95th Rifles - work in progress - Part 3

Nearly finished now - just need to do plumes (which I'm going to do in a much lighter green) and some other details such as the canteen straps.
I love basing  figs and am constantly fighting an urge to base them before they are properly finished. Also, my current lack of space means that a unit of based figs takes up a lot more room than those which are still loose - so I'm hesitating. It makes more sense to just put these away and move on to the next unit but...I just bought a load of grass tufts! We'll have to see.

I put thirty canteen and backpack decals on these guys. I'm not sure what I think of the results, they are great decals but at this scale you are either a) too far away to even see them or b) so close up that you can see very clearly every wrinkle, crease, shine etc. i.e. the decal is very obvious.  I might just leave the rest - again not sure.

I've had a lot of fun with this unit - about half are Foundry, Front Rank and Perry metals, but the rest are made up of the bodies of Perry plastic riflemen, grafted onto all manner of Perry and Victrix legs with a variety of converted heads. The officer here, for example, is a Victrix head and officer body with a Perry hussar pelisse.

95th Rifles - work in progress Part 2

Just an update - they're coming along nicely and quite pleased so far. I asked for some help r.e. undercoating and varnish on the Steve Dean forum and received some very useful advice - I'm so used to working with plastics where the paint never chips off and needs no varnish, that all these metals were quite tricky at first (of the 65 men about 30 are metal). But now, thanks to the matt Daler Rowney varnish which I bought, things are much better. I'm very grateful for the advice, and increasingly I can see that the difference between terrible figs and beautiful figs has very little to do with an individual's skill but rather, is pretty much down to what you know.
Anyway, here are a couple more pics of Number 1 company, 2nd Battalion Rifles. Still plenty to be done but much, much quicker than all those damned redcoats!

Rifles it is! Work in progress on the 95th

Many thanks to everyone who voted! In the end there were just a couple more votes for the Rifles but next up I'll do a squadron of the Scots Greys (the runners up), I promise.

So here is No.1 Company (Miller's), 2nd Battalion 95th Foot. The 2nd Battalion formed part of Adam's brigade and, along with the huge battalion of the 52nd, really hammered the final advance of the Imperial Guard late in the day. So I'm going to have both this battalion and the 52nd in a desperate firing line, with the 71st and 3rd Batt 95th advancing in line (being at the other end of the wheeling line, by the time the 71st had formed up the French had already taken to their heels).

So... early days but such a pleasant change to all that horrible white lace.

The Battalion was only six companies strong at Waterloo but to compensate for this, each was very large. No.1 Company had a nominal strength of 115 men. They suffered 25% casualties in their sharp exchange with the Guard - 4 men killed and 25 wounded.

The company was commanded by Captain George Miller who was wounded by cannister shot fired by a British cannon which had been captured by French troops, “They fired it three times, loaded with grape, into our square, and did great execution.”  A Peninsula veteran, Miller had received a special gold medal for his conduct at the Nivelle. He was promoted to Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel for Waterloo and died in 1843.

Man down at the front - poor Tom Plunkett!

40th Foot - finished!

This is, of course, a bit of a lie - they're not finished: I still have to base them and there are still a few drummers, serjeants' stripes, sword pommels and missed bits here and there to complete. But for the moment, they're going back in the box and I'm going to move on. My job has really picked up recently so I haven't had much time, and the 40th have kept me busy since Christmas.
The blogger stats show this site popping up on all sorts of wargaming and modelling forums - French, German, Canadian and others - and its amusing/weird for me to read people discussing my project. The two most prominent sources for discussion are a) I'm mad and b) I'll never finish in time for June 2015.
The first point may be true but as far as b) goes - no, of course I will never get close - I'd need several more lifetimes and triple my meagre salary to manage it but I love doing this - for me it's the history of each, ordinary, forgotten individual that I find fascinating, far more so than analysing grand scale tactics, the battle itself and so on.

So here are the 40th Foot forming square one last time before they go back into a box for a good while.

I'm not sure what to do next; I have a choice of the following:
1) One of the 3 Rifles battalions - all that green would make a nice change
2) Scots Greys - I haven't started on the heavy cavalry yet, and I should get a move on
3) a Horse Artillery battery - I don't have many figs yet, I was keeping fingers crossed for plastic one day. I've done an RA battery already (as you can see here) so one from the RHA would be nice.
4) one of Halkett's regiments (30th, 33rd, 69th, 73rd) - bloodied and much reduced (thank heavens!) from Quatre Bras - I'm using all Victrix for these.

I don't know if enough people read this to actually have a poll - but please, if you see this, it would be fun for me to hear your opinion and I'll use that to make my decision. It's as good a system as any even if there's only a couple of votes!

40th Foot - part 3 - nearly there

On it goes - broken the back of the buggers now and the end is (maybe) in sight.
I'm still not sure how to base them - I think I'm going to have to have one row kneeling (not 2 as I know was correct) and 3 rows standing. At the moment I have a front rank kneeling, second rank firing or presenting, third rank with muskets raised skyward and fourth rank either at the ready or resting. I'd welcome anyone's thoughts on this.

 As always, still plenty to be done - but at least most of the incredibly tedious lace is now finished.

One of the best accounts of the 40th comes from Serjeant William Lawrence of the Grenadier company - I fancy this might be him in the centre of the pic. He served with the 40th in South America, the Peninsula and 1815. His writing is very much an infantryman's point of view - he spends as many pages describing the finding and preparation of a ham and two chickens after the battle as he does in the combat itself.

40th Foot part 2

On it goes...nothing to see here, move along please...

At the back you can see a mounted colonel. Unfortunately colonels are the only choice we collectors of British 28mm Napoleonics get - Perry make 2, Victrix make 2, and Front rank make 3.

So to keep every unit unique I've put a Perry head (covered shako) on a Victrix Colonel.  This doesn't solve the problem of Adjutants (who were usually Lieutenants and also mounted). Every British infantry battalion had a mounted adjutant yet nobody makes such figures which seems odd when you consider some of the more obscure figures which are produced.

The 40th would actually have had at least 3 mounted officers, none of whom were colonels - Major Arthur Hayland (who was killed), Major Fielding Browne, and the adjutant, Lieutenant William Manning. So I'll need to get to work on two conversions to make these two other chaps - I bought some Front Rank horses last week with specifically this project in mind and I shall post updates here.

40th Foot

Not much to report since Christmas - been working on the 40th Foot who, unfortunately for me, were not at Quatre Bras and were therefore pretty much at full strength at Waterloo which makes them - with a nominal strength of 840 -  rather a large unit to do. Last time it was tartan tartan tartan, now it's buff buff buff.

I'm going to do the 40th in square which leads to the usual problem of not having enough kneeling figures. As I understand it, regulations stated that, at full strength, a square should comprise the first TWO ranks kneeling and the third and fourth ranks standing. Even with some generous donations I would need as many as 400 kneeling figs and that is never going to sit well with my bank account. So I'm going to cheat and have only the first rank kneeling and then three ranks of standing.

Here, from much later in the century, is a company square (not battalion) so only two ranks. A formation much favoured by historical renactors (all 17 of them).

Famous painting by Lady Butler - damn! Two kneeling ranks!

Hurrah! Only one rank kneeling! But again, from another war, and hardly a definitive historical source.

I'll just have to hope someone comes forward with a scrap of historic evidence for my 1-rank-kneeling, 3-ranks-standing to which I can cling!

So here are some very work-in-progress pics just in case anyone thinks I've been shirking the task.