Painting Warlord Games Napoleonic Infantry

I got a couple of freebies at Crisis, well, my chum got one and I got one but both ended up in my grubby little mitts.

They were sample sprues from Warlord Games, one Napoleonic British infantry and the other Hanoverian infantry.

 

The sprues each comprise of five bodies (marching pose, one is an 'elite' ranker), five regular heads, one bandaged with cap and one bareheaded head, five backpacks (with subtle variations) and an additional pair of 'elite' wings.

There was no flash and only a few mould lines which scraped off easily.

It took but a minute or two to snip the pieces out and glue them together. I did take the precaution of washing the complete sprue in some warm soapy water first.

A close-up of the figure shows that there is a lot of detail on the figure but I am depending on the painting technique to bring it out.

I took my cue from an article on the Warlord Games website.

http://www.warlordgames.com/painting-napoleonic-british-step-by-step/

I made one or two slight changes to fit my own style namely to not use a spray undercoat/basecoat. I'm not a great fan of spray painting although it does have its place.

I started with red all over the jacket area.

Then dark-ish grey over the trousers, being neat along the junction of the jacket and then flesh all over the head and hands.

Then it was simply a case of block painting in the finer details, collars, cuffs, straps, backpack, musket etc. The most difficult part is probably the lace and the straps. I'm 64 and I can manage so I dare say most of you will manage too.

The end result looks a little like this although I did touch up one or two overpainted areas.

I diverged again from the Warlord treatment in that I drybrushed the black shako cover with dark grey to bring out a little of the detail.

The final stage is a brush applied coat of Army Painter Strong Tone and looks like this.

I gave the figures a couple of coats of matt varnish.

I was a wee bit disappointed with the overall tone of the figure, a bit dark I thought.

In an attempt to resolve this I painted the second sprue, the Hanoverians, in a similar fashion with a couple of differences. After all the painting was completed I varnished the figure before applying the Strong Tone slightly watered down and also painted some of the shading rather than expect the Strong Tone to do it. I think it made the figure a little less dark.

What do you think?

The figures themselves are lovely, just enough variation in the poses to simulate a unit marching along but not in a parade ground manner. The heads can also be positioned a slight angles to further add variety.

I think I am quite inclined to buy a few boxes of these figures to make up complete units which will adorn someones army. Now when is my next show?