Napoleonic French Army - A New Beginning

 

Having sold my previous French army to fill the wargaming coffers for future campaigns, I was determined to re-build it as quickly as possible. Question was how? My Russian and Prussian forces were composed of mainly Wargames Foundry infantry, due to my reluctance to "go plastic", whilst most of the cavalry was Perry. Having looked at what was available (and the Christmas 25% sale!!), I decided to go the same way with the French. Although the figures are a little "retro", they are full of character and there is a LOT of choice, with loads of in-pack variations. If you want that scruffy campaign look, it seemed a good way to go.

At the time of writing I have just finished a couple of  French line battalions, bringing the total to 8, with an additional 2 light and 4 Italian line, making 14 in total. This Christmas just gone, I took  advantage of the annual sale to add a further 4 French line and 2 Italian light battalions (still to be painted). I also bought enough French line  artillery to furnish all the batteries I will ever need.

I have also done a couple of regiments of light cavalry to round out phase 1 of the army. These will feature in a later post.

Here are a few photos of the infantry. They are organised in "battalions" of 24 this time - I just couldn't face painting a load of 36s again!! I am intending to cobble together a quick play set of Napoleonic rules which will allow us to play medium sized games (20 units a side) in an evening and larger games (35-40 units a side) in a day. A unit of infantry will represent around 1,200 men and a unit of (12) cavalry around 600. The idea is to be able to field up to a couple of infantry corps per side, supported perhaps by a cavalry corps and maybe the odd guard or grenadier division. I will keep the blog updated with my progress (and maybe even the odd after action report!).

                                        Above - one of the Italian line infantry units.

                                                          French light infantry.

And finally French line infantry.

They don't have the table "presence" of 36 figure units, but they are so much easier to do! Will hopefully get the total up to 20 this year. Also hoping to add a load of cavalry units, lights and heavies, using heresy of heresies - plastics! so stay tuned to see how I get on.