Thursday, March 8, 2018

British Infantry on parade

I've spent most of February working on my british infantry, not only to make the 2 battalions I showed here on previous posts, but also because I took the opportunity to work on my existing battalions as well, to correct some imperfections - they're among my first painted units of napoleonics, and I've learned a thing or two about correct regulations since then.

I had 6 battalions of line and 1 of light infantry, but they were mostly incorrect regarding their flank companies, some had too many grenadiers/light, some had too few. Also, none had standard bearers, and most had scarce command figures. So, there was a lot of work involved to fix all that.

Here we can see the result, with all my current battalions on parade (including the 2 newly finished). I don't have enough poles to give each battalion 2 flags - as I mentioned on other post, the Hat Command kit is quite rare - so I chose to give one each, with some carrying the regiment colors and others carrying the King's. This way I get a got mixed visual on the battlefield.


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My units are 32-men strong. The flank companies (grenadiers on the rigth, lights on the left) should each compose 1/6 of the unit, so I round that up to 6 models for each flank company. Fixing the proportions of these men involved most of the work required to correct my battalions, not only with painting new models, but also removing and gluing, and redoing the texture on the bases once the new models were in place. It was labor intensive, alright, but the result is very nice.


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I also added a drummer to each battalion, and in some cases a bugler and/or fifer. The light infantry battalion is the one that received most additions - they only had a officer to represent their command party, so I added a bugler, drummer, color bearer and fifer. 

I also gave it a new officer - the one from the Command kit is a better sculpt than the original from the light infantry kit, though I wonder if it's correct to give a officer in a bicorn to a light infantry unit - I haven't seen any visual reference on that, but I haven't found anything that says they should only wear shakos, either, so I guess at least for the peninsular campaign it should be correct.

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I plan to add another 3 units to this army, with at least one of them being a second light infantry battalion. This would give me a total of 12 british battalions, which, together with my portuguese, spanish and brunswickers would make for quite a large force to face the french in peninsular battles in our games of Black Powder.

6 comments:

  1. I've really enjoyed watching this army grow before our eyes. Particularly as I'm currently painting up the same Hat peninsular kit. It is my first napoleonic army so it has been very helpful seeing what you have done, thanks for you regular updates

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    1. Good to know it's been helpful, Anthony! Cheers.

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  2. Blimey!!!!! That´s some Parade.

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  3. What an impressive and beautiful parade!

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