Commission Miniatures Italian Napoleonic Artillery.

I have had these for ages and note quite got round to them, same goes for the cavalry but I have yet to get these into the painting queue.

Commission Figures make MDF buildings in 6, 10, 15 20 and 28mm but also make some very interesting 6mm MDF figures for the Napoleonic's and a new range of Marian Romans with plans to extend the Roman range and add ACW.

The guns need a little work in that you need to trim the width of the wheels. I was quite nervous to start with but it's fairly simple to do. Indeed I practised on the spares and cut those so fine they were well under 1mm thick. The wheels then need gluing in place, a lot less trouble than the old Baccus and present day Adler.

Four guns each with a crew of four, two six horse limbers and two mounted officers will set you back just £1.50 so very much lower price than their metal counterparts.

These are French figures painted up as Italians for our Project Russia 1812 game. These finish off my foot artillery and the one unit of horse artillery. In fact it finishes off my Italian part so I will be moving onto my Polish next. It took me less than an hour to paint up the guns and crews so you really can crack on with these.

The limbers are nice, like the guns and infantry they fit in well enough with the metals if you wish to do so. No they do not hold up to close inspection when compared to metals but why would you want to? You can build up an army quickly and at low cost or like me you can just add some nice reinforcements. 

Italian Guard Conscripts by Adler

I finish off the Italian Guard Infantry with the Guard Conscripts, the only guard battalions that wear shako. These are Adler Young Guard figures that work well for the Italians.

Like the other guard infantry I need two battalions for Project Russia 1812 and now only need to paint up a few guns and a small unit of cavalry. Then I will need to start on the Poles.

Being Adler they have loads of detail that stands out quite well making painting the detail that much easier. These actually painted up quicker than I expected.

A trick to speed up painting is to paint the shako cords before the shako and then paint the shako up to the cords. You still need to touch up a few of the cords but on the whole they are done.

I just inked the faces as my Nut Brown Ink was running low and had gone really think. I have restocked now so will be back to normal for the next lot of 6mm I do.

Italian Guard Infantry 6mm Baccus

Nearly finished with the Italian Guards for our Project Russia 1812 with just two more Battalions after these four. These are Baccus French three old castings and one new.

All four wear bearskins, first up is the Velites with a mainly white uniform. I find white somewhat tricky to paint as a base colour. I even used a different white to go over the crossbelts that is only noticeable if you pick up the figures for a close look. I probably won't bother again.

Italian guard units tended to have the sons of wealthy Italians within the ranks which suited Napoleon as it tied these families to his cause and the fathers of these men as the units were not usually involved in fighting. All this changed when Napoleon went east.

Wearing French uniforms also meant I had those tricky straps to paint on the backpacks. As usual I just painted the two straps, that third always looks wrong. 

Next up simply termed Guard Infantry and a different uniform in that these guys were a dark green jacket. I added a Leven tree to the base just for kicks. 

As you can see the Leven trees look really good, I still need to plant a load of these trees in multiples for larger area forests and woods.

I don't see any of the Italian Guard units getting much use as they really did not get that involved in battles, but they will get to fight at least once. I have the Guard Conscripts on order so these should get painted up within the next six weeks leaving me with very little left to do for the Italians for this project. I probably will be painting up a few more standard units for the Peninsular and any other battles or campaigns to come.

Italian Napoleonic's

I have had a load of old Baccus French Napoleonic sculpts for ages with the plan of painting them up as some form of French allies and have finally been given a nudge to get some of them done. More than a bit of a nudge actually as I needed a few units for this weekends game.

First up two battalions of the 3rd Ligne Regiment. These though will be used as light battalions in our game as they are easy to tell apart from the other Italian battalions due to being based in the new style. The old castings have two drummers where the new ones have just the one drummer.

I have painted these up in the suggested white uniforms with green waistcoats the same as some of my battalions, others have green jackets. In our rules the Italian infantry are on a par with standard French line and lights.

More old castings, this time Chasseurs and again they share the attributes of their French equivalents. These are the 2nd Italian Chasseurs.

Then the 3rd Italian Chasseurs, not the best shot of them to be fair. These are standing in as Wurttemberg light cavalry, the drunken leader was later superglued back into position.

Last up two batteries of Italian Artillery. I will try and get better images when I bring them back from Lee's as the pics I have were very poor. They are dressed in rather nice green uniforms so it's a shame not to show them off.

As The Boy choose to fight on my side in charge of two divisions of Prussians these new figures are taking the table for the first time on the opposing side! Never mind, I do get to play with my Prussians which is an event all of it's own.

We have played seven turns of the game so far and it's been a lot of fun so far with both sides having a fair amount of drama. The rules are holding up at the moment, more on that in following posts.