Milice Canadienne

Some pictures of my first batch of Canadian militia for my FIW project. Since it's a skirmish project, I decided to go with painting 8 figures at a time. My usual for rank & file being 16 to 24 figures. I'll post details of this project in a later post.

For this project I decided to forgo my usual style of bright colours and pristine clothing and use muted colours, with a limited palette of mostly browns, beige, dull reds and blue. I've seen some really colourful FIW figures and it does not fit with my vision of the era at all. I made a point of not using any standard colours that might look like uniforms, but I did give all my militia red tuques to give them at least a sense of similarity; from my readings, the regional distinctions of red for Quebec, blue for Montreal and white for Trois Rivières were not introduced until late in 1759. Also, since I intend to give blue tuques to my Compagnies Franches de la Marine, red for militia seems like a good choice to clearly differentiate the two on the gaming table.

 To increase the dirty campaign look I used Army painter strongtone.  I painted the figures as usual with my 2-3 layer method and then just added the AP on top for added highlights. The AP also serves as a very good gloss varnish. The marvellous Dullcote was then used to remove the AP shine off the figures. For an experimental first try, I'm really happy with how they came out. I quite enjoyed working on a few figures instead of 20+ figures, and I think it shows.

The figures are from Conquest. These guys represent some of my ancestors, who did their best to defend their land against almost impossible odds.

'The unsung heroes of North America were the French Canadians, who were out numbered to the order of twenty to one by the English colonies and yet contrived to maintain the balance for so long through their mobility and skills with woodcraft and weapons'.

Chris Duffy Military Experience in the Age of Reason. 

A word on Conquest Miniatures; they are bloody marvelous! I am a huge fan of the Perrys, but these are just as nice, maybe even better. I'm really impressed by their looks and how well they paint for such detailed figures. The Indians might be even better. Very, very impressed by this range.

Hi,

Welcome to my humble blog about miniature painting and wargaming (mostly). Hopefully the first of many posts to come in this new blog. For those that don't know me, I've been running the website Clash of Empires for the last 5 years. The website is mostly about my 1809 Napoleonic project and the Austrian army of the era, a favourite of mine. If you like Napoleonics, it's well worth a look.
Now, shameless self-promotion aside, this is a new blog, my first with Blogger. Why?

Well for one thing to separate my other wargaming projects from my Napoleonic project. This blog will feature various projects and painting from fantasy to the French-Indian wars. Somehow, featuring Chaos warriors in my Napoleonic blog just seems out of place!

Also because I've been wanting to try something different and to see what this Blogger thingie is all about. Freewebs has not aged well in many regards; it seems like ages ago but when I started my site Blogger was still in it's infancy and websites were still cool. I'm curious to see its advantages and the differences between the two platforms.

For more than 6 years now, I've almost exclusively devoted my time to Napoleonics, but for a year in which I painted an Imperialist TYW army. For all those years I've successfully resisted the urge to paint and start other projects. 

But just recently, I've opened the proverbial floodgate and decided to tackle other projects I've been dreaming about. The first reason is because the painter in me is revolting! After painting my TYW project I realized how much there is to gain by painting other eras than what you're used to, as you develop or master techniques you did not need before. And as a painter of course variety is just good, clean fun.

Of course, there is also the joys of starting a new era. Researching and planning a new project is one of the great pleasures of this hobby. I will admit I can be borderline obsessive about all the little details like base size, armies to paint, etc. and I find starting a new era is exhilarating (man if there were ever any doubt I'm a geek...). What can I say; I like this hobby.  I really, really like it. But for me the researching, the planning and the painting are my favourite part. Gaming is just a really fun bonus!

So, yeah, quite a few projects are on my wish list. At the moment, I can mention an old school Warhammer Chaos army and a French & Indian War skirmish project. I'll probably also add some more TYW Imperialists eventually. I'll go from one to the other indiscriminately, and don't be surprised if other projects or just impulse painting pop out. It's all good.

Iannick
Montreal, Qc