Full Lasalle Game Austrians vs French

Had a quick lasalle game today between Austrians and French. Avant Garde with Infantry and Cuirassier vs French Line Division with Elites and Dragoons.

50% Old Glory models, 40% Tundraworks, 10% Battle Honors.

Reserve Cavalry for both sides arrived early, the dragoons on the flank and the Cuirassier in the center.  French Elites counter-charged to make a hole in the Austrian right but were unable to make a difference before austrian infantry and cuirassier broke through the center.

Review for TundraWorks 15mm Austrian Line

Full disclosure: I’m writing this review of the painting process of the Tundra Works Austrian line as an insider at Tundra Works. I work on production of the molds and models, but only offer some opinions relating to the design aspect. As such I thought I would write up my initial experience with these models as they are relatively "new to me."

First off, painting these things was bloody easy. I can’t overstate that. They were designed to be that way but it’s great to see it come together. Being a true 15mm scale we did very little in the department of oversizing accessories and other features; meaning that you spend a lot less time detailing than you would on other lines of models. The other reason these paint so quickly is that they are more or less 2d models. Some lines are posed with musketmen mid-stride and muskets held at present arms. This creates 3/4 distinct “sides” to the model that all require attention. On the Tundra Works Austrians the poses are very simple, rifles down and men standing at ease or at attention depending on the pose. You paint the front, then the back and that’s it. 

For the process I followed this 
(link) 
guide for the most part. I did a pure white base coat with a spray can to start. I did the 
muskets, hair and backpacks with Vallejo Beige Brown. After that I painted the skin 
tones with VallejoFlat Flesh. The boots, ammo pouch and shako were painted using a 
mix of 1 part Formula P3 ironhull grey and 4 parts Army Painter matt black. 
I then did the bayonets and bedroll with Vallejo Dark Ghost Grey. I specifically 
chose not the detail the metal parts on the musket other than the bayonet. This is 
because with the more or less true scale of the accessories you simply 
won’t see these at table height. You could definitely still paint them but I 
am very much not a stickler for details. 

Anyway, with the base colours done I hit all the models with a light to medium coating 
of Vallejo Umber wash. I tried my best to not over do it since it can easily make it 
look like your men slept in a pigsty. I wanted a brown tone, not a mud bath. After 
that I hit the white highlights, strapping on the front, white buckles on the kit on 
their backs and a bit of white on the back of the collar using Formula P3 Morrow 
white. I did the back of the collar since the wash had a tendency to pool there 
and adding a touch of white seemed to make the models pop a bit more at a 
distance. After that I did the coloured turnbacks and cuffs as per this guide 
 https://www.baccus6mm.com/_paintingguides/NAP_Austria.pdf 
This is really useful as well for seeing the different regimental 
colouring (mine are Schroeder’s regiment). For that I used Vallejo Blue. I very 
intentionally overstated the size of the turnbacks simply because it was 
easier than painting the very small truescale details. It also makes the
 pop way more at table height.  After that it was just a matter of getting 
the green and yellow highlights on the shako. I used Army Painter Daemonic 
yellow and Flames of War camo bright green.

A few extra steps were there for the officers but it was mostly just for the drums 
and swords. For the drums I did a brown outside and a beige ochre for the skin. 
After washing I highlighted the strings on the drum with white. For the swords 
I just did with a Gold handle and grey scabbard, although I’m not actually sure 
if that is the right colour for swords in the Austrian army, so check that one 
out yourselves. It looks good to me though.

There are a lot of details I intentionally left out. They are quite small on the true scale model and definitely do not need to be done for gaming at this scale. Although they are still there and if you are a perfectionist you can get them. I also decided to base these guys at 10 per base. Since these are smaller than heroic 15s/18s you have a lot more room to work with, and a big unit of Austrians with 60 men is just so much more imposing. I think they came out great for gaming quality and at 10-12 minutes per model for the painting (not including basing, although that wasn’t hard either) they are very suitable for large armies with lots of models to be painted.

Overall painting these was remarkably easy and fun. I haven’t enjoyed myself this much ever while painting historicals. The only thing I like painting better are my custom urban rubble based sci fi space Soviets.

Product Page Link:
https://www.facebook.com/TundraWorks

Gaming Lasalle with a full division of Tundraworks French

Gave my 4 battalions of French line a spin along with the same amount of one of our early product testers, which turns out to be the base army for a french line division. Supplemented the support stuff from my italian collection.

There are some Tundra Austrians opposing them, but mostly old glory 15s.

Game went well for the Austrians, mostly becoming a matter of attrition which favors them.

I also tested a basic aspern scenario, finding the austrians to be progressing through the town too slowly even with substantial luck.

Full Brigade of New Casts Painted and Based

1st regiment, france, 1809ish (and not fond of the new eagle ordnance), 15mm.

These are models I've been working on for about 6 months now, all the feedback during design and testing has been much appreciated. We are not yet selling these publicly but if you'd like to follow our developments more closely just check out
https://www.facebook.com/TundraWorks

First test battalion of french painted!

  These are an attempt at a more historical color scheme, my first run at grenadiers (below) felt too blue. I will see what I like more:

Looking forward to do a full write up and guide to painting them once they are all based!


Update: have 2 of them ready now, with some nicer shots:

Speed Painting Napoleonic Austrian Infantry

The final result, less basing and soon to be delivered flags

After several requests I have decided to put together a step by step towards painting 1809 pattern Austrian Infantry. This comes during my own experiments with mass casting, so it affords a good chance to show off the features this line was designed for : fast to paint, non-heroic proportions, and overemphasized or at least easily distinguished unit features like facings; with the hope of producing models that look good as a mass.

I think Austrian infantry are a great target for this sort of sculpt design because hobbyists often shy away from them as an option simply because of the intimidating prospect of painting such an army. Let's look at the  2 major challenges:

1. Painting white: White is a scary main color to be working in, especially for novice painters. First, you have to get a consistent, strong coat and avoid chalkiness, something that is going to be hard without either spraying or many coats. But once you get past that you have a second problem - contrast. The Austrian Uniform in particular has several layers of white and this all makes it quite difficult to maintain strong "black-lining" or any other kind of shading that prevents the model from looking like a white blob especially from tabletop distance. I will discuss both how I painted it and how I kept contrast.

My initial experiment with different shading/wash options: Left to right we have Vallejo Black,  Vallejo Grey, GW Sepia, and GW Earthshade

2. Size of the Project: Austrians are often portrayed in oversized units withing several game systems to represent their huge battalions relative to their peers, and this means that there are more to paint. Painting 4-500 of the line alone at 15mm scale is quite the task. The solution to this is to be strategic about the project and avoid getting into lots of detail work - but this is complicated by the army being white.

The bare metal blob

Now let me get to how I approached things...


STEP 1 : White Spray

I start all my austrian models with 1 airbrush coat of vallejo white primer followed by vallejo air aged white. You could use any white or off white spray can for this, though ideally the main color you want to paint white in should be similar to the spray color.


STEP 2: Brown Layer

I usually paint my models from the innermost layer to the outermost, and I think that's particularly important for Napoleonics where there are so many straps on top of everything else.  So I start here with a brown (reaper muddy brown but this could really be anything) that covers all flesh, hair, and the musket. You don't have to do the flesh with a brown layer, but I find it helps especially with busier models. In retrospect for this new line I could probably get away with just doing flesh without a brown undercoat because the hands and head are not as enlarged as in other lines.




 

Step 1 and 2 Completed - Front

Step 1 and 2 Completed - Back

STEP 3:Block paint all other objects+flesh

This step just covers my 1 or 2 layers of paint for all the other soldierly accessories on the model as well as the flesh ( reaper fair skin shadow). I usually do the backpack,water bottle ( both vallejo flat earth) and the roll (reaper cloudy grey) first, then I do the hat, cartridge box, and gaiters black mixed with grey for some contrast ( in my case pure reaper black with mixed in reaper stormy grey). I then do other little bits like the yellow hat decoration, the green leaves and the metal bits. Hair and mustaches will go in too, though if you are in a hurry then you could just leave all the hair dark brown.


STEP 4: Wash the model

This is key because you really are counting on getting contrast here, I don't think directly shading in lines for large amounts of 15mm models is at all reasonable, but for this white uniform a strong contrast is still needed. You saw already I experimented with different washes, and ultimately I decided to go with GW Agrax earthshade. I feel that the brown goes well with the off white I am working with. You could use black if you wanted but I personally reserve that for models with "colder" colors like my french, or very strong colors like the British. I found that the vallejo washes gave a very grainy looking finish, so I didn't go for them at all.

Step 3 and 4 completed - Front

Step 3 and 4 completed -Back

STEP 5: Add Facings

After the wash, I add the facings, and this is the first time we need to be careful to preserve as much shading as possible. Try to get the facings colored in one clean stroke, and prevent it from coloring the recesses. I used reaper violet red for this particular unit, but you can of course do whatever color you want. The name of the game from now on is to preserve contrast, not fill it in.

Step 5 finished - Front

 

Step 5 finished - Back

 STEP 6: Paint white for the first time


So despite the fact this is an army of white, you should only be brushing on white as the final layer. For me, this is really broken down into to steps - first, layer on the uniform white, which in this case is the off-white vallejo air aged white. Here it is particularly important to not lose shading -- remember that it will be very hard to get back, so don't paint to "complete" the white, just paint as if to highlight it, avoiding recesses entirely.

I then take pure white and do all the straps on the model. This could be done in the same white as the uniform, but I like doing this extra step to gain contrast and make the model a little bit more interesting.

To summarize, you could highlight all the white as one color, or you could do two colors, one for the uniform and one for the straps. You could even skip this step entirely, if you are comfortable with the "tint" look that I know many army painter "dippers" are. Just keep in mind the straps should be a lighter white than the uniform. I also painted the rifle strap white - I realize they were not always white but I find it goes well with the model.

Below you have the finished product:

Step 6 (painting completed) - Front

Step 6 (painting completed) - Back

I actually completed  48 of these in two 4 hour sessions less the spraying and inking - something I'm quite certain could be done faster since these models were completely new to me and I was still figuring out their angles and how to best shade them. I'm getting ready to do another 48, so if you have questions let me know and maybe I can snap another shot.

Regarding the models, I'm quite happy with how they turned out considering we designed and cast these all in house as amateurs. The goal was to get something that was easy to paint because my primary use for these is to make Napoleonics more accessible to the students we run campus events for (see https://taskchairgeneral.blogspot.com/2018/02/battle-of-leipzig-after-action-report.html).
In that regard I think even this first most rudimentary attempt will serve well, as I was not getting slowed down in detail painting, and was very easily able to access facings and other key unit distinctions. Being that there are 70+ sculpts ready for our first run of 5000, I'm excited to see the rest of these.