as rocks. I tried to plough the centre of the base a bit to represent the snow well-trodden by the horse.

As special feature I left the load of the sledge unglued and mounted it on a thin base itself. For the future I’m planning to make some substitute loads: wounded French, seated officers or just goods.

Fortunately at Tactica the sledge performed very well. He was part of the retreat column which played a major roll in the scenario I directed during the convention. I didn't finish looking through all the pictures now but during the next days I'll show you some impressions from this nice event.