Last weekend I finally finished my Napoleonic Portuguese line infantry. The remaining 47 of them, bringing the total to 48. I bought these from a Foundry overstock sale last spring along with my cazadores. They are the old Perry figures, which are still pretty nice figures though I've never quite understood the nappy gamers' infatutation with identical poses.

I bought them as an experiment to see how I liked painting Napoleonic uniforms. I picked the Portuguese partly because they were on sale, and partly because they have relatively simple uniforms for this era.

I painted the cazadores already in April while these sat in reserve. I cleaned them during the summer and then gave them a basecoat of blue in September, but then they sat for a while waiting for the final details. As the date for the Napoleonic game approached, I really had to finish these, so immediately after the Baughast were done I started picking out the straps and cordage.

It took almost two weeks of non-stop work to finish this batch. Quite frankly, 47 figures in a single batch was just too much. Working on them was not much fun at all. With that many figures, almost anything you do ends up taking at least two hours.

Even though I picked the simple uniforms and simplest possibly color scheme (I intentionally chose a regiment with a single color for facings, collars and piping), there is just so many little details on the figure. Details that were designed to stand out. Granted, they look pretty spiffy now that they are finally painted, but getting there wasn't a whole lot of fun.

And that's just for the simplest possible paint job. Just picking out the details, with almost zero attention given to shading or highlights.

I have now painted all my Napoleonic figures. I should at the very least get some officers for these guys, and for a balanced force some cavalry and artillery would be nice too. It's just that I'm pretty burned out painting any cordage for a while... I like colorful uniforms, but something with a whole lot less crap hanging off them would be nicer. Seven Years War, maybe? Who doesn't like a tricorn?

I really need to make some sort of plan for next year.

P.S. Managed to do some cleaning at the workbench after finally clearing these. Also started the final Resolutions batch, looks like it will be more orcy goodness.