57e régiment d'infanterie de ligne

Gentlemen, I present to you the 57^e régiment d'infanterie de ligne!

To be honest the reason I decided to paint this unit was quite simple; I saw this regiment's nickname "le terrible que rien n'arrête" which roughly translates as "the Formidable/terrible that nothing can stop" and I decided to paint them! After all, you must agree that this is a pretty catchy name for a regiment. Lets hope they prove themselves this coming Sunday in our monthly game!

It appears that this regiment has a rather long history. A quick search on wikipedia revealed that the 57th was first raised in 1667 and has served ever since in the French army. During the Italian campaign and in particular in the battle of Favorite 1797 (??? this is wikipedia not me...) they earned their nickname when they repeatedly charged the Austrians despite heavy losses.

I believe this is a really good unit to have in one's collection because they fought at most of the major battles of the Napoleonic period: Ulm, Austerlitz, Jenna, Eylau, Wagram, Leipzig and a number of other battles.

All figures are Perry. The command are metal and the rest are plastic. They are all in Bardin regulation uniforms although the greatcoats hide most of the details. I have to admit though that greatcoats make a painter's life so much easier and the result is still very nice!

I initially painted 36 figures and in time I am planning to paint the second and third battalions.The flag is from GMB.

Hope you like them!

Brunswick command stand

It has been quite some time since my last post and quite a few things have happened since.

The most important one was the completion of my Master thesis here in Japan and my decision to continue my studies with a Phd. The problem is that last Friday I had the entrance exam and I can't say that I feel very positive about that.. Hopefully it should be ok, and I will be able to stay in Japan for the next 3 years. However, in case the results are not good, the Japanese government will stop funding me, and I will have to go home. So lets hope things work out!

The results are due this Friday, 25th February....

On the hobby side of my life things have been progressing rather well. Since I finished my master thesis I was able to spend a couple of hours daily on my minis so in the coming days expect to see a number of posts. For the time being I give you a command stand for my Brunswickers. Its an hussar officer with a brigade commander. I am not quite sure I got the colours correct though. I had a rough time researching the officer uniforms and I had to rely heavily on the illustrations of Alexis at his "cent jours" site:  Les unifores pendant les cent-jours

I hope you like it. Comments and critique are, as always, welcome!

Brunswick Leib battalion

In our last game I realised that the allied side was quite outnumber in comparison to the French. So since I always wanted to paint some Brunswickers I got my greedy hands on these guys:

Brunswick Leib Battalion

The mont-saint-jean site ( http://centjours.mont-saint-jean.com/detail_uniteBR.php?rubrique=U&unite=99&nation=6) lists the Leib battalion at 691 men , including officers. Since I am using 1:20 scale I decided to settle for 32 figures since I could base them in 4 bases of 8 figures each.       

Painting these guys was quite easy actually. From start to finish I think that this unit took me about a week's painting time to get done. Figures are all Perrys and are of really high quality as someone would expect from them. The flash and mould lines however are quite disturbing...

On my painting table right now I have the Duke of Brunswick and my first unit of foundry Russians. Hopefully by the end of this month I should have both painted and the allies will no longer be outbumbered!

hope you like them! Comments and critique are more than welcome!