Rebasing step 1 complete.

 Before I went away I made some progress on my 6mm Napoleonics. For the first step I decided to focus on getting the Napoleonic figures back into useable elements without worrying too much about their rather ancient paint schemes! 

This was essentially the tedious job of prising them off the existing bases, reorganising them into sensible units and then sticking on their new bases. This process would also show up some gaps which needed to be filled, but fortunately I still have a moderate sized box half filled with even more  ancient Napoleonic figures of various types (including an embarassingly large number of Polish Lancers and Imperial Guard Grenadiers!)

After a few days, I ended up with the British, French and Prussian infantry and cavalry. Everyone is one 30mm x 20mm bases, so the same size as my recent ACW stuff and the on the same frontage as all my nineteenth century stuff - which means I can use my 1860s Austrians, Italians and Bavarians as supplementary units. In 6mm the uniforms look virtually identical to their Napoleonic counterparts, as do the flags.

I was slightly tempted to go with 25mm x 25mm but in the end decided against it. The main thing was getting the infantry in two ranks, which gives a lot more flexibility in terms of representing different types of elements - some of them had skirmishers as the first rank, some were just close order infantry, and the command elements also occupied various positions.

The other box has all the Russian infantry and cavalry, plus everyone's guns, leaders and wagons, limbers etc. In total there are 248 individual elements with around 1,400 figures and 25 guns. It isn't a huge collection by any standards, but adding in the useable nineteenth century figures adds considerably to that. I'm also fairly liberal in terms of swapping cavalry around, one bloke on a horse being much the same as another in 6mm, and there are 54 elements just of Napoleonic cavalry, plus a load more in the nineteenth century box (who again, are wearing uniforms virtually unchanged, especially the Hussars and Cuirassiers).

In the main I've gone with notional units of 3-4 infantry elements or 3-4 cavalry elements, but I tend to mix elements up for higher level games where formation strengths are so varied. A typical infantry 'unit' has four bases each of eight figures in two ranks, one of which is a command base with officers, drummers, flags etc. The cavalry elements have four figures on, purely for convenience as that is the standard Irregular 6mm cavalry element size.

The elements are deliberately set up so there are gaps at each end - contemporary sketches show that units always had gaps between them, not a wall-wall line of troops shoulder to shoulder so beloved of wargamers. 

Next job is to review the paint jobs on the figures. Many of these haven't been touched for 40 years, I've learned a few tricks since then and we have access to much better uniform sources now.

On to the 6mm Napoleonic Russians

 The other 6mm Napoleonic box has my Russians in it, plus wagons and things.

This one is a bit emptier than the other. I expect that will change when I've thinned the figure count per base out a bit. I've already got all the leaders (rebased on pennies) over on the right hand side.

Russian cavalry and guns. I realised fairly quickly that rather than actually taking them off the old bases, I could simply cut down the existing bases as I've fortunately lined up the magnabase strips underneath in such a way which made this easy. The guns were originally on 30x40, so if I was lucky I could get two useable 30x20 bases out of it once I'd pried the horse teams off. The row of guns in the right hand column are all the French artillery which has had the cutting treatment.

The cavalry were originally on 30x30 bases, so I basically had to just cut 5mm off the leading and trailing edges. I wish I'd thought to do this for the French and British stuff. Oh well. I've got plenty of card and magnbase, it is just the latter is quite expensive.

Some rather ployglot units, supply wagons (30x40), Cossacks (30x30) and some Russian leaders (30x30).  The wagons just needed trimming, and both the leaders and Cossacks (all H&R) had originally been based on very thin plywood, so it was quite easy to pry the plywood off the card bases. I was going to base the Cossacks in more open order (2-3 figures per base) as they were irregular cavalry.

The Russian infantry, plus over on the right all the leaders I'd already rebased and the various limbers and teams I've taken off the existing artillery bases. I was just going to do enough limbers to use for pure Horse Artillery units and leave them out for foot artillery. 

The Russians are all H&R and were obtained third hand from John A, so I didn't paint any of these. They are utterly exquisite figures, a masterclass in how to paint 6mm over a black base with just the highlights. They have even got the pack straps, different coloured pom poms for each regiment and the Shako cords painted on. Unbelievable, and they rather put my teenage daubings in perspective. 

This lot currently has eight bases of Guards (each of two ranks of four plus four Jagers)  and sixteen bases of line infantry (each of two ranks of six). All the figures are based in strips of ultra thin plywood, which makes it quite easy to get them off the current bases in one piece.

The slightly daunting job in the future will be to get the paint jobs on my existing stuff up to snuff to compete with these figures. Fortunately I have learned a thing or two about painting 6mm figures in the last 40 years, as I certainly don't intend to re-paint hundreds of figures from scratch.

 

Re-basing the 6mm Napoleonics

 Ah, re-basing don't you love it. I'm hoping this will be the very final iteration for my 6mm Napoleonic stuff. I've been somewhat inspired to do it by the various ACW games we've played recently, as I've realised that a cunning rules-agnostic basing system will always be best. I also wanted to do some modelling/painting as I haven't picked up a brush in ages as I've spent the last few months playing Fallout 4 (again) instead.

Here are some of them in one of the boxes. Some British on the right, various French on the left. I've already re-mounted several leader stands onto pennies and cut down the artillery. This lot are currently based for the second version of Horse, Foot and Guns with various 'brigade' sized elements with typically 12 x foot or 6 x horse on them. 

The British figures are mainly Irregular, from one of the Division packs they did back in the mid 1980s, although there are some newer additions. They were originally based for WRG, and then HFG version 1 from the late 90s, so this is their fourth re-basing. They generally have two ranks of six infantry on each base.

The French are much older and are my original H&R figures from the mid 1970s. They were also originally based for WRG, but prior to that they were based for a long forgotten 6mm set which used  individually based figures(!) on 10mm bases. This will be their fifth re-basing. The infantry are arranged in little columns of twelve figures in three ranks - a few voltigeurs, then the line companies and a couple of grenadier figures on each ie my original WRG battalions all glued together in a big mass!

Some of the French stuff. The HFG artillery bases are huge, but I've kept the 30mm frontage so in most cases all I had to do was (carefully) cut the bases down after prising off the integral limbers. In the foreground are some Lancers based in sixes, also on huge 30mm deep bases. These  started life as Polish Lancers, but I repainted or at least tidied up, a lot of the figures when I rebased everything for HFG 2 back in the noughties.

Some Prussians. These are also Irregular,  but unlike the British they are based in columns like the French (three ranks of four). The Line units usually have some Fusiliers or Jaegers in front, while the Landwehr are just in massed columns.

The general plan is to thin them out a bit as the figures are really crammed into the HFG bases. Phil Barker was always a big optimistic about figure counts and base sizes. I'm looking at something similar to the ACW basing with eight infantry per base or four close order cavalry. I like using two ranks as it gives much more flexibility about how the figures are arranged, which can be used to give visual clues as to what unit type and quality they are. 

The general process for some cavalry. They are currently based sixes, so lever them off the old bases with a sharp craft knife - some are still stuck down with two part epoxy, so it can make it a bit challenging to get them off.

Then rearrange them neatly on their new 30x20 bases in groups of four. The Irregular stuff is cast in fours, but I had to cut quite a few of those bases up for the individual figure removal required by WRG, and the H&R figures are all individual but if you are lucky they come off the old bases in groups. These chaps look like French cuirassiers.

I'm aiming for generic infantry and cavalry 'units' of four bases each (ie Neil Thomas style), but with some extras to mix and match, and obviously the bases can be used as individual elements in their own right or mounted in appropriate groups on my ever increasing collection of sabot bases. The units can be anything from Battalions to Corps, depending what I'm doing, but I'm a big battle sort of guy so they will more commonly be on the bigger end of things. 

It is going to take me quite a while do the whole lot, and I'll re-paint some of them as I go along, so I'll post updates as they occur. I nice Autumn/Winter project.