"My First Proper Unit for Blucher in 6mm" Topic

I have completed my first proper unit for Blucher in 6mm, it's Maitland's Guards Brigade.

There's more pictures on the blog:

link

Thanks for looking!

Very nice. The figures are fantastic

Agreed, excellent work!

Thanks guys!

Very nice looking! I think that's the way to "fight" your Blucher is with 6mm diorama stands.

Jim

Very well done

Lovely work!

That's splendid!

Lovely work there, Baccus figures are very nice, I have some French and Austrians and they are smashing figures for their size.

Real nice. Nice to see the troops arrayed that way. As an aside (because I am a nutter) I would paint the top of the flags with the same color as the flag to remove the 'white' stripe' on the flag edge. But then agin, these small things only lead to madness!

Cheers guys, I am glad so many of you like them! Othra, it had crossed my mind about painting the tops of the flags, but as you say, therein lies madness.

Alex, you've done some really splendid work on those guys. But 6mm? You do as you will, but it's going to be hard to properly appreciate those miniatures while a game is in progress.
Of course, I'm old and can't see as well as I used to. But I would have done such a force in 15mm.

Thanks Rrobby! I know what you are saying, but I like the vast look of 6mm, especially for the Napoleonic big battle games. Plus there is a whole lot of detail on a 15mm compared to a 6mm figure. These Brigades are taking approximately 4 hours to paint, I wouldn't like to think how long it would take in 15mm…

There is that… I used to have an Austrian force. We were playing using Empire rules in 15mm. A three Bn. line rgt. was made up of either 15 figs. per bn. or 18 figs. per bn. Lots of painting. But we could, and did, fight some great battles on a 4'X6' table.

Yeah, painting all that infantry would really melt my brain I think. The thing with 6mm is that I am no shading them in anyway. It's all black lined and pretty quickly slapped on. I just know I would get too detailed in 15mm or bigger…

Hi Rrobby, it sounds to me as if you are unfamiliar with 6mm and so you aren't quite 'getting it'. Comparing doing units such as these in 15mm and bigger and 6mm is pointless as they are different animals. With the larger scale you are concentrating on the individual figures and investing a lot of time in getting a unit that is small in numbers but relatively high in quality.

On the other hand, 6mm is about considering the whole unit as the end product. Abwehrschlact's base is a perfect example of how you can get a lot of figures in a small area, but still use the available space to create a dioramic effect. The end result is a great looking wargames unit as opposed to a small collection of castings grouped together. 6mm gives you mass and numbers which simply cannot be done in the same way with the larger scales and has an aesthetic all of its own.

As for the other points, they really are much quicker and much easier to paint than the big castings and give you a great return on money and time invested which practice makes even better. I will bet that any future units that the OP produces will take a lot less than time than the rather nice one he has done so far.

I used to own a very large collection of micro armor. I found I had to sell it some years ago due to financial/family problems. When I overcame those difficulties and started rebuilding my WW2 forces I found that my eyesight wouldn't let me paint micro armor anymore. So I switched to 15mm. Now, you explain to me how a 56 year old man can regain his 30 year old eyesight, cost free. Then how to replace a huge 15mm WW2 collection with 6mm. Again without cost. Then fix my gaming companions eyesight as well. By the way, I'm the young'un in our group. The next oldest is only a couple of years older than I. But the oldest is 73.
You manage all that and I'll quite gladly start painting 6mm miniatures again…

Excellent. What size basing are you using?

If it take 4 hours to paint a brigade for Blucher I need to switch to 6mm.

6mm rocks for the days of the big battalions, and for the modern games in anything larger than company scale. And for those who can't see to paint… 1 Optivisor.. and 2. if you can't see to paint, no-one else can see to criticise.

For 6mm, technique beats accuracy any day.

Delbruck, the base is a Blucher specific one from Sally 4th, so is about playing card sized. It initially looks a bit weird, but the grass and such lessens the sharp edges.

As for the time taken to paint, each battalion of 32 men took me 2 hours from start to finish, however, I could have painted both battalions together. This would probably take about three hours. Then of course there is the basing which may take about an hour in total.

I find 6mm surprisingly easy and quick to paint, but I do have reasonable eyesight, so I get rrobby's point on his eyes. However, I don't have good enough eyesight to be painting correct coloured Bricoles on Napoleonic figures in 15mm, so this scale is perfect for a slapdash painter such as myself.

Thanks for the compliments guys, Baccus, your figures really are amazing in detail.

Hi Robert, I wasn't suggesting that you suddenly become a born again 6mm gamer, just that you were missing some of the attractions and advantages of using the scale.

As for the eyesight thing, then you and I are of an age and I still manage to paint model and sculpt the wee chaps. I have a goodly number of customers all who have a decade or two on the both of us quite happily applying paint.

As has been said by others, painting 6mm is all about technique. It is a different technique than for painting bigger figures. The thing to remember is that there is no dot you make or line you draw that is smaller and thinner than on 15mms – what you do is learn what NOT to paint to get the end result. In practice it is quicker, easier and less demanding to paint 6mm than 15mm and 28mm figures and far less strain to the eyes. I've not painted piping on collars for years and am all the better for it!

I am 53 and have drifted back to 6 and 10 mm figures. I am going down in size as I get older. O ptivisor with a light is great. I wear trifocals and have no problem painting.

My problem is my back and knee. I need to sit and have moved to a smaller table. No need to reach across 6 feet of table now. If I cant reach it from a sitting position then the table is too big.