Tuesday 29 December 2015

101 uses for a French Marin

So apparently my French marines are not marines at all but are sailors, thanks to Stuart A and Roy for pointing that out – if only I’d applied myself more during my CSE French lessons.


Steve noted the fact that Roy has a surplus of Sailors of the Guard and kindly sent these photos of a suitable paint job conversion - these are FN96 Marine (marching) converted to Young Guard Tirailleurs Grenadiers.


I’m pretty sure that I’d heard before that the Hinton Hunt French Marine figures were often given paint job conversions. Some of the figures that I have came originally from Don and look to have been painted as either Westphalians or Saxons.

Any other suggestions?

5 comments:

lewisgunner said...

My that looks like a lot of work! You would have to shape the Marins overall trousers into breeches and gaiters and remove the frogging from the chest. That looks like major surgery to me so I am impressed with the effort involved. However, I would really like to find a unit that could retain the frogging and somewhere I recall seeing a Spanish unit that had this....or I just have a half memory. of a picture of Bailen and it was the Marins themselves that I remember.

Stryker said...

Hi Roy - converting Marins into Marins doesn't count!

the Archduke said...

Seems to me that the Marins captured at Bailen were either dead or close to it. So it is highly likely that the Spaniards were wearing their nice uniforms shortly afterwards. Happy New Year, gentlemen.

Wargamer Stu said...

If you want to preserve the cut of the uniforms you might consider the Flanqueurs Grenadiers / Chasseurs, although you would need to trim the plumes on most of them. Ditto for the Pupilles who have a very similar uniform. Both had a nice green which makes a change for the French.

If you want to keep the plume then Reuss from the confederation of the rhine provided about half a battalion of somewhat Hungarian looking troops, but you might need a small amount of sanding on the trousers - maybe that's just too obscure though...

lewisgunner said...

http://www.zeughaus-braun.de/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/5e06319eda06f020e43594a9c230972d/i/m/img_0034_1_4.jpg

Shows the uniformes of the 'battaillon des princes ' into which the Reuss troops were incirporated. its just the sort of unit wargamers love with three different uniforms in the same formation. Pretty project which I have a recollection of having done at some time.