28mm Napoleonic French Cavalry 1814-1815

A nostalgic twinge over the last couple of weeks saw me going back to one of the classic wargaming periods: The Napoleonic Wars, so I thought I'd take advantage of the very best Napoleonic figure ranges available, namely 'Perry Miniatures'. I have a habit of selling off all of a collection from time to time and always regret it, even though I could expect to restock there are always a plethora of military wargaming periods which seem to get in the way.  So at last I bought some French Imperial Guard Empress Dragoons and some British 1st Regiment King's Dragoon Guards to start with.

The French Cavalry - Imperial Guard Empress Dragoons.

Of course restocking my depleted Napoleonics I'd have to start with the French so onwards with some Imperial Guard Empress Dragoons:

Each regiment of cavalry will be made up of 9 riders with horses, perry sell cavalry in boxes of three so there is some logic used here.

pack FN143 Empress Dragoon Troopers (2 packs of these)

pack FN142 Empress Dragoon Command (1 pack of these)

the riders were mounted on corks and painted separately from the horses, it makes it much less fiddly to do it this way.

A black enamel undercoat was applied all over each figure.

The first colours were blocked in.

I must admit I finished 3 troopers first to see how the colour scheme panned out.

This particular regiment had mostly chestnut coloured horses with a few bays thrown in and of course the trumpeters horse was the usual grey colour.

The Chestnut horses were painted in tan enamel paint washed over in burnt sienna oil paint - you must use artists quality paint for the oils! to get the best effect. The burnt sienna oil was mixed with tan and yellow colours for the highlights.

Basing achieved using 2mm plasticard 25mm x 50mm for each single figures 50mm x 50mm for doubles and 75mm x 50mm for threes. Basing effects created using polyfilla stones (ballast) tea leaves and grass tufts (available through this blog) and the odd bush etc.

Finally 'Testors Dullcote' matt varnished sealed the whole job.

I'm going to experiment with a number of Napoleonic rule sets, 'March Attack' by Crusader publishing will be the first rules I will have tried for some time.

Next in the pipeline will be a Regiment of British Dragoon Guards.

Cheers for now,
Peter.