Lancashire Games French SYW Heavy Cavalry

Recently finished up a couple of heavy cavalry units for The Boy. These are Lancashire Games French cavalry from their Seven Years War range. Having painted up quite a few of this suppliers figures I do find them really quick to paint. The detail is reasonable and I do miss out a few of the smaller details to speed things up but they still come out looking fine.

We use Black Powder rules which allow you to be creative with your basing. Were not over happy with the army list book for this period but it does supply you with stats for the units but beyond that it really does not help in producing a realistic or balanced army. Indeed the author actually states he is no expert on the period!

This regiment is the Royal Cravate, having looked at a display game that used a larger than standard number of figures we decided to copy them. Light cavalry have twelve figures a regiment, dragoons have fourteen and the heavies sixteen making each cavalry unit average about £7.50 a pop. Of course any units that use most of the other suppliers the cost is somewhat more.

The second regiment is Meustre ds Camp and as usual The Boy picked which units he wanted me to paint. He still has a lot of unpainted cavalry so I will be back to this army again fairly soon. 

The flags are from Cadogan Hobbies who sell on ebay and are very good value for the quality. I have the flags for just about all the cavalry and infantry for Prussia and France and for under £28 and that's hundreds of flags!

The Boy is a bit low on unpainted infantry so will look to pick some more of those once I get a couple more battalions painted. I also bought some Blue Moon command figures for him that will give him another two command stands and allow for a mounted officer on one of his infantry bases. Will have to look for other command figures at some point to further expand his command options.

If you do go down the route of buying Battle Packs from Lancashire Games be aware that most of these packs are just the standard figures, command figures have to be bought on top of these packs, annoying if you don't realise and have to make a second order. However shooting Alan a email to check prior works well as he is quick to respond.

6mm Napoleonic Prussian Artillery

To follow on from the last post on French SYW Artillery I felt I had to go with my latest addition to my Prussian Napoleonic Artillery.

I don't need a massive amount more artillery for my Prussians in total so these are a bit of a tidy up. All four guns and crews are Baccus, the limbers are from Commission Figurines and the horses and riders are Adler. Yes the bits box was raided!

The Adler bits were actually bought ready painted  but were missing some of the limbers (some were used as wrecked ones on bases due to damage) so I broke into a pack of Commission Figurines as I can still use the horses etc without the limbers.

As you would expect these did not take much time to paint up and are now tucked away in a box awaiting future play. Problem is that I have enough for Waterloo which is about as big as my Prussians are likely to get for a long time yet. However my Prussians are not really about painting for a game so much as I have them and want to carry on till I have enough for the whole of 100 days campaign and possibly then look at earlier campaigns, who knows. Whilst it's fun I will continue to paint the odd unit or battery up.

At the moment I have the last of the infantry and cavalry for our game for Joy of Six in a couple of months. The plan is to have them all finished before the end of this month and then sit back and enjoy painting just what I want, expect a right mix of toys.

French SYW Artillery - Lancashire Games 15mm

The Boy's army continues to grow, he has had noticeable success in a recent game with his guns, blasting my poor infantry to bits as I advanced towards his troops so it was not surprising that he should favour yet more guns.

As such I painted up a couple of battalion guns and a medium giving him a little more flexibility. He will need a couple more battalion guns when I paint up a few more infantry battalions for him.

As he has a artillery Battle Pack from Lancashire Games so still has plenty of guns left to go at. I also have one as well as the Blue Moon gun pack so we won't go short.

In fact these have taken the table once already but suffered from the usual luck that first time used troops tend to suffer. Still The Boy's army continues to grow, he even has two regiments of heavy cavalry on my workbench at the moment that will soon be finished.

His next troops though are likely to be 6mm British Napoleonic's he is hankering after a few horse artillery batteries having played against my French ones a few weeks back.