Black Powder - Napoleonic British

June 02, 2020

Black Powder - Napoleonic British - Progress so far....

At the beginning of the year I had 300 plus miniatures to paint - the majority of these were Napoleonic. I had previously purchased a French and British starter armies, plus the Waterloo box set (majority Warlord games) - having sifted through for breakages I was still able to form a sizeable force. In order to create sufficient brigades to play a viable game of Black Powder most units were scaled down to 4 bases of 4 (16 miniatures in total). For the time being all units of this size were I would classify as regular ignoring suggested frontage. I also took a similar approach to cavalry. In order to get more units I limited them to 5-6 miniatures. In the rule guidance that would suggest they were small, but for our own purposes they would they would be regular. this would mean (and this is particularly true of the available French forces ) that I could create a reasonable brigade without the need for additional miniatures.

Having painted a fair few Napoleonic soldiers now you have to acquire a real passion towards them to be able to paint that sheer number well. I have got only a fraction of what others have, but having to repeat the process over and over can get overwhelming. The way I approached it was to to split the infantry into their units (16 miniatures). I'd paint these and then as a break paint a cannon, light infantry or cavalry or paint some bolt action etc. Still the infantry seemed endless and it became a case of quantity over quality - from 3 feet away the en-mass effect was still good (and certainly better than grey plastic).

Like all my painting I try and keep to a fairly restrictive pallet to keep it as simple as possible. I am not a rivet counter wen it comes to painting and 'in the theme' of the British army was more of what i went for rather than historical detail - and to be honest the games we play it won't matter. My excuse is the limited selection of paints means I can't be wholly accurate 😉

Anyhow, progress so far:

Picture: The redcoats in all their glory - progress to date. There are at least another 2 units of infantry and a second cannon plus a few officers and ADC. At some point I will add command groups and flags which will bring it to the next level.