Regiment of the Day - Loubny Hussars
For the start of my newer Russian Cavalry collection, will get into the Loubny Hussars for 1812+
Figures by Lancashire Games ... this lot started life as a rescue lot from an ebay auction. Ended up with a about 100 mixed cavalry figures in various states of disrepair.
Thick heavy black 'primer' paint, bent legs, lots of flash and glue, and all horribly stuck together on bits of thin cardboard.
Not good.
Anyway, after a trip to the workbench, and a deployment on my lovely new terrain boards, I think they came up pretty well ... what do you think ?
Close up of the command element - I only had to order some extra Russian Hussar packs from LG to complete these regiments ... so all up they were pretty cheap on the wallet.
Russian Hussar regiments of this period are pretty potent forces - having around 6 full squadrons in the field.
They have a Morale Grade of 'Crack Line' through to 'Elite', and an ACE close combat rating of 20 !
Add in fact that they hunt in very large packs, and these Russian Hussar units are absolute game winners.
A shot in glorious technicolor to show off the uniform details here.
This regiment has blue jackets, pelisse, and trousers. Yellow facings and white lace.
Looking at several Russian re-enactor groups, they tend to do the 'yellow' facings for the Loubny regiment as a very dull buff colour.
Vallejo pale yellow works for me in this case.
Bit of creative license on my part with the regimental banner here.
Given that we are dealing with a large number of regiments in similar dress on a big table in 15mm, I am happy to sacrifice a bit of osprey-style accuracy in place of being able to find the damn units on the table.
Each of my Russian Hussar units then carries a basic Russian Cavalry Standard, with the background colour of the standard in the regimental facing colour.
Works for me in this case.
With the varnishing, I am now more than happy with skipping the gloss varnish stage altogether, and hitting the figures with vallejo matte varnish through the airbrush.
Using a 0.2mm airbrush head, and applying a couple of coats with the pressure turned right up .... this gives a nice tough finish that seems to work pretty well. No 'frosting' accidents using this method either.
After matte varnishing, I have been adding a little gloss varnish to bring out some highlights, and that trick has been working exceptionally well for me.
The B&W shot below does a good job of showing the difference in texture with some little bits of gloss varnish.
You can see below that the shakos are in a dusty matte finish, but the visors on the shakos have a gloss sheen. Same with the boots, and the sword scabbards, although those are not quite as obvious in these shots.
Couple of little tricks I have been doing with horses lately :
1) Painting the eyes black, and adding a very small dot of white to give it a reflective effect. Copied this idea from JJ's excellent figure collection.
2) When doing the highlighting of the predominantly brown horse, I make a highlight shade using a bit of vallejo 'Cavalry Brown' and some medium grey. The 'Cavalry Brown' is WAY TOO RED to use as a base colour for horses .... however, if you water it right down and use it as a final highlight colour, it adds and excellent lively sheen to the horse that actually looks right.
That should do for now ... tonnes more to come next. Hoping I can get all my Russian posts done by the end of December at least !
(and then its on to something even bigger)
Thanks for reading :)
Nice job on the Russian hussars.
ReplyDeleteNice work, love the B&W pics!
ReplyDeleteCertainly would never know that they're a "salvage" job.
ReplyDeleteAnd to think that with all the Russian Hussars I've done, I don't have THIS regiment....