At the time of writing this, the revamped French line for Blood & Plunder has just dropped in all-new resin. The new material is great, but even better are new minis! Finally, the Compagnies Franches de la Marine have arrived on the Blood & Plunder tabletop. As a “frequent commander of French forces” myself, I was very excited to get a preview release of these wilderness troops – just in time to have them painted for launch.
Before We Begin: Our Canvas
My minis arrived in the new, 3d-printed material that Firelock is using. If you want a more in-depth review of the how & why of this material, you can read the review over at Blood & Pigment.
But since this is a painting tutorial for new minis, not a review of a new material – let’s make this short and sweet:
4 minis, $18.
The detail is amazing. That picture up there is not a render: those are the minis as they arrived to me.
And yes – that means that I didn’t clean any flash or straighten anything. There are a few leftover support “nubs” on the backs that I knocked down with an Xacto, but that was it. No hot water straightening (although another in the batch needed it), no filing, and no washing.
No assembly required.
Prime & Go.
Durability might be an issue. I did have a model break on me when it was dropped during priming. From about waist-high, onto a concrete floor, the butt of his rifle went shooting off across the workshop. You can see it on the kneeling miniature. I don’t particularly think that a “drop test” is a fair assessment, as I don’t make a habit of dropping my minis from tabletop height. I do make a habit of storing them in foam cases, where I’ve had more than a few of the metal minis slowly bend and deform over time when they didn’t fit perfectly into the spaces – something that can only be repaired with hot water, ruining the paintjob.
Maybe, after a few more weeks of living with these minis, I’ll put my thoughts on materials into another post. But for now, let’s get to painting. Or well, first:
Reference Images
If you can spell Compagnies Franches de la Marine to type into Google, you’ll get a whole bunch of pictures of Canadian reenactors dressed up in frilly French uniforms. That, or you get French & Indian War miniatures.
There seems to be one school of thought on painting these guys: they’re either all blue, or they have grey coats. Except…
I also found this cruelly pirated page of an Osprey book on Pinterest, which talks about how the Compagnies actually equipped themselves in the field. It’s a bit out of period, but I don’t think much changed between then and now. Especially when looking at the models compared to the picture: they seem to be based on this pic almost specifically.
TL:DR – It makes it clear that these men might have been the first ‘Special Forces’ unit to “go native.” They ditched their uniforms and adopted woodsman dress made from whatever they could find. Often, their former uniforms. Blue and Grey were common, but not universal. It also gives the names of the garments, which is handy for googling other, real-life examples of them and seeing what they looked like in their original color and culture.
Step 1: Base Layers
I gave the minis a “quick & dirty” prime with some Krylon flat white, all-purpose primer. You’ll notice a theme going forward: I don’t use anything fancy or expensive. That budget mindset continues with the skin-tone. I used Barbarian Flesh from Army Painter to do all of the skin.
You need to keep your paints thin, or else you will obscure too much detail. Go too thin though, and the pigment breaks up. Unlike cheaper craft paints, Army Painter colors have fine pigmentation and won’t break as easily. To further help this, I thin my colors with AP’s Speedpaint Medium rather than water.
Eyes
Eyes were done with a very fine brush – a single stroke down the middle of each eye, masked off with the skin tone. You don’t need to paint eyes at this scale; if this were a real person viewed from a distance where he was only 28mm tall, you wouldn’t be able to see eyes. I started painting eyes, and now I’m stuck doing it on all my Plunder minis.
I will say – these printed models have enough detail that they eye itself is raised from the socket around it, making this peculiar brand of masochism almost pain-free.
Step 2: For your Consideration. & Guns
Spoiler alert: I’m going to use Speedpaint on these models. I’ve learned from experience that Speedpaint and GW’s Contrast paints are slightly different beasts.
Speedpaint can “reactivate” if you hit it with any other paint. The fact that it is translucent also makes it hard to “touch-up” if you make a mistake. This means that rather than the usual “inside to outside” order of painting
(skin -> clothes -> worn -> carried)
we have to paint our non-Speedpaints first, and then touch up any mistakes in white, before going back to Speedpaint.
TL:DR – paint your muskets with Oak Brown, now.
Step 3: …really chaps my Mitass
Was Richard Simmons Canadian? He seems Canadian – like how Michael Cera is Canadian. These guys are definitely Canadian, and their stylish leg warmers, chaps, mitasses are made from either cloth, or buckskin. Anything buckskin gets painted with Kobold Skin.
The bands of definitely-not-elastic that hold up the mitasses, come in a variety of colors. I went with red, or more buckskin.
Fine detail alert: each of those little bands has a different pattern sculpted into it.
I didn’t want to do the bands in Speedpaint, because again: hard to touch-up fine detail work once it’s down. Easier to cover Speeds with regular layer paints, rather than the other way around.
Step 4. “And Now, I am making your silver pants, blue”
First show of the Speedpaint. A lot of the Speedpaint colors are far too vibrant or “magical” for historicals. Highlord Blue is probably pushing it a bit, in terms of vibrancy. Still, I whacked it onto some pants, and everyone’s hats, and the gap in the bottom of their jackets. If you look very closely at the crouching figure, you can see that I got some between his chaps and coat.
Despite their woodsy appearance, the Compagnies were regular-army troops, issued with uniforms. During this period, their jackets were grey, and their trousers and waistcoats were blue. Much of their woodsman equipment was made by recycling uniforms. Hence: blue cap badges, and blue “inner lining” peeking through their coats.
The white is there because this is the time to clean up any mistakes. We’re on to Speedpaint in full next.
Step 5. Capot Capers
Here is where we go off-script a bit. As we said above – the Compagnies were uniformed, but quickly adopted more practical woodsman garb on campaign. While recycling their old blue and grey uniforms was the typical source for cloth, they did use civilian fabric as well, and that cloth was available in all sorts of colors.
For “French Uniform Grey” of all eras, Runic Grey is the way to go. For the almost-white coloring of French in this period, start with a white basecoat and then thin-down your Runic Grey with a lot of Speed Medium. I went with a 1:3 mixture.
You cannot thin Speedpaint (or Contrast) with water!
doing that ruins a lot of the properties of Speedpaint.
The leftmost model is wearing the Runic Grey uniform. The others are wearing normal AP paints, thinned down very heavily with Medium, which is how it is intended to be used. The model on the farthest right is actually “painted” with Soft Tone Wash, mixed with Speed Medium. Honestly: pick up a bottle of the stuff, it’s amazing.
Step 6. LeatherMummy
Time to pick out details! All of the leather was done with the very apt Leather Brown. The powder horns were hit with Mummy Robes, which is just AP’s bone-white color. Out of pure laziness, I also did the non-Kobold moccasins with Mummy Robes, just to get some color variation.
Use a very fine brush when doing the leather belts! They’re tiny, and if you stray: you’re into Speedpaint touchups. I err on the side of caution and try not to overbrush, preferring to cover the edges with a heavy layer of shading, later. I probably could have painted the leather before their coats and made my life easier still.
Step 7. Pedantry
Brass is soft and expensive, but doesn’t corrode. Steel is durable and cheap(er), but does corrode. What’s it all mean?
Gun barrels in this period were usually left bright. Charcoal bluing, and browning/russeting existed, but they weren’t as common for mass production. So I always paint my musket barrels in Plate Mail Metal for its dark, blue-grey metallic.
I also did the axe heads with this color while I had it out.
Greedy Gold makes a good, brassy color to paint the lockplate and fittings on the muskets. And the ramrods were wooden – so leave them brown.
Step 8. Throwing Mud & Shade
Soft Tone is Armypainter’s wash, and it works very well. It’s a little more “cool” than GW’s equivalent, but that’s later. Normally, a wash is handy for shading your minis. I used it “as intended” on the buckskin chaps, brushed on as heavy as I could without it pooling, then left to dry.
The capots didn’t really need the wash though, because Speedpaint is self-shading. That freed me up to get creative and apply the Soft Tone as weathering: dirt and grime, instead. I hit the lower edges of the coats, under the armpits, at the elbows, and in some of the deeper recesses around the hoods. You can see in the photo how well this “dirtied up” my woodsmen.
Keen-eyed onlookers might catch that I did the hair and brows with my finest brush, and that I also painted the baseboards with Desert Yellow.
Step 8.5. Watch your Tone
Strong Tone was the last of the weathering. This color is almost a dead-ringer for GW Agrax Earthshade – which is a favorite for anyone who paints models, for grime and dirt.
I applied this as a shade over the bases, muskets and some of the leather bits. It also goes over the axeheads to give them a worn look, but keep it away from the sharp edge of the blade, which would be ground clean more often.
Elsewhere, I applied the Strong Tone more selectively, getting the bottoms of the legs and jackets, and some of the deeper shadows in the places already dirtied with Soft Tone. If you’re feeling brave, you can apply a few flicks of the color to get a dirt-spatter onto the model.
Step 9. Tanning Oil
It’s later – let’s talk about Seraphim Sepia. In my opinion, there’s nothing from ArmyPainter to match this GW shade when painting skin. This color is warmer than Soft Tone, without the green or blue tinge which makes Soft so good for dirt. But it is not as obviously red as AP Flesh Wash.
I apply this heavily over all of the skin, and let it pool into the recesses. The only place that I try to brush it away from, is in the eyes. This is honestly all that I do for skin and faces. I will very rarely go back and drybrush the skin with a lighter color. I know that there are very complicated recipes for skin, and when I’m not painting pale-faces, I’ll go down that road. But call it a privilege: a lot of places make good flesh-tones for the “Broadly Northwestern European” population; you might as well use them.
The Finished Product:
The finished result is a low-budget, low-effort paint scheme that doesn’t use any complicated techniques, but still looks the business on the tabletop.
Originally I was worried that while the details on these minis was very very crisp (on close look, there is a sculpted string running from the left shoulder to right hip, opposite their baldrics) the amount of details on these no-frills woodsmen was going to be sparse. However, the weathering provided enough visual interest to break up the plain surfaces of the coats.
Heavily-thinned SpeedPaint is the way that I will go forward on my Blood & Crowns minis, since it seems to be the easiest method for painting desaturated cloth. I normally paint very clean minis, and it was fun to dig into weathering these.
Hopefully, this has gotten you excited to paint your own units. The new material takes paint extremely well, and holds it too. I didn’t have any issues with paint rubbing off as I handled these minis in and out of the photobooth without their coat of varnish. Go grab some Compagnies Franches de la Marine, or any of the other newly-updated units from Firelock. They’re well worth it.