Norman Langerak

FRENCH ARMY

Ah, the little Frenchmen arrived!

Well, I couldn't believe my luck with this - a complete army pack of Baccus' 6mm figures. I've looked at the figures before a couple of times when surfing the web for new projects to start and new lead to purchase but never bit the bait. Well, now I got the chance to get my hands on these anyways.

Firstly I must confess that I do have a little bit of experience with this scale. This, however, is limited to some figures of Irregular's Riot range, so I decided that these figures would be new and different enough to qualify.

Within a week of the contest on The Miniatures Page I received the army. The first thing I noticed was the packing of the army, which was a nice little box. While unimportant for the product itself, it somehow feels nicer than a bare ziplock bag. Must say that the painting guide was a nice addition as well. But enough about these trivial details and on to the figures.

About the castings I have two things to say. First the positive - there was almost no flash which had to be cleaned, which is a nice thing, but also is something which should be expected. Then the negative - while the fine detail on the figures is very nice to behold, it is a double-edged sword in the way that especially fragile details like horses' legs are miscast in some places leaving ugly gaps where legs should have been. While not pleasing to the eye, a horse balancing on two very thin legs instead of four has a very great risk of bending and breaking. This also applies to the muskets which were about the only parts which needed some cleaning. While cutting away the excess metal I was afraid they would break ruining the figure. This, however isn't something only encountered in 6mm, as even with 15mm figures I've had bayonets break off rifles due to the difficulties in cleaning them.

Painting the little grey men

After cleaning the figures I washed the figures and glued them onto strips of sheet styrene for painting them.

For the basecoat I chose basic white, pretty standard for anything, especially small figures with bright colours, which these were said to be. Indeed, I believe I read that the Marlburian period figures were so nice because of their colourful uniforms. Ironically, the main colour of the French army I received is grey. So much for colour, although they do have colourful turnbacks and some troops have bright red uniforms for example. Still acceptable and as nobody complains about the abundant greys and greens in Second World War uniforms there's nothing wrong with these grey French either. Just a greater challenge to make them stand out on a 6mm battlefield.

As for the serious painting of the little French I started by painting their faces and hands, not unlike how I paint 28mm figures, only that now I didn't bother with the eyes. A simple coat of a dark fleshtone (to be highlighted at a later stage) without bothering about staying within the lines. Depending on the figures I continued with the main colour of the coat - grey for the infantry and cavalry and red for two of the four cavalry units. (I split up the bases into the elements they would going to be when gluing them onto the styrene bases before painting). After these layers, which could still be painted using "1" brush, I decided to move to the "00" brush, which I rarely use except for fine detailing - as the areas are quite tiny, the larger brush would, despite it's good tip, be too large for most of the work.

The next bits to be painted were turnbacks (mostly red) and the tricornes (black, with a white or yellow edge). The lighter coloured edge was painted on after the coat of black, beginning with white and then yellow for the figures which needed yellow. Nothing very special there. Hair and musket stocks got a simple light brown colour, the barrel of the musket and the bayonet got a nice silver finish.

I decided to paint all the horses dark brown as that's a common horse colour and as that should get the viewer's attention more to the rider. As for painting technique I used the same dab-on-thinned-paint-from-the-palette-technique as always. No drybrushing as that can give a dirty-looking result which I didn't want here, or highlighting, as that would take ages and while very nice to behold through a looking glass it would remain unseen by everyone looking at the figures. Effective 6mm mass-effect, no 28mm individualism.

After finishing painting the figures themselves, I sprayed a coat of varnish over them to protect them a bit while rebasing them onto their final 40x20mm styrene bases. The cavalry had to be cut to arrange them into line, the infantry could be based without additional preparation into two ranks.

The next step was texturing the bases, for which I used the tried and tested method of sand mixed with PVA and after painting that adding some static grass, this time some dark and some light green.

The banners I left until the very end. Because I decided that would paint the units in only the colours of two regiments, I needed more flags than were supplied on the flagsheet. Painting the flags, which are fairly simple in design, wasn't a big problem and the colour appears to be a little bit brighter than the printed flags. After a second coat of spray varnish I declared the army to be ready for battle and spent a little while staring at the result, which I think ended up being quite adequate.

Some afterthoughts now that I see the finished army on the table

The figures aren't very realistically proportioned as their heads seem to be relatively large. This may not be the ultimately realistic option, but despite that it gives a good, maybe even better visual effect on the tabletop. Because these figures, and small scale figures in particular, are mostly viewed from above, their length isn't of very great importance and their appearance creates for a better mass-effect. I might even dare to say that these are very short 10mm-ish figures.

As for my thoughts about the use of 6mm figures - I will certainly consider using them more now, as massive armies simply look better on the table. Speed of painting is of secondary importance, as in my experience even 15 or 28mm figures can be painted to an acceptable gaming standard fairly quickly, depending on army and period. I spent about 8 to 9 hours painting these eighty 6mm figures, which take about as much surface area as twenty 28mm figures, which I can paint to a gaming standard in the same time. Well, allright, the paintjob on the 6mm's might be relatively better.

Well, that more or less sums it up. I enjoyed painting the figures and writing this report and I would like to thank Peter Berry for supplying the figures for this purpose.