Tuesday, December 8, 2009

15mm AB Napoleonic British Infantry

These figures have actually been in the painting queue for over a year. With no major project to work on, I'm able to flit around from work to work, and this week I landed on these AB Brits.



This unit is painted as the 5th Foot in the 1806-1812 uniform. The figures I used are AB-B03 (officer), AB-B04 (drummer), AB-B10 (infantry centre company order arms), AB-B11 (infantry flank company order arms), and AB-B12 (ensign standing bare pole).

Bases are from Litko and flags are from GMB. I don't think I've seen the 15mm GMB flags anywhere else on the web. I don't even think I've read a review of them.

They come six to a sheet for the same price (£3.30 with shipping) as the 28mm flag sheets. At today's exchange rates, that's $5.38 for six flags, or about $.90 per flag. That's expensive, but I spent $17 on figures for this unit and don't mind spending an extra $1.79 on flags.

The flags are printed on the same good quality paper as GMB's 28mm flags, which presents a small problem. The paper is a little too thick to comfortably bend at these small dimensions. I had a tough time getting the waves in the flag and still keeping the edges even. If you look closely at the regimental colors above, you can see where I had to paint the edges of the flag to keep a wide strip of white showing.

Still, I'll be using these flags almost exclusively with my 15mm miniatures. They set the unit off very well.

Last time I compared some figures I painted just now with some that I painted four years ago. Today I'm comparing these 15mm AB Brits with the 15mm Old Glory Brits I painted two years ago.



It's not really a fair comparison, since I was painting these OG figures for speed and the AB figures for quality. I painted 40 OG figures in four hours and 24 AB figures in eight hours. Still, it always amazes me just how different paint jobs can be, even from the same painter.

4 comments:

  1. These look good enough to be 25mm figures! Outstanding shading work on the pants and your cross belts are impeccable. I don't know how you do it.

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  2. Very nice, I really like the look of the painting at this scale, really crisp.

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  3. Great stuff.
    I like how crisp your job on the AB's is without being cartoonish or too perfect. A good balance there. I think your varying colors on the trousers turned out very nice as well.

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  4. Scott, the progress from your older figures to your newer figures is stunning. Really, your improvement makes me SO jealous... after 25 years of painting I am still not sure I am there!:)

    Beautiful job, as always!

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