From StuartL - Les petits Français - 72 Points

Hi all,

    So, after taking a week or so off from the challenge and painting to deal with some real life stuff, I managed to get back behind the brushes a bit this week. Todays post was largely inspired by minis painted by fellow challenger GregB. When I first joined the challenge back in 2018/19, Greg was working on some Franco-Prussian War minis in various scales. I had not previously heard much about this conflict, and I was rather impressed by Greg's fine work. 

    A couple of years ago, I was browsing My Mini Factory, and came across a 3D designer there by the name of Turner Miniatures. He was just starting to add some FPW minis to his tribe, so I subscribed, eventually getting everything that he released. I got some minis printed out in time for last year's challenge, but as I was unable to enter, they just sat there gathering dust. 

    So, with my entry to the challenge this year, I resolved to get some of these chaps done. Turner Minis are somewhere in the 6-8mm scale range normally, but these were printed at 135% so should be a bit over 10mm. The figures come in strips of 4 and I based them as full battalions.

   

    Each of these units is made up of 24 soldiers mounted on a piece of plasticard roughly 9cm by 4cm. The flags are all hand made. No-one I know locally is going to know what they should look like, and sourcing flags for minis that are not at any exact scale seemed like a bit of an effort.

    Normally, only the 2nd battalion of a regiment would carry a full standard with an eagle, and the other battalions would have fanions. But again, no-one I am going to play with will know or care about that. Simple French Tricolore make it easy to determine allegiance on the tabletop.

    I'm not a huge fan of painting smaller scale minis. I tried these at 6mm and didn't enjoy it. Even at 10mm, it felt like a huge departure from my usual style when I do 28mm. Perhaps these will grow on me if I do more of them, I'm not sure. I have a bunch more French waiting to be painted and after that I will need to arrange printing out some Prussians to oppose them.

    Scoring wise, there are 72x 10mm minis, at 1 point per model, so that should just be 72 points.

    My ongoing duels information:

Skulls - 206 (+0)
BSRoD - 16 (+0)
Squirrels - 11 (+1) - D&D Animals, 30K Militia, Plague Clowns, Afghans, Robots, Anglo-Saxons, Medieval Polish, Clan Smoke Jaguar, 81st West Africans, Undead, 10mm FPW French

    Hopefully life will stop getting in the way and I can work on some more substantial entries for next week.

From Millsy:

Good to have you back on the tools Stuart!

Despite what you say about not enjoying smaller scale stuff these look great. I know next to nothing about the period but I like what I see and may have to dig a little deeper now. Probably a bad idea as we all know where that leads.

Such fine fellows all deserve their own eagle despite what the button counters might say. Anyone as well turned out as these chaps wouldn't leave home with a mere fanion.

Great stuff and another 72 points added to your tally mate.

Cheers,

Millsy

From MikeP: A Few Tiny Napoleonics (24 pts) (Glorantha)

 Hello friends:

I have a very tiny entry as one of Tamsin's Tuesday Tigers, tiny in both scale and points.   It's been a busy week and I'm working on the rest of my Germanic war band for next week, hopefully.

This Christmas Santa gave me an Elegoo Mars Pro 3 printer and I eagerly fired it up to print the test file that comes with the machine.   Alas, my first attempt produced a block of resin, and drained all the resin in the tank.   The best advice I got was that the LCD screen that shipped with the machine was defective and was just pouring light all over the tank.

Elegoo came through and sent me a replacement LCD screen, but the downside was that I had to remove the old one and install the new one, slow trembling step by slow trembling step, watching a YouTube video as I went.  It was nervewracking, because I'm not terribly technical, but I was successful and the test piece printed, so I felt quite heroic (hence the Glorantha part of this post - more to follow).

I know that there are some 3D printing veterans in this Challenge, but I'm finding it all new and exciting, so here are my first 3D prints, from Turner Miniatures.  Henry Turner is a prolific designer of 3D figures that can scale from 6mm to 15mm.  He's primarily known for his two Europe Asunder Kickstarters, the first being infantry and artillery, the second, which I've backed, being focused on cavalry.   

Here are two of Henry's free 6mm cavalry figures, an Austrian cuirassier trumpeter and a French cuirassier eagle bearer.

Until now the only 6mm cavalry figures I've painted are metal castings from Baccus.  I was pleasantly surprised by how much detail Henry packs into these little guys.  They were enormous fun to paint.

I'm calling these figures 6mm, though from the base to the top of the head is almost 15mm.  However, they compare quite favourably to my 6mm Baccus figures and on the table I doubt I could tell them apart. Right, that's the test figures done, can't wait to start printing and painting these guys by the squadron and by the battalion!

So how do I justify Glorantha with this tiny entry?  Because heroes come in all shapes and sizes, and these two dashing cuirassiers are as heroic as they come (really, would you argue with them?), and because I took the 3D printing plunge and then fixed my machine.  QED, I am, to quote Lord Flashheart, a bally hero.

Finally, here's a bit of fun.   Henry Turner offers this free .STL file, "Caporal Frosty".   He's appropriate for this snowy cold day where I live.   I scaled the file up to 15mm before printing.

 Perhaps, before he abandoned the Grande Army in Russia, Napoleon asked for a body double so his troops didn't know they'd been abandoned, and this was what he got?   Or maybe it was bait to lure the Cossacks off the trail?   Hmm, that almost sounds like a Babylon 5 entry, but I'll refrain.

Two 6mm mounted (2 points), and 1 15mm foot figure (2 points) and Glorantha = 24 points, I think.

Cheers, 

MikeP

Smashing work, Mike! Somehow, I don't think Napoleon's troops were fooled for one minute by his body double! 

Tamsin