David Bickley's Wargames Blog

The occasional ramblings of an average gamer, journeyman painter, indifferent modeller, games designer, sometime writer for Wargames Illustrated and host of games in GHQ.



Saturday 15 November 2014

Latest Recruits for the Revolutionary French

I bought some of the Trent Miniatures French Heavy Cavalry at Derby Worlds earlier in the year and they have rather quickly, for me at any rate, made it to the front of the painting queue! At present there are no Command figures for these, although Duncan thinks he may get them done next year. I had a few spare Foundry mounted officers [new sculpts] left over so I was able to fit them into each unit for now. The result is two bases for the 4th Cavalry and four bases for the 27th Cavalry. These will add to the 7th Cavalry and the Dragoons I've already completed to make a decent sized Heavy formation for our table size I feel. I've also been painting a few Elite Company Skirmishers as I had four figures left over from my 24 figure battalions and did n't want them to go to waste!



























































The 27th Cavalry, chosen merely because I fancied the orange facings! Cavalry Regiments in our games are eight figures on four bases. I used the figures whose poses I liked most for this full Regiment of Heavy Cavalry, adding two mounted officers from Foundry. For the 4th Cavalry I used those with what I thought was an unsatisfactory pose and added an officer from Foundry to make them up to four figures on two bases.

































The 4th Cavalry: the mounted officer is from Foundry as I said, the four troopers from Trent Miniatures. Whoever sculpted these, the figures are not really up to the standard of the infantry Matt sculpted, as I've said before, but they are redeemed in my view by the decent horses, sculpted by Mark Copplestone I believe. Their main fault is the stiffness of the pose and the lack of more pronounced detail, especially on the clothing. The separate heads do help to mitigate the stiff poses though on the positive side. They are not so poor though that I would n't use them, so don't think I would n't want you to add them to your Revolutionary French!












The four spare Trent Miniatures Elite Company figures, two firing and two loading, which I've based separately to use as skirmish figures. I've enough Battalions for the french to enable me to group the Elite Companies together into a composite battalion to boost the French options in a game. Next up in the painting queue will be some Front Rank early British Dragoons, which I think I will paint up as the Life Guards. I hope to get to these later in November as I'm trying to finish some stuff for Rhanzlistan as Wargames Illustrated  are coming to GHQ at the end of the month to photograph our collections to accompany an article I've written for them about our project.

2 comments:

  1. The pose on the 4th cavalry look as though they have been sculpted to make the casters life easier, certainly a pose I have never seen in any cavalry exercise diagram, in fact it look as a tad uncomfortable. None the less you have made a great job on them.

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    1. I recall you mentioned that when you first saw them at Derby and I have to say I think you are right.

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