French Veterans

I was very pleased to recently receive an email from wargame rules author David Brown who wanted to know if I would like some Hinton Hunt troops that he had in his collection. He said he’d followed my blog for a while and wondered if I’d like the figures as they didn’t fit with his Perry and Connoisseur troops and he therefore never used them.

FN/9 Grenadier (marching), FN/8 Officer (marching), FN/6 Drummer (charging), FN/4 Colour-Bearer (charging) now in my possession courtesy of David Brown.

Well of course I was quite chuffed about this because I have long been an admirer of David Brown's General de Brigade rule system. In fact, I was about to embark on 15mm armies based for use with those rules when the Hinton Hunt’s came back into my life and I went down the vintage rules route instead.

6 x FN/9 from the collection of the late Eric Knowles.

The figures are fifteen marching French line Grenadiers together with an officer, standard-bearer and drummer. By a happy coincidence Tony passed on six more marching Grenadiers from the Eric Knowles collection the last time I saw him (that seems like 10 years ago) so together they give me a full 24-figure unit.

A full unit of Combined Grenadiers.

My thanks to David (and Tony) for such generosity, I hope to give the troops a spruce up and get them back into action sometime in the new year.

British Heavy Metal

A couple of weeks ago I managed to obtain enough castings of BN/40 Dragoon (mounted) trotting in helmet with flowing horses tail plume to expand my existing squadron of six figures to a full twelve figure unit. I’m pleased about this because the figure is one of my favourites, being in a unique pose amongst the other figures in the Horse Attached Series. My suspicion is that this was the first cavalry figure that Marcus Hinton sculpted for the Napoleonic range as the pose seems designed for ease of casting and is similar to the mounted figures in the earlier American Civil War range.

The recent acquisitions are all excellent castings with no flash unlike the six figures I had already that were basically a solid block of metal from which I had to hew a model soldier. I love the fact that the previous owners had given up on the attempt and just painted over the flash.

Work is underway and this move also heralds a long overdue reorganisation of my entire British Heavy Cavalry.

Erbgross Herzog Von Toskana Dragoons

That really does sound more like a made-up name for a unit on an imagi-nations blog, but it is the title on the Hinton Hunt painting instructions for AN.77 Austrian Dragoon (mounted) charging. The regiment is now finished, based and ready for action, although sadly not in time for the Battle of Windmill Hill.

The figures are all lovely original castings generously gifted to me by Don about ten years ago. My painting does make them look a bit cartoon like because of the black lines against the stark white but the overall effect from a distance is quite pleasing.

General Winter

Last night when I went out to the Hinton Hut for a painting session the thermometer was registering minus one outside and plus one inside. Even after an hour of the heater running it was only up to fourteen degrees. This morning there was an inch of snow, General Winter has arrived.

It's a 10 yard dash from the back door to the Hut (although clearly, looking at the footprints I don't always make it).

I did however manage to prise open my frozen fingers just enough to put the finishing touches to the last two Austrian Dragoons. I like how this unit has turned out, the yellow and red really pop against the stark white. I just need to base them now.

Austrian Dragoons, perfectly camouflaged for the current weather conditions.

Next, I will be painting something red as there is more than enough white around here at the moment.