6mm mdf Napoleonic Figures

I've been toying with ideas of what figures to use to replace the playing cards in Blucher games. While researching on line I found the wonderful new mdf 6mm figures from Commission Figurines being used for just the purpose. These little chaps are really quite interesting. Whilst they remind you of miniature wooden toy soldiers from yesteryear, they have a really surprising amount of detail. I decided the only way to find out was to order some.

I bought a mix of infantry and cavalry, French and British and a pack of Artillery, in all six packs for £13 delivered. Packs of infantry are 96 strong (inc command), cavalry 36 figures and Artillery 4guns with crews and horse teams.

I painted a few British up to try them out and include some pictures here so you can make your own minds up.

I started with a (uncharacteristic for me) black spray undercoat. First step was to dry brush the trousers light grey. I also painted the rolled greatcoats on top of the rucksacks in the same colour.

Next step was the red tunics. Look closely and you can see the engraved cross-straps.

The muskets were picked out in bestial brown.

The cross straps and helmet plumes were picked out in white.

A small dab of flesh picked out the faces and two smaller blobs, the hands.

On the backs of the figures the water bottle was picked out in grey-blue.

The packs include several tiny mdf drums ready to attach! The flag poles (florist wire) were superglued on at the same time.

A blob of gold paint suffices for the cap badge.  You can see that the fine parts are a little delicate....broken plumes for example. The strip the figures come attached to was painted a light brown ready for the basing stage.

Then I started to base them roughly 20 figure to a stand. After much deliberation I decided on 60x30mm as this matches my Baccus figures (based for Polemos)  and this size laid on top of the Blucher card, looks good and you can still see the status details.

I textured the bases with PVA coated in sand. When dry I gave this a coat of sepia wash before spraying in Matt varnish. With hindsight this was unnecessary as in future I'll cover the bases with brown railway ballast that will save me the sepia wash stage!

Finally, after the varnish was dry, I coated the bases once again in PVA and sprinkled on a rather dried out, grass coloured static grass.

I'll add some flags later, when I've found some on the Internet to print out. All in all I'm really rather pleased with these little chaps. Very effective they look en masse. Very good value too at less than 50p per stand. Very quick and easy to paint up well. I'm not sure how robust they'll be in use, but even if they break, they'll be easy enough to glue together with PVA.

Highly recommended.