The final items for my FIW French

Here are the final pieces in my French and Indian War jigsaw puzzle. The wagon has been sitting around, half-finished for ages, mainly because I hadn't got round to undercoating the horses.

The wagon and horses are from Warbases, and the wagon is really a Gribeauval wagon limber, at least, that is what it said on the MDF sheet. However, I think it will be fine as a support option in lots of different guises, because I am not going to get all nitpicky about whether it is the right sort of wagon or not. Life is too short ..............

The figure with the barrel is a from a pack of Perry AWI metal civilians, so he fits in pretty well. I've painted him so that he looks like he might be a member of the French infantry without his uniform coat. The wagon and horses are from Warbases, who have some rather nice carts specifically for Sharp Practice that I will probably buy at some point. I've got another one of these wagons still not made up. I will probably modify it in some way and not use the cover.

Finally, here is the last part of my Régiment de Guyenne, a Colour Party. These are from the Warlord box set, including the flags, which are on the leaflet in the box. I've got a few figures left over, so I'll hang on to them in case I suddenly have a need for some more 18th century French characters.

So, I am now all ready for the monumental clash of French and British in the great North American wilderness at the end of january. 

Now, on to my next project, which I shall get started on next week, probably.

More from my French and Indian War project for Sharp Practice

I began this project towards the end of 2018, and I wrote about it here. Since then, with a few distractions onto other things, I've finally finished off the rest of my forces for the Sharp Practice day at Bristol Independent Gaming at the end of January.

Here are three groups of fusiliers from the Régiment de Guyenne, accompanied by a Senior Leader, Capitaine Philippe Au Brion (drawing his sword), a Junior Leader , Lieutenant Pierre Lardon (armed with a musket and a sword) and a Musician (drummer).

First, here they are in line, ready to fire;

And here they are in a marching column;

These are all Warlord 28mm metal figures, based on 25mm circular bases and mounted on Warbases movement trays. I chose to paint them in pale grey rather than pure white, because there was considerable variation in the actual colour of the cloth used for French uniforms in this period, and a pale grey-white seems entirely appropriate to me. Indeed, in many paintings you will see that the uniform coats were not actually pure white, and the terms "off-white" and "white-grey" are often used to describe the actual colour. I think that the cloth used was actually made from undyed wool, and you never see pure white sheep.

I am reasonably happy with how they have turned out, eventually, and I will explain why. Now, I don't like to say bad things about manufacturers generally, and this is really a rare gripe from me. However, I bought two boxes of these French infantry at Colours last year and while I have no issues at all with the sculpts, which are great, one box was considerably worse than the other one from a castings perspective. It wasn't just flash, the issue was quite large blobs of superfluous metal on a number of the figures, requiring a lot of work with a knife and a file to get the figures in a fit state to paint. In a couple of cases, the cleaning up was pretty extensive, requiring the use of metal snips to cut off the worst of the extra "growths".

Anyway, moan over. I still have a couple of odds and ends to finish off, including a Colour Party, which I hope to get finished next week.

A new Sharp Practice mini-project; French forces for the French and Indian War

The French and Indian War,  which was fought in North America between the British and French colonies began in 1754 and ran on until 1763. From 1756 onwards, it can be viewed as part of the much larger Seven Years' War. It started out as a conflict between the colonists and their local forces, but gradually regular troops from France and Britain began to be deployed as the conflict grew.

I am painting up a smallish 28mm French force for a Sharp Practice weekend in January next year at Bristol Independent Gaming. Each player has 65 points available for their troops and mine is going to consist of the following;

Leaders (total 22pts);

Status III - Capitaine Philippe Au Brion, the impoverished son of an Irish emigré military family. He is accompanied by a Musician (drummer) 10 pts

Status II - Capitaine Henri Thierry, 6pts

Status I -  Lieutenant Pierre Lardon, 3pts

                Lieutenant Jean Merluche 3pts

Troops (total 42pts);

3 groups of 8 Fusiliers of the Régiment de Guyenne (18pts)

3 groups of 6 Compagnie Franche de la Marine Skirmishers (24pts)

Support (total 1pt);

Burning torches 1pt (not sure how useful these will be)

This gives me a grand total of exactly 65pts.

Capt. Au Brion is the force commander and leads the fusiliers. He is assisted by Lt. Lardon. 

Capt. Thierry commands the skirmishers, with Lt. Merluche as his deputy.

Before starting on this little project, I looked around for the what I thought would provide the best fit for the kind of force I wanted to paint. I decided on the Warlord boxed sets of Compagnie Franche and Line Infantry, and I bought two of the latter, so that I'd have enough figures for my plans.

So far, I have completed the skirmishing force made up of troops from the Compagnies Franches de la Marine, autonomous companies of infantry who were attached to the  French Marine Royale and who served both on ships and as garrison troops in the various French overseas colonies. Until the FIW, these were the only regular French troops stationed in Nouvelle France, the French possessions in North America.

Anyway, here is where I am with this project so far.

First, here are Capitaine Thierry, on the left with the drawn sword and Lieutenant Merluche.

Next are their troops, in three groups of six skirmishers. Note that there is a lot of variation in the dress of these soldiers. in the first group I have added in one figure from the box of line infantry. This is because I didn't want any figures with an officer's gorget amongst the rank and file. I see this figure as being a low-ranking NCO, and therefore not a leader in SP terms. While on active service, the troops of the Compagnies Franches wore a relaxed service dress that included some items adopted from the Native tribes of the region. The hooded capot tunic was also popular. Troops were issued with swords, as were line infantry of the period, but these were often replaced with tomahawks.

Finally, I have painted up two Deployment Points. Both of these are resin items from Coritani Miniatures, whose products can be found here. Both of these DPs are using surplus figures. The one on the left is from the Compagnies Franches box and the other one, painted up to represent an office of the Régiment de Guyenne, is from the box of line infantry.

My next task is to get my line troops prepped and undercoated.