10mm Napoleonic Army painted in Lockdown

[madaxeman]

Bizzarrely, I've never owned any Napoleonic figures, played any Napoleonic games or even read any books about the Napoleonic Wars. I mean, I've not even watched a single episode of Sharpe!

But, finally the inevitable has caught up with me, and with the help of a nudge from the arrival of a set of rules which more than one person at my club might potentially agree to play (in the form of Bataille Empire) I have finally taken the plunge and dipped my toe into Napoleon's wars.

Of course, being respectful of the principles of Napoleonic gaming in which every player must have their own individual approach to rules, scale, basing, terminology history, uniform and painting I had to find a means of doing something unique and (in some way at least partly) incompatible with my clubmates – so with everyone else already having 15-18mm troops based for Blucher, FoGN and various other sets I went my own way and built an army in 10mm with a large investment in Pendraken lead in the form of a French starter army picked up at Warfare 2019. I then topped this up with a few more orders from the nice chaps at Pendraken (and added in a couple of extra purchases from Old Glory and The Wargaming Company, both made at Cold Wars 2020 just before Lockdown struck) to leave me with the daunting painting challenge of maybe 500+ foot and mounted figures to do under Lockdown conditions, hopefully to leave me with a viable Bataille Empire army that is still utterly different to the stuff owned by the people I'll be (eventually) playing.

The paint job is very much an industrial, en-masse effect rather than trying to make each figure a work of art in it's own right, which was driven both by deliberate intention and also my capacity to do anything else at this scale. I took a load of photos through the painting process, and learnt quite a lot about painting 10mm massed, uniformed figures as well – all of which is is now online on http://Madaxeman.com on a page with about 70 photos of the WiP and finished army, as well as my thoughts and learnings from the near-industrial process of getting them all done.

The full page of photos and comments is online here : link

Here are a few of the 70-odd pictures on my site:

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Good on ya Tim

[sunjester]

They look superb! Well done that man!  

[Techno]

I totally agree ! 

Cheers - Phil

[Ithoriel]

For a paint job described as "very much an industrial, en-masse effect rather than trying to make each figure a work of art in it's own right" those are rather spiffy!

Vive L'Empereur! En Avant!

[mmcv]

Excellent!

[GordonY]

Jealous, currently struggling with 600 15mm Infantry, havent even ordered any of the "Donkey Wallopers" yet.

Gordon

[Steve J]

Excellent work and at this 'scale', it's the overall effect that matters IMHO.

[Ace of Spades]

That's quite a colourful bunch, nice!

Cheers,
Rob

[sultanbev]

I've found I can paint 80 10mm infantry in the same time and less effort than 40x 15mm figures of the same unit.
One trick I do is base the front rank on their base before painting, so that speeds up painting. The rear ranks have to be painted loose in your normal way.

Mark