French Guard - Baccus 6mm figures organised for BBB rules

 My friend Mike and I have been gaming the BBB scenario book Napoleon's Bloody Big Battles, one common factor in all of these battles is Napoleon, the other is the French Guard, first called the Consular Guard, then the Imperial Guard.  

Over last winter/spring I took the time to create enough French Guard figures for most of the battles, in some cases making a summer and winter option.

The Old Guard started as two infantry regiments of Consular Guards (Grenadiers & Chasseurs) and two regiments of cavalry (Grenadiers & Chasseurs).  It went through a number of changes, mainly expansion, adding more infantry, dragoons, lancers, etc.  You probably already know this....  😊

The Infantry

Old Guard - summer

Here are the Old Guard in their summer uniform - the Grenadiers have red plumes and the Chassuers red over green plumes.  These three bases are enough for most of the scenarios in the book.  

As I wanted these troops to look their best, all Guard troops were painted with brass muzzles and firing mechanisms on their muskets (these are normally just steel, as per the gun barrels and the bayonets).

The Old Guard Chassuers have had plumes added to the side of the Bearskin (re-purposed bayonets)

Old Guard - Winter

In colder weather the Guard wore blue Greatcoats, a colour not used by most of the French army, so they stand out a little more....  Here the Middle Guard skirmishers are standing in for Old Guard Skirmishers in Greatcoats.

Middle Guard - Summer

The Middle Guard wore shakos, otherwise (and especially at this scale) they were identical to the Old Guard.  They had a number of different flag styles - I went for the gold "N" in a wreath on blue because it sets them apart from everyone else on the table.

Middle Guard - Winter

The Middle Guard also wore blue Greatcoats, so they are easy to tell from the rest of the army.  

Young Guard - Summer

I have only made Young Guard in Summer so far, here are the Young Guard Grenadiers.  I made the 1st & 2nd Tiralliers and the Flanquers Grenadiers, who wore Green Jackets as they were light infantry.  I could have made a skirmish base of these, but I decided to go with a base of formed infantry, partly because I only needed one skirmish base.

Tiralliers & Flanquer Grenadiers

I needed 6 bases of Young Guard, so the other three are 2 bases of Voltiguers and one of Flanquers, this time the Flanquers are based as Skirmishers. 

The Cavalry

Here's the Guard Cavalry made to date - you'll need 2 bases of Heavy Cavalry & two of Light.  

Guard Heavy Cavalry

The Heavies are the Horse Grenadiers - they get all the +1 bonuses - and the Empress Dragoons

The line Heavies were the Carabiniers - a similar uniform and using the same models

Guard Horse Grenadiers on the left, Line Carabiniers on the right

My other heavy unit is the Empress Dragoons, click on this link to see more.  Here's what the two Heavies look like together - suitably scary!

Guard Light Cavalry

The Light Cavalry are the Chassuers a Cheval (one of my favourite units), the Polish Lancers and the Dutch Lancers.  The Lancers are covered here in more detail.  Here are the Light Cavalry units together.

Here are the Chasseurs a Cheval of the Imperial Guard on their own.

Artillery

I really enjoyed painting these up.  As I wanted to show their using 12 pounders, I increased the crew figures to 5 per base.  

To move them around the battlefield I made this limber & gun.  As far as I can tell Guard Artillery transport uniforms were slightly different to those of the line artillery.

I also made a Horse Artillery battery (foreground) for the Waterloo game.

Guard General

As in my second Command & Control post  I have now made a General figure to lead these fine troops

Finally...

All figures are Baccus (though not necessarily as described on the tin).  I have enjoyed figuring out the conversions needed to get the look I wanted.  

Sources used were the Funken book, Pinterest & the Jemima Fawr website which has 8 detailed blogs on making the Guard in 15mm, I found this really inspirational.

What's next?  Horse Chasseurs & Grenadiers of the Guard with alternative flags, Polish Lancers (possibly with flag changes), Dutch Grenadier infantry, possibly more foot guns, possibly winter foot artillery in greatcoats, Young Guard Artillery, Guard Marines ......

French Revolutionary War - French infantry stands for BBB

A little while ago I got the idea that I could create French line infantry stands with flag for use with BBB rules.

I searched high and low on the internet but could not find any 1/300 French infantry in Tarleton helmets that I could use, so I repurposed Baccus Spanish skirmishers by creating drummers and flag bearers from the "loading" figures.  The front rank is firing and the second rank loading, drumming, flag waving or leading.  I have taken a British horse artillery officer (leader figure in Tarleton) as an officer on one stand.

I plan to add some figures in bicornes, as well as those in tarletan helmets, to mix it up a little on future bases.

I created the flags in excel and then printed my own sheet.  By choosing regiments that had easy to reproduce geometric shapes, these were easy to knock up (why make life harder??!).  

Here are the pics of the first two units:

The facing colour over white plumes really "pop"

Here are the units in the classic "ordre mixte"

Here is the top of the sheet I created for the flags:

Here is the master flag - the hoist part of the flag is sized to go round a 0.5mm pole in 6mm, which is why it's a bit wide...   This gives you an idea of the teeny tiny detail on there.

So, there's more of these bases in the pipeline - and I readily admit that I really like these colourful additions to my FRW French army.

Just in case this inspires you to have a go, the figures are Baccus NSP19 Skirmishers in Tarleton, with a RHA Officer thrown in.  

Contact me if you'd like a copy of the flag sheet as a word document.  I've done 2 flags x 3 sizes, enough to test fit on models and make the occasional mistake.

Enjoy!

Austrian Infantry Command - variations on a theme

 I posted some while ago about making officers, drummers and flag-bearers for Austrian infantry, using Baccus AWI Loyalist figures and doing some conversion work.

Last year's battle of Neerwinden playtest required more units to be raised, so I made the extra units needed but never got round to posting about the troops!  By way of recap, here's my earlier post on converting the figures.

The Austrian officers from 1792-98 wore the Tricorne, with a gradual phasing in of the schiffhut (bicorne hat).  Searching the Baccus catalogue enabled me to do some figure substituting, to make my command bases more interesting:

So here's the officers made to date:

Grenadiers:  

SYW Grenadiers are ideal.  The flag bearer had his flag replaced by a pin and the officer with spontoon (small pike) got this reduced to sword length.

One command got an officer in Tricorne.

Finally one base (on the right) got no officer (as it's following a base with an officer....)

Line infantry

I now have 6 command bases with officers in Schiffhut (plus two, in the background, with no officer).

I also have 3 bases of officers in tricorne, using the SYW Austrian artillery officer and British AWI standard bearers (flagpole shortened to sword), as these wore Bicornes in Flanders 1793-5 so were going spare.

I hope that this has inspired you to give these troops a go....