French Line Infantry by Commission Figurines from MDF

I actually painted this Commission Figurines Battalion before The Joy of Six but never quite got round to posting them. The BIG difference between these figures and other 6mm producers is that they are made of MDF. Yes MDF and they are rather nice.

I had this battalion on the table all game and only one person spotted them all day! Not that they actually look the same when closely looked at but at game distance they work perfectly well. They are sold as a cheap option to metal figures 96 figures set you back £2.00 opposed to just over three times for the same from Adler or Baccus. However that is not the best selling point, it's the speed you can paint these figures up in. I painted the 48 figures above in about 2/3rds the time it would take me to do the 28 figures I would of a Baccus battalion. So they win on both speed and cost but how well do they measure up across the board?

Well they obviously do not have the detail of the metal figures and the limitations of working with MDF and cutting via laser means it would be a big ask to get them to be more detailed than have been done so far. That said you can also get drummers and skirmishers now which would make these fit in with my other battalions much better.

It's also something of a learning curve, next time I will take a scalpel to the plumes and pompoms which I missed on this lot. I also need to put them slightly offset and weather them a little to get away from the chocolate box look. I sprayed them Army Painter Ultramarine Blue and was surprised with the amount of detail that showed through post spraying. Indeed I lost no detail what's so ever. At this point it just needed a dry brush of a lighter blue to give a little depth and help create the illusion of cloth rather than a straight forward painting (i.e. less old school look).

They do get backpacks, blanket rolls and ammo pouches though. As stand alone they work well and I would be happy to make a whole army out of these wooden wonders. The range remains fairly limited with many generic types of units though 21 codes is not a bad start at all and these include extra codes released since Joy of Six so is expanding.

They do sit reasonably well with Baccus and as they are slightly larger than Baccus sit well with Adler from a scale point of view. I still yet have to paint up the cavalry and artillery but will be doing this sometime in the near(ish) future as well as painting up the rest of this pack.

So I think you can start with one supplier be that metal or MDF and add in the other at a later date. Indeed the ones I have been given to paint up will find their way into my armies and I will be picking up a few more bits at Donnington in October. However I remain a big fan of both Adler and Baccus so they will remain my main go to guys for my Napoleonic needs but I can see Commission Miniatures getting a growing following and look forward to seeing more display games that use these figures in the future.

I have a game tonight and hopefully tomorrow night as well and with another already booked for next week I am finally getting back to the swing of gaming, can you tell the Holiday season has finally come to an end?