95th Rifles

 

Just to show that I have done some painting. Here we have a group of six 95th Rifles, a skirmishing unit in Sharpe Practice. I have had these on the table for 3-4 months now. They are from the now defunct Alban Miniatures line. They are really the most anatomic 28mm Napoleonic figures that I have found. I have enough Rifles for 4 units with the Big Men. They will join some French Voliquers and Sharp and Harper.

It would be nice to find some British light company figures. Keep looking I suppose.

AHPCVIII: Sixth Submission-Alban Miniatures

This was supposed to be what one could call a Vanity project! Maybe best to avoid them, methinks.

I believe the first time I saw an Alban Miniatures were the free Sharpe and Harper figures that I received when I purchased Sharp Practice from TFL some years ago. I was immediately attracted to their anatomic proportions, no awful big heads or hands. I put them away and about a year ago I decided to paint them.......they looked pretty cool, let us get some more. But Alban Miniatures went out of business a couple of years ago. I advertised around and found a nice Dutch chap who had some which he was willing to let go. I finally had some British Rifles and some French Légére Voltiguers. There are British lights and French Ligne out there also but not yet been able to lay my hands on these figures.

But why did I want to do this, I have plenty of British and French 28mm skirmish figures for Sharpe Practice 2, but they were of the big headed variety and this is where the Vanity comes in. I wanted a SP2 Alban Miniatures force, and since they are quite different than any other 28 mm figures, I would need at least 2 sides to play a game.

I do not have a large lead pile, so searching around for something next to paint, I decided to have a go at painting some Alban French Voltiguers. They looked well cast, minimal cleanup required so they were primed and I started to have a go. 

Well, I found that for a middle of the road painter like myself they were quite a challenge. I am sure each figure was about 2-3 hours of painting time. There was just much less sculpting detail to work with than I am accustomed. My usual painting time for a Napoleonic 28 mm figures is probably around 45 minutes. I suppose it would be OK but I am just not that pleased with the result.

Well here they are, they do look good at a distance, so I suppose I will soldier on. I need at least 5-6 groups to have a good SP2 game, so a long way to go. By the way if anyone has any Alban Miniatures to sell, please let me know!

Légére Voltiguer Skirmishers

Status II Leader, Status III Leader, Musician

A New Project

The Sharpe novels and TV series started me off in wargaming about 15 years ago, and it is a hobby that I have enjoyed immensely. It is never complete; there is always something to add, adjust or sometimes completely change. I am very thankful to Bernard Cornwell for that, he has kept me busy well beyond reading his books and watching two great TV series.

It must have been 7-8 years ago when I bought a copy of Sharpe Practice and with it came two 28mm figures from Alban Miniatures. I did not like the ruleset but I did like the figures. They were so different from the chunkers from all the other 28mm Napoleonic manufactures. But because of this they were useless to me so I put them away. A lot of things have happened since then, I got rid of the 3000 twenty-eight mm Napoleonic figures that I had painted and paid someone else to paint an equivalent 18 mm Napoleonic army for me. This was without doubt a correct decision, they take much less room and are so much easier with which to game.

I did keep around a hundred 28mm figures so I  could play Sharpe Practice 2 (which unlike Sharp Practice is a great ruleset). These were both French and British and are Perry, Front Rank, Calpe and even some Foundry miniatures. All very nice figures.

In the last few years, I have gone beyond Napoleonics to other wargaming eras and have painted figures from several different manufacturers. Every now and than I ended up painting figures which were much more anatomic without the exaggerated heads and hands that characterize most 28mm miniatures. I particularly like the FIW figures from Conquest Miniatures as well as the fantasy figures  from Westwind. Both these sculptors' figures are finer in proportion than most 28mm miniatures although Alban are still the best proportioned I have seen.

I recently was going over my now small 28mm Napoleonic skirmish collection to see what I needed to add. I have to admit missing painting the occasional 28mm Napoleonic, but I just was not that keen to paint any chunkers, I get enough of that from adding to my Dark Ages collection. I then remembered those 2 figures from Alban Miniatures, dug them out of the box and said why not!

They are a little more challenging to paint as they are much less exaggerated in proportion but at the same time they are excellent sculpts as one can see. I am not a great painter but I believe they came out pretty good.

That was the easy bit but I would like to build up enough figures to field a French and English skirmish force. And here comes the rub, Alban Miniatures are of course now defunct. So where was I to get the figures? As you can see from their website, they had a good range of French, a fairly good range of British and had added some Austrian and Saxon figures. They are very nice figures and I wanted some. I advertised on TMP, Lead Adventure, TFL forum and Yahoo group and fortunately struck pay dirt in the Netherlands. Dick B., a Dutch wargamer, just happened to have almost 60 rifles and voltiguers that he was never going to paint. He very kindly agreed to sell them to me and they are on their way now.

The search continues, of course, as there are French line voltiguers and fusiliers as well as some British light infantry out there. If any knows a source or has some to sell please contact me. Maybe one could say that I am on quite a quixotic adventure but it does excite me!

Now if I could only figure out how to improve the white balance in my photos, I will be all set.