More Battalions

I received part of my recent order from Foundry a few days ago (the guard and light infantry battalions) and got right to work cleaning and priming the figures. I found the quality of the figures to be very good. You can see the Guard unit in the front of the photo and the light infantry in the upper left. There where no real problems with the guard figures, a a few casting "strings" and some bent bayonets which were all quickly dealt with. The Light Infantry came a bit worse for wear - 4 figures didn't have the pom on top the Shako and I broke off 5 bayonets bending them back. All in all, easy things to fix. As you can see I've started painitng the guard unit and since it's supposed to rain today, I think I'll get some quality painting time in. I wonder if it's a sign of age or advanced "geekedness" that I'm more excited to be able to paint toy soldiers than go sailing today?

While I was waiting out the final hours of the primer curing time, I also assembled my third box of Perry Plastic infantry (just behind the guard unit). I've got one more Perry box on order along with 2 boxes of the new plastic Cuirassiers and that should complete my force for now.

I did discover a useful painting tool by accident yesterday - the plastic container from a Bindi Profiterole dessert makes a great paint palette and water container. The top is cone shaped and has a small inner ring with four gaps that allows one to put the paint on the outside of the ring and the thinner on the inside and then draw the paint through the gaps. It really helps to add more control over the thinning process. The large cup can serve as a water reservoir or bits holder. Of course, I did need to eat the rather tasty profiterole dessert in order to gain access to this little modeling gem. Oh the travails I endure to push forward the frontiers of our hobby.

After some input from this blog and several other sources I have decided to roughly model my force on a specific French formation (division) which will aid greatly in helping me select the correct flags and other minor add-ons. Of course this will also require another trip to the Osprey web site.

Oh well, back to painting imperial guards!