French Grenadiers

Thanks to all of you who voted or left comments in the great re-basing debate. You may be surprised to hear that, despite the overwhelming support for re-basing, I have decided to stick with my current system. I think Roy and Lee tipped the balance when they pointed out that the way I currently base my figures is the true retro style and anyway it’s also the way I had my original Hinton Hunt army based. I’ll just have to put up with them falling over when they manoeuvre up-hill.

With the basing dilemma behind me I have finally managed to move on and find a little bit of time to do some painting. You may remember that I began this batch of French Grenadiers back in December and all I need to do now is apply a finish of Humbrol Satin-Cote and they’re done – that’s a stunning average of one figure a month painted! The figures are:

5 x FN2 Grenadier (charging)
1 x FN10 Grenadier Sergeant (marching)

One of the good points about re-painting old castings rather than just collecting them is that you become aware of things you wouldn’t necessarily notice at first glance. In this case it was only as I started to apply the paint that I realised that one casting (centre front rank) had its legs and head bent in a different position to the others. I think this rogue figure is probably a DK casting rather than Hinton Hunt and I will check this out by looking under the base for any clues when I remove him from his bottle-top. It’s still possible that it is HH because, as I’ve mentioned before, there were often variations in the production moulds that Marcus Hinton produced.