"French Grande Armee starter set" Topic

I found someone in Britain to base and paint for me but I cannot for the life of me find a 15mm starter set. The only complete one I found was for the waterloo campaign. I would really like to field an army during Napoleon's heyday and would like to stay away from the Waterloo styled uniforms. What are my options?

In 15mm, the French are going to look pretty much the same for the whole time period. Unless you are talking about the Epic figures, I don't think anyone makes starter sets. If you don't like the French, they had plenty of allied troops in Spain, the 1809 campaign, and the invasion of Russia. That said, I am not sure that I understand the question.

Maybe I do understand afterall. If you want an earlier French army, you need to do some research on Orders of Battle and buy figures according to what you need and what rule set you are using. You can also build a relatively generic French army if that is what you want to do.

Can you elaborate on what you are thinking about?

Essex makes starter packs.

link

Do you want the 1805/1806 uniform with bicornes, or the later 1809 onwards one with shakos? The figures look quite different, but the earlier period is the apogee of the Grand Armee

In my opinion the 1809 French uniforms were the apogee of military tailoring. They are far more ornate than anything in 1813-15.

agreed! where can i find details on those uniforms?

To start, I would just do a search engine look (Google it!). There are amazing amounts of information available online for free. Something like " French 1809 uniforms".

If you want to spend a little money order Osprey books. if you want to spend a LOT of money get the Elting two volume set. Somewhere in between would be the two volumes by Fred and Lillian Funken, but there are more accurate sources now, the Funken books have some small errors, but were great by the standards of the 1970s.