British Light Dragoons - 14th Regiment

I finished my second unit of light dragoons for the British cavalry. These are Italeri models, very nice sculpts, even if a bit hard to pose on my 5cm x 5cm bases, given their overly extended stances.

Since I already had a unit in yellow facings, I chose to do this one here in orange, as the 14th Light Dragoons.

British Heavy Dragoons

I painted this unit of Heavy Dragoons from Waterloo 1815 to see how I liked them, compared to the Hat models. These are definitely better sculpts, but I knew from the Plastic Soldier Review that their detail was not very crisp, so I feared they might not paint up very well.

In the end I quite liked the result, and will be getting a lot more of these guys for additional regiments for the British. My main complaint about them is the brittle plastic. Quite a few parts were broken on the box, a few others snapped on handling, so there was some gluing and fixing involved here. 

One corversion I did was giving the wounded  rider a sword. I believe his stance is supposed to represent him falling foward, as his horse ducks, but by giving him a sword I think he passes well for a rider urging his comrades forward (he's the 6th guy from left to right, front rank).

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.

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.

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.

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.

British Peninsular Infantry - Buff Facings

I've been wanting to do a unit of british infantry in buff facings for a while. I find their distinct look, with straps in the facing color, to be very appealling. I think I'm gonna paint another such battalion in the future.

Just as with the unit from my previous post, I also made use of some figures of the Hat Command kit in this one: a mounted officer, standard bearer, drummer, nco's and a pioneer. I'm just not sure what's supposed to be painted on the patch of his bearskin, so I just painted it red.

British Peninsular Infantry

I've finished a couple more units of line infantry for my peninsular british, and this time I added flags to them, using the standard bearers in the Hat British Command kit. That's a rare kit in the market, being out of stock for quite a while, but I managed to grab 3 on ebay over the last year, each with 4 standard bearers, so enough to fit my existing and future battalions with one flag each.

That kit also gave me other options of command figures, such as a drummer and a mounted officer, which I also added to this unit. The rest of the models are from the Hat Peninsular British Infantry kit.

This first battalion of my latest batch has blue facings, and for the flag I chose to use the King's colors. They also come accompained by a few bases of skirmishers.

British and Allied Staff

Here is the British staff, along with a couple command bases of allies. As usual, these are a mix of personalities from Strelets and a handful from other manufacturers, such as Hat and Waterloo 1815.

First, the british personalities:





















I have two versions of Picton. The one below is from Waterloo 1815:

And this one here is from Strelets. A very cartoony Picton, in the style of Strelets. It's quite interesting to compare two very ditinct styles of sculting on the same subject.

 The Duke of Wellington:







The Duke of Brunswick:








Prince William of Orange, accompanied by a Nassau Jaeger officer:







A handful of unnamed commanders to complete my british headquarters:

As I like dramatic vignettes, this one below represents a reunion of commanders chivalrously debating the best course of action.