French Flags! I've been hesitant to settle on the flags for my French force, but I finally decided to order a bunch of them from GMB Designs. The reason I waited for so long was primarily since I was not sure on which flags to get. Initially I found a lot of conflicting information, some stating that the 1804 ("diamond") flags were used throughout the campaign, and others stating the 1812 ("tricolor") flag. With the help of TMP and one of the Napoleonic Wargamer Facebook groups, I ended up going for the 1812 flag. One key point was a Russian book with drawings of all flags captured in 1812, and all of them were of the tricolor 1812 type. Flags for the 1812 campaign is a cloudy issue to begin with, as Napoleon had ordered the regiments to be more careful to avoid more eagles being captured. That meant that only one battalion per regiment would carry an eagle, while the rest would carry a fanion, a simple coloured flag. The cavalry, especially the light cavalry, would leave their flags in the depot altogether. Of course, some commanders were more interested than others in following these orders, and as far as I know there are no complete records on which regiments used fanions or not, so in the end you can pretty much decide on which way to go. Me, I'll be using flags and eagles on my cavalry squadroons, because it looks good. But I also got a couple of fanions for my infantry, so I'll add some of them too. The flags were pretty simple to use. I cut them out with scissors, and painted gold around the edges on the back, to avoid the white to show through when they're glued together. Then I applied plenty of PVA glue to the back of the flag, and carefully folded them around the flagpoles. Then, while still wet, I folded the flags a bit, to make them billow in the wind. The only problem I had was that some flagpoles were a tad too short, so the flag ended up a bit frayed at the top where it met the eagle, which mas most notable on the line infantry miniature. I applied a few brushstrokes of blue to the spots where the white of the paper stood witness to my forceful struggle, and it turned out ok. Infantry Reinforcements Officers We are gearing up for the SP2 campaign set in Russia 1812, and when I made my lists I noticed just how many officers I will need! In the campaign I will be able to split my force into several parts, so I could use a bit of overlap, using the same model for several different officers. But that's not so fun, is it? I had two officers left from a Warlord French infantry box, so I painted them up as a center company officer (the green plume guy) and a grenadier officer (the red pompon guy). The mysterios giant is a voltigeur miniature from the Flintloque game, and he'll play the part of my spy, until I can get something more suitable. I've been using him before in a pinch when I don't have enough Voltigeur NCOs. NCOs These guys were left over from other painting batches, so I took the time to paint them up as well. They will shore up my lack of NCOs among my fusiliers and voltigeurs, as you can easily turn a normal French infantryman into a NCO by adding stripes on the arms. Neat! They are all from Warlord's plastic French Infantry box, except the Perry voltigeur on the far left. Grenadiers I squeezed in a third unit of grenadiers as well, this time mainly Perry plastics, but supported by the odd Warlord plastic Late French Infantry and a piper from Front Rank. Voltigeurs Another Perry plastic addition to the force. This is my second unit of voltigeurs in skirmishing poses. I have a lot of voltigeurs already, but these will look so much better in my skirmish screens than the ones in march attack poses that I've been using until now. A third and fourth unit would be nice too, as I usually try to screen every line formation with 1-2 units of skirmishers, but it's a big step up.
Now I need to pour over my campaign army list, and see if there's anything I'm missing! Cheers, Jonas
2 Comments
Jonas Svensson
13/2/2018 09:29:48
Thanks! The Perry poles are also a bit thick to my liking, while the metal ones I got from warlord are a bit too thin instead. I'll see if I can find some replacement poles in the future, 1.2mm sounds perfect.
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