New project - Napoleon in Egypt 20mm 1/72nd Newline Strelets

I've got a thing for camels. There; I've said it. I don't care when, i don't care how, but any army with camels is on my list to do. For so long, I've been looking for 20mm Ottomans so I can do the French invasion of Egypt, but  I could never find anything. Unknown to me, there were  manufacturers producing stuff for at least the last  eight years, that I could have accessed. But no  matter. Irregular had started making them; Newline had started making them and several European  makers had too. Sadly I can't afford a Euro a figure, so as nice as they are the Euro stuff is beyond my reach. I then had a good look at the Irregular and Newline stuff.

Seems like most people have had to push the prices up as lead becomes a rarer, more expensive commodity. I totally get that people have to live and so their incomes need to go up, but I'm surviving on an ever decreasing income. Fortunately, my time left is decreasing too, so I have less need to buy more expensive figures and a greater need to paint and then sell the ones  I have. I was pleasantly surprised to find the  clean looking Newline figures were  less expensive than the Irregular ones, and since I'm determined to put on at least one  battle for  Napoleon's campaign in Egypt, I threw caution to the wind ( financial caution anyhow) and bought a  load of figures from Newline and various plastic manufacturers.

As a test order from Newline I sent out for  some Ottoman artillery, French dromedaries and Grenadiers and from Strelets (various online suppliers) French Light and Line Infantry, some cavalry, and some bashibazouks and mamelukes to make mameluke and irregular cavalry.

For now, I just wanted to show you the  haul of plastic in their boxes. As it will take some time before I get them painted (it took two hours to clean one box  of twelve bashi-bazouks!), Im hoping to have a battle ready force this time next year.

I was also pleasantly surprised to see that I could get a reasonable amout of musket armed Janissaries out of a Zvezda box and also I can make some of the other figures into  provincial fellahin and even use a few of the figure from an Italeri Muslim set  to provide ethnic cavalry and foot for the opposing Russians when I get round to doing the Russo -  Turkish battle  of 1807  - 1812!  Happy days :)

More Napoleonic Austrians 1/72nd or 20mm? Italeri, Airfix and Strelets

Dug out  my old Austrians,  still waiting to see combat :( I picked up a few RSM figures ( proper 20mm) and was curious to see how they compare to the Strelets and Italeri stuff I already have. These are battalions of converged grenadiers and I need one more base to have the  numbers needed for Leipzig. I was reading some post s on TMP  about  20mm and 1/72nd being imcompatible. Now , I have freely used  old ' 25s', plastic 23mms and  20mm interchangeably without concern since I can remember. I'm well aware that soldiers come in all shapes and sizes and with due regard for  some unit's height restrictions , there probably ought to be a little more height variability  on the wargames table. as for the variability in equipment sizes at various scales - I've never noticed any issues. some manufacturers might make some kit  a little larger  or smaller that it should be, but unless your comparing the largest against the smallest renditions of a particular item,  i don't see  much scope for glaring issues. Comparing a 1/72 scale tank against its HO/OO cousin will show a genuine disparity and perhaps they should be kept within a single scale, but then they are much less variable within a type than the men that use them.

I think these are Kennigton figures. They're definitely the smallest of the figures at proper 21mm foot to top of head. If they were 1/72nd, that would make each man a fraction  of an inch under 5ft. No good for the grenadiers maybe , but passable for the infantry?

These are the Italeri ( I think) 1/72 grenadiers. At 23mm they would roll in at 5ft 5 inches! That's shorter than me! If we measured them based on 25mm representing 6ft 4in (for the very tallest of troops) then the 23mm scale out to  5 ft 10in ( perfectly acceptable for a grenadier and the regular infantry reach a lofty 5ft 4in, again fair enough for me and certainly no reason not to use them together.

Strelets commanders measure in at a lofty 23mm, hardly giants compared to the Kennington figures. 

Austrian Artillery

Had these Kennington miniatures sitting around for a long time waiting to be mobilised. Finally got them painted. Based on 3 x 2 inch bases. haven't worked out which units they are yet, but they will count as 12 pdrs in that they have 4 crew per base. There's four bases of these, which I hope will feature in a battle report soon.

French Commanders

Originally I started  painting up 20mm Airfix plastics for WRG Napoleonics. I still have a couple left from 1980 that have had repaints and been reassigned to new units. Since then I've slowly built up forces for Napoleon's Battles with the uncertain objective of refighting Borodino before I die.              
Here's the great man himself..

Using Strelets' Napoleon and Italeri staff, I based him on a 2 x 2 inch base. I generally use the 25mm basing sizes but I felt that a full 3 x 3 would just be too big for the figures.

Going to the other end of NB's command scale - Divisional -  Lahoussaye, commander of the 6th Heavy Cavalry Division (part of III Cavalry Corps) at Borodino, is next in line. I tried painting the gold stuff in brown first and then using the gold as a highlight followed by  some off-white.