These past few weeks I have been mustering a 6mm British Peninsular army from Baccus. Painting sessions have not been too regular but I am finally in a position to field a small army for Age of Eagles (AoE in short). I managed 54 infantry stands, eight artillery batteries, and 16 cavalry stands. At AoE's scale of 360 infantry and 180 cavalry per stand, this would translate into a small army of 19,440 infantry, 2,880 cavalry, and 48 guns - each battery having 6 guns. In terms of figures, each stand contains 8 infantry figures and 3 cavalry figures, so with the artillery that's in the region of 500 figures, all told.
True to form, Baccus make very detailed napoleonic 6mm figures - it's amazing how they manage to fit in so much detail in such small figures - so hats off to Peter and his team for the quality of their product. It is a shame that they are pretty much larger than Heroics and Ros so they are not really compatible but to be honest this lack of compatibility doesn't show that much once the figures are on table.
Although AoE is brigade level and doesn't really go into the nitty gritty of lower organisation, I still opted to organise the troops into battalions (two stands = 720 men), with four stands to a regiment at 1,440 men. I made this choice mainly because of the various facing colours which distinguish the different regiments and their regimental flags. The result was a lovely array of coloured regimental standards accompanied by their respective King's Colours.
I staged a few photographs to give an idea of the finished figures. There's still quite a pile to finish as well as a lot of Spanish and Portuguese to complement the Brits. Maybe they will feature in a future post. For the moment, however, here are the Brits that I've managed up to now, stovepipes and all.
Very impressive, Mike! 6mm certainly gives the look of big battle and mass troop formations. Baccus figures look great.
ReplyDeleteThanks Dean! That is one of my pet arguments in favour of 6mm. I do not see any other scale so well suited for 18th & 19th century warfare. Baccus make fine figures indeed.
DeleteWow! I echo Dean. Your British are very impressive. Amazing the detail you put into these 6s. Great job!
ReplyDeleteThanks Jonathan. I'm a sucker for detail and I honestly don't know whether that's a good thing or not. I just can't resist painting in those details even though I end up spending lots more time to finish a unit.
DeleteThere is a slight flaw in your excellently painted troops. British Infantry Regiments rarely deployed their two battalions (if they had a second battalion) together and often they were not even in the same theatre.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your kind comment Jim. Yes, I agree 100% that British regiments in the peninsula rarely fielded both battalions. Indeed, very often a regiment's second battalion would be employed in a different theatre altogether, as happened in the Walcheren campaign for example. However, this was a photo shoot for the benefit of this blog post and not pics from a game, historical or otherwise.
DeleteMike beautifully done as ever - you do the scale real justice.
ReplyDeleteThanks a million Norm. You are too kind, as always.
DeleteLooks great, a beautiful and realsitic scale!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much Phil. Yes, I am a great fan of 6mm and truly believe it is as close to the real thing as one can get, especially if one is more interested in the big picture of things.
DeleteGreat job on these very little men. One of the advantages of 6mm is that they’re supposed to paint quickly but with that much detail I’m not so sure...😀
ReplyDeleteYou’re not far off the mark Stew, haha! But seriously, although - yes - the high level of detail does slow down the painting process, it’s still nowhere near the larger scales. I would say these took me around four weeks or so to paint (with long stops between painting sessions). I doubt I would have managed 500 or so larger scale figures in a similar timeframe. Thanks for commenting 😊
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