By Gar, It’s Been A While…

 Here’s some Napoleonics that I’ve been painting and converting.

These are converted French Horse Grenadiers - Grenadiers A Cheval de La Garde Imperial, some musicians, painted up Lucky Toys, and a couple of Line Horse Artillery guns.

I also did the Empress Dragoons.

Finally a lone Cuirassier. I guess I’ll get ‘round to doing the unit, but I ran out of steam.

I also did some  English units, these being Waterloo Hanoverian. There’s a company that put out these guys in 28mm plastics, and I just seized upon the look of them to paint some 1/72 Prussians up.

I also did some artillery. Basically they look just like the English artillery, but I painted the artillery drivers in red like the earlier Waggoner corps. Just a whim on my part.

And finally I painted up French Foot Artillerymen as Russians and Gave them a couple of limbers.

Winter Update

 Not much new this winter, except all the snow.

We don’t get the big snowfalls like people down east with those Nor’Westers or people in Colorado with the huge snowfalls.

But we do get blizzards, which is sustained high winds and snow.

This year they’ve been a near weekly occurrence and we are getting blocked in by all the drifts.

So it’s been a great time to do favourite tv and movie rewatches, read a book and paint toy soldiers.

Here’s a scene reminiscent of Valmy. Hong Kong soldiers made into Revolutionary war period French.

Next are a few Thirty Years War types. The large base is a terico, made of figures from one box of Mars figures. The pikes are those provided in the set and a bit of an experiment on my part. I used to just use florist wire, but after I dropped a biscuit tin full of pikemen, I kinda walked away from them. These soft plastic pikes may not be painted (yet) but they stay in place. 

These next guys are actually lead 25mm Minifigs S range if I’m not mistaken. I bought a bunch of broken figures and these guys were in them. No swords, but they look ok on those Giant copy horses. Also there is  a squadron of Warrior Miniatures 25mm French Cuirassier.  

And finally here’s some of those medieval figures I bought and featured in the last blog post. They paint up nicely.

Some Late Roman/Byzantine Soldiers Plus Some New Dollar Store Items

 

These are some infantry, just toys from the Risk game “Godstorm!”

I have some other infantry, loosely based on the Hinchliffe figures and WRG book “Armies and Enemies of Rome”, that I posted here: http://dougssoldiers.blogspot.com/2015/10/some-photos-i-found.html

Here’s a wider shot:

The cavalry in front are Emhar rowing Vikings with plastic shield on Giant recast horses.

And another

I have a metal command figure I picked up on eBay. He might be a stand in for Justinian or Stilicho. As an aside, author Kieth Roberts book “ The Boat of Fate” has a vivid description of Stilicho. An excellent book on late Rome set in France, Spain and Britain. One of my favourite re reads.

Next up is a regiment of British Waterloo Hussars. These are some of those guys I picked up a while back from eBay. I did some touch ups to the chipping of old Humbrol paint and coated with a seal of wax. Nice figures but the original owner never painted up the trumpeters or kettle drummers.

Finally some new made in China dollar store toys.

New poses!

And they are close to 1/72 scale!

Unfortunately I had to get these on eBay and not my local store. I guess with shipping backlogs it will be some time before I see them here.

Anyway, here’s the eBay photos which show the poses in two colours and an idea of their size:

Here’s my own size comparisons:

Top row left, Airfix Paratrooper pretty close in scale, next pair is the  1/76 scale “Follow me” GI officer who is towered over by the new guy.  The last two pairs are Airfix Waterloo French and they aren’t too badly matched size wise.

Bottom row: a made in Hong Kong GI next to the new pose, quite a difference, and finally a couple of pairs of 1/76 scale Matchbox figures being dwarfed by the new guys.

Over all the new figures are crude, but the  poses are unique and for me, someone who cuts them up, drills them and slathers them with plasticine, I have to say I’m pleased. Some poses have wide spaced legs which might make mounting them on horseback that much easier.

Anyway, a curiosity perhaps, but one with some use.

More Plasticine Soldiers

 Here are some more plasticene conversions and some complete plasticene figures I’ve made.

First up is my attempt to have some of Marlborough’s Danish corps.

The infantry are made in China US GI’s in the “follow me” pose with toothpick guns. In support are two squadrons of dragoons.

As for the uniforms, I used an article in Military Modelling from the 90’s, but a perusal of Charles Grant’s book on the armies of the wars says the coats were all grey and only the pants and stockings were colourful. Oh well, Knotel says they were yellow. I’m completely lost on the flags, I know there should be two, but I’ve seen multiple designs, so I just made one up. Oh yes, I started on the green regiment as well.

The horse. A couple trumpeters, the yellow commander and the dragoons. Except for the commander, they are those Thai cowboys I found. Commander Yellow is an Esci Scots Grey.

Up next are a couple of Greeks. The mounted guy is Pausanias, formerly a Marx 7th cavalry trooper. Hopefully fighting Persians is more successful than the Indian confederation, but he did end up in a bad way too.

The wounded guy sitting on his shield is made entirely of plasticene and mounted on a poker chip.

These guys are made of plasticene and seated on plastic zoo camels. They are created from the Funcken drawings of Napoleon’s Egyptian adventure. 

I thought I’d make some British soldiers in boats for a Quebec game, but this is as far as I got. Plasticene men in a made in China boat. They still need a base and toothpick oars. And a flag.

And now a return to the desert, with my start of a Sassanid army. I put about a dozen infantry (WW2 Japanese officers with plasticene shields and headgear), on a base meant for 24 figures. I have pinched the idea from Pony Wars, the old rule set Peter Guilder adopted for his Sudan games. A handful of men can represent a horde.

The clibinari are Lucky Toys Revolutionary War horsemen with plasticene cloaks and hole punch shields. I just painted the face metal for armour.

The light cavalry are plains Indians with some new hats.

The elephants were a real find. Hinchliffe miniatures.  I got them on eBay. All I had to do was put them back together and touch up the paints.

Hopefully these guys and their friends will square off against Bellisaurius in front of Daras one day soon. I didn’t post the Byzantines as I can’t find them. I use all kinds of boxes and only recently have I begun to sort them out in eras. The Thirty Years War/ECW/Rocroi armies are in my bedroom, the ACW is in the hall and WW2 are stacked precariously at the top of the stairs. And the Napoleonics are under foot. I wouldn’t have it any other way.  

I was asked in the questions below which plasticene brand I was using.

Currently I use Plastalina by Craft Smart. It’s $5, very reasonable.

 https://canada.michaels.com/en/craftsmart-plastalina-modeling-clay-4-earth-colors/10062645.html