Napoleonic Bavarian test stands...

Keeping up with the Germanic theme, I'm displaying two 'test' stands of 15mm Bavarians for various Napoleonic Wars systems.

The Kingdom of Bavaria was a major ally to Napoleon's Campaigns, and a significant contributor to the Emperor's war effort. Posted today is the beginning of Napoleon's VII Corps of the 1812 Campaign into Russia.

For your approval... what we have here are Old Glory 15mm Bavarian gunners and cannon (12 lb and 6-8 lb). Soon after the two allies cemented their relationship off the field, the Bavarians made strides to become more uniform with their new friends, taking on new organizations, tactics, and even uniforms more akin to the French.

The Bavarian artillery received a complete overhaul in ordnance and organization to include, yes, French gunner's uniforms. What remained was the "Raupenhelm", sometimes called the weiner helmet, that was worn by virtually every other branch of Bavarian service.

Bavarian (French) artillery unforms consisted of the dark blue coat and pants with scarlet collars, cuff, epaulets, and turnbacks. Accrutrements and belting were all standard Bavarian issue.

The guns were mainly 6-8 lb field peices with some occasional 12 lb guns included in various units. The guns were bronze smoothbores, and carriages of the common touble-trail design painted light gray.

The figures and guns were primed in dark-gray primer and them blackwashed for extra depth in the recesses but not necessarily darkening the highlight areas. The faces took to the brown wash very well and I was happy with most of the results. All colors were either GDW, Polly Scale, or bulk acrylics.

The belting and painting all the little "do-hickies" common to 19th century uniforms was tricky, but not overwhelming. All 15mm infantry have their uniform quirks. The tricky part was obtaining good, practical information concerning details and all the various colors. Painting Napoleonics is a bad time to go "FARB".

The guns were a bit of an experiment... you will need to tell me what you think. My bronze paint seems to come off a little light IMHO, so I applied brown-wash to the entire barrel before adding black-wash to the barrel bands, muzzle, and lifting hooks. This method refers to the 12lber only, I skipped the brown-wash for the 6lber.

Looking at the photos I see a good amount of detail to finish and goofs to fix. This is my first foray into Napoleonic minis (at the long behest of Scott MacPhee), and I think I've a good deal more to learn. I don't feel these are up to my standards yet, I'm sure I can do better, so consider this a work in progress. That's all for now.