Napoleon & Friends

This may be my last post for a while as the moving date looms large and what more fitting a picture to show you than this one I snapped about three years ago of Napoleon and some of his marshals reviewing the Imperial Guard.

In the back row (from left to right) are FN224 General (painted as Lannes), Baraguay d’Hilliers, Soult, Murat, Junot, Davout, and Massena . In the front are Bessieres, Napoleon, Dorsenne and Cambronne. What strikes me the most is that in all this time I have only managed to repaint three of the figures shown here. There’s a lot more painting to be done.

Mindful of Matt’s horror story about losing some of his soldiers during a house move I have been negotiating with Mrs S over the safe passage of my Hinton Hunt collection in the car rather than the removals van. However, with the back seat to be stuffed with Mrs S’s knitting, our two dogs, the kettle and various heirlooms this may not be a done deal yet.

Ney or not?

I know I said recently that I wasn’t going to buy anymore Hinton Hunt figures and that was my intention. However, I was idly perusing eBay last week when I came across a listing for Marshal Ney. Now Ney is one of the personality figures that I didn’t have and quite wanted to have so I put in a bid not really expecting to win, especially given the sort of prices that HH have been going for in the last year or so.

Well I did win but I think perhaps I should have paid more attention and looked a bit closer. The problem is that I’m pretty sure the horse is not Hinton Hunt (and this is probably why I won) because the positioning of legs doesn’t look right and it’s certainly not a French horse anyway. The base is Hinton shaped with rounded corners but the underneath has been filed too flat to show any markings if any were ever present. I am hopeful however that the figure of Ney is actually Hinton Hunt FN354 Marshal Ney but having looked at other available pictures on the Hinton Hunter and LazyLimey I not entirely sure. The genuine item has the head looking straightforward whereas this chap is looking slightly to the right although it is possible that the head has been repositioned.

Anyway I thought I’d throw it open to the floor – is it Ney or is it not Ney? If not, any ideas what make? If it’s not HH perhaps you could let me down gently as I may not live down my mistake.

Intermission

Well all the Hinton Hunts are packed away ready for the move and my hobby room has become a bit of a sad place now with an empty display case and boxes piled up on the floor. It’s getting to the point where I can no longer pretend to be doing "important" packing in the evening and may have to turn my attention to sorting out our possessions in the rest of the house.

Consequently no painting of miniatures is happening at the moment so I have had to trawl through my old photos looking for something suitable to post. This is another picture of General Ponsonby taken during the recent review of the British cavalry division. I think he is possibly my favourite personality figure.

In the true style of an intermission I am however able to offer you some music. My son Joe is in the final year of a Music Composition degree and as part of his dissertation has to produce several bits of work. Take a look at his MySpace account and listen to the track called Party Over Here – any feedback (here or there) would be appreciated.

Marschall Vorwarts

I said a couple of posts back that I was working on another personality figure and here it is - Field Marshal Blucher PN60 mounted on horse PNH1. I’ve had the figure of Blucher for some time but only recently acquired a horse for him thanks to Clive. Both figures are Clayton produced castings but the quality is excellent and if I didn’t know where they came from I would have been convinced that they were vintage figures. It does make me wonder whether David Clayton had much original HH stock when he took over production and if that became mixed with his own stock – does anybody know?

Painting this one was quite nostalgic for me as it is the only personality figure I had in my original collection. Of course I parted with that figure along with all my other original Hinton Hunt figures years ago so I’m really pleased to have him back. What’s also been very pleasing is that during my recent sort out I worked out that I have enough HH Prussians to build and army of 6 x 24 infantry units, 1 x 18 cavalry unit and 3 or 4 gun batteries. Over half the figures are Clayton castings and the quality of some are not so great but it does mean that I should be able to achieve the original aim of this project and recreate my old army. I only have to paint them of course – ha!

That clears the painting desk now until after the move – it’s still four weeks or so before we go but the next task is to pack my entire collection (and then the rest of our house contents of course).

Foundry Freebie (Off Topic #14)

One of the many gifts lavished upon me this Christmas by Mrs S was the Wargames Foundry set of Napoleonic paint colours. This was perhaps a bit extravagant but I really like the fact that it gives a decent Prussian blue and Russian green (among many others) as these were both colours that I had found difficult to match using my existing paints. Now the clever chaps at Foundry included a ‘free’ 28mm British infantry figure in the set so of course I had to use him to test drive the colours.

Normally with my Hinton Hunt figures I block paint them reserving a bit of shading only for the personality figures. This means I don’t really get a chance to use the Foundry three shade colour system to its full potential but with this figure I was at last able to have a go. I actually found that it took me no longer to paint this figure than it takes to paint an average HH figure and I think this is partly because the detail on the model is so easy to follow (as opposed to the HH detail which is devilishly tricky). I really enjoyed painting it and would love to do a whole “In the Grand Manner” unit (all your fault Noel) but I have to be sensible as I’m already doing Napoleonic’s in 15mm and 20mm and to add in 28mm would be absurd, wouldn’t it…?

On a completely different topic, I have been clearing through the wargame room in preparation for our move and decided it was time to get rid of my hoard of wargame magazines. I have loads of them that I never look at and I don’t fancy lugging them back up the M5 (most of them were lugged down the M5 eight years ago). If anyone wants any old issues of Wargames Illustrated or Miniature Wargames please email me, as I am happy to send them to you for just the cost of the postage. I’m putting some on eBay but failing that they will be entering the Devon recycling system soon.

Some quality geek time

Over the last couple of evenings I have begun the long overdue task of sorting through my Hinton Hunt lead pile. Task is perhaps the wrong word as of course this is unadulterated geeky pleasure. It’s one thing to have the collection neatly listed on a spreadsheet (and of course I do) but quite another to actually sort through the figures for real.

I decided to do this primarily to get the figures ready for packing prior to our move next month but I also thought it was about time that I sorted them out properly into units to help give me more structure to this project. So I’ve been sorting the infantry into companies of 6 figures and bagging and tagging them and have already had a few surprises – some figures incorrectly identified the first time around as Clayton castings turned out to be vintage HH and (sadly) some vintage figures turned out to be copies.

When I started this project I never really expected to have enough figures for a decent wargame but the thing has snowballed and with the assistance of many other helpful and generous HH fans the armies have grown. The one big problem that remains is my lamentably slow rate of painting progress which means it will be years before I finish them all. One thing is sure though, I won’t be adding any more figures to the collection (in fact I haven’t bought any for well over a year now) and by fixing a proper goal I may just see the project all the way through to the end. When I work out what the end is I’ll let you know.

15mm French Guard Chasseurs (Off Topic #13)

I’ll start with an apology because I am sorry to say I have no new Hinton Hunt offerings to post. This has mainly been caused by the disruption of the festive period but also by a slight slump in painting enthusiasm. With a house move looming on the horizon in February output will probably remain quite low and I don’t think I will be tackling any full units until after the move.

That said I have managed to finish this unit of 15mm Battle Honours French Imperial Guard Chasseurs. I say finish because they were an eBay purchase made before Christmas and I was the victim of a dodgy photo because they’ve needed far more work than I had anticipated. The biggest problem was trying to find a way to attach two new wire sabres and the top of the flag but I think I got there in the end. However at a quid each it wasn’t a bad deal I guess and I’m quite pleased with the way they turned out.

This unit is to be added to my Waterloo period 15mm armies for use with the Age of Eagles rule set. My initial aim is to amass enough troops for the Quatre Bras scenario included in the book and I’m not too far off this now.

I do have another HH personality figure in the pipeline that I hope to be able to post on soon so watch this space.