More 3d Printed Napoleonics

 

These Frenchies are a freebie sample from MC Miniatures on wargaming3d.com.

They're described as "15mm w epic size", whatever that means. They are indeed pretty close to 15mm from foot to eye.

The British soldier alongside is a metal figure from a manufacturer I don't recall. It was sold as "15/18mm", and it's definitely nearer to 18 than 15mm. Too large for 15mm, too small for 20mm. They're nice enough figures, but neither fish nor fowl as far as scale goes.

I have a bit of a yen for Napoleonic horse-and-musket wargaming, but the sheer number of figures required has always put me off. I've made a start on a British Peninsular army of about 1810 vintage using  20mm plastic HaT figures, but progress on that has rather stalled. I haven't looked at them for a couple of years.

I speed-painted the single strip of Frenchmen and then slathered them with Army Painter Quickshade Dark Tone. This is an oil-based glossy varnish-stain, and I probably won't matte-coat them at all. I really don't mind small-scale Napoleonics being all shiny and glossy like toy soldiers, because that, after all, is what they are. The gloss varnish enhances the brightness of the colours, and compensates to a degree for the grubbiness that the stain leaves.

I know very little about the vast array of Napoleonic uniforms, so these have been painted largely by guess, though with reference to some pictures I found on the internet. If I got deeply into Napoleonic wargaming I'd probably start looking at reproducing specific regiments and what-not, but for the present I'm quite happy with generic crapauds.

Later...

I nabbed some STLs by a chap called Henry Turner from wargaming3d.com

This particular one is a freebie, and it is (of course) Napoleon Bonaparte.

Turner's figures are marketed as 6-15mm, and as supplied they seem to be about 7-8mm. Therefore they need to be rescaled to about 200% for 15mm, a fact of which I was unaware before I printed the first batch. You can see Napoleon's little Mini-Me in the front there.

Their proportions are probably better for 6mm than 15mm, as they tend to be rather dwarfish in stature — big heads and short legs, and a fairly chunky build. However, the detail stands well proud of the surface of the figure, which makes it quite easy to paint, and there's good facial detail which is always a help. Although their proportions aren't naturalistic, they do make for good, sturdy wargaming figures, and en masse and painted up I think they'll look fine.

In terms of modeling, I do prefer the MC Miniatures figures, but Turner has a much wider catalogue of Napoleonics to choose from.

And later still...

The strip bases of the MC Miniatures figures are all 28mm x 6.5mm x 1.5mm.

Simply gluing them to a flat group base would mean a lot of effort in basing, and would most likely mean that each rank would look like it was marching on top of a grassy mound of its own.

I whipped up this 30x30mm sabot base and printed it on my Ender 3. The ranks of figures sit down into the base so that their feet are much more nearly level with the ground, so there will be much less need for messing about with basing grout and the like — I could pretty much just paint the base and then go straight to flocking.

I did this base in three ranks, because of the French habit of attacking in column, but it does make the base quite crowded. I'll try another with just two ranks and see how that looks — if it's okay, apart from anything else, it will cut down on the amount of painting required per battalion by a third.

And here is the two-rank version of the base.

It's okay, but it definitely has less of the feeling of the attack column about it.