Its been a month since I posted any updates, mainly due to work and real life commitments restricting my time and painting space.
I have managed to carry on with some work, however, from a small section of the kitchen table, and these are the results.
First is a completed Vistula Legion Uhlan test piece. It is an attempt to make use of some of the spare torso's you get in the Perry plastic French Chasseur box.
I wanted to go for a campaign look for these guys.
I have utilised a torso with Kinski jacket, scraping away the turnbacks and adding some piping to reflect the correct Vistula uniform. Other torsos have a blanket roll around their body that I will be using too. The oilskin covered head is from Warlord - kindly provided by Brunei35. These don't sit very well in the Perry neck socket so a sliver of plastic is needed to elevate the head slightly and get it to sit in the 'bowl' of the Perry socket.
Legs are spares from the Chasseur set, the sword is from the soon to be released Russian/Prussian Uhlans Perry set. When I met up with Alan Perry over Easter he very kindly provided a few pre-production sprues from this set for me to play around with. The Lance arm comes from this set too. As each box will come with 4 sprues of lances and swords, it means you get 12 spare swords with each box - solving the current problem of never having enough swords to make good use of the spares in other Perry sets. Full credit to Alan for doing this as it makes potential conversion possibilities so much easier - and you will be able to buy the sprues separately I believe!
Next up are some Westphalian Infantry - these are Perry plastics again, utilising their 1812-1815 French infantry in Bardin uniform. I had 2 boxes of these sitting around for ages, and whilst the figures in great coats can be used for pre 1812 easily enough, I had not worked out what to do with the rest. It turns out 1808-1810 Westphalians are very close to the later Bardin uniform, so I have painted a few up to see how they look. The drummers need the later French livery removing, which is easy to do, and I added some buttons to give the impression of the Bardin uniform, cut from micro sprue.
The 1812-1815 Perry infantry come with 6 voltigeurs firing and loading muskets in addition to the full battalion of marching
figures. I thought i could do a battalion in firing line with these, and whilst researching Westphalian infantry I came upon the Light Infantry regiment that wore light blue with orange facing uniforms. Such a colourful unit had to be done. I painted up a couple of figures as test pieces, and will use the Perry plastics for the Chasseur and Carabinier companies. I assumed it would be easy enough to find some French firing line in Bardin uniform that could be used for the Fusilier companies, but how wrong I was! There are some, but they do not match Perry for size or style. Fortunately Brunei35 came to my rescue again and suggested I look at Murawski Miniatures. They do some retreat from Moscow figures that would work, but I also found the Duchy of Warsaw firing line figures that will only need minor adjustments and head swaps to suit my purpose. The main problem is that the Fusiliers do not carry the sabre, so only need a single cross belt. Most suitable figures all have a double cross belt. The DoW figures have the single cross belt and and will be ordered soon.
The final conversion for the Westphalian Light infantry is the Carabinier. They wore peaked bearskins with no front plate. I found some Victrix bearskins without the plate, but they had no peak, so I cut the peaks from some spare heads and spliced them into the bearskins.
Finally a shot of some Victrix French dragoons approaching the final stages. Very nicely animated, but not the easiest to put together, and in my opinion, lacking some basic options.
I hope to get some of these units completed before the end of the month, and then crack on through May with the rest.