Carabineers

A squadron of Carabineers resplendent in red crested helmets - surely the most colourful of the French heavy cavalry? No French Napoleonic army is complete without them. Here we have:

4 x FN106 Carabineer (one piece casting)
2 x FN311 Carabineer (mounted on FNH5)

One-piece Hinton Hunt cavalry castings are a bit marmite - you either love them or you hate them! They’re not the best of sculptures and generally came with more flash metal than figure. The detail such as cross belts tends to disappear annoyingly as you attempt to paint it so a good deal of imagination is required to animate the figures. However, for all their faults, I find myself strangely drawn to them. Perhaps it is because they were the only Napoleonic cavalry figures you could get when I started wargaming (unless you wanted to painstakingly convert Airfix US cavalry figures).

The two-piece castings are much better figures being easy to paint and compare well to those produced today. Presumably Hinton Hunt introduced them to replace the earlier one-piece castings although the two types remained in production together. I have enough castings left to make up another squadron to which I will eventually add some Cuirassiers to form a heavy brigade.

The old ads are the best

This is the advert that started it all for me – from the inside back cover of the July 1968 issue of Miniature Warfare. The advert proudly boasts that Hinton Hunt offer “the largest range of high quality 20mm war game figures in the world” – heck!

I was intrigued by the drawings of the mounted figures although I had no idea who they were supposed to represent. I just knew I wanted models like that and strangely enough, I now have both of them. The chap on the left turns out to be Marshal Davout and the one on the right is Marshal Murat. They don’t come much more dashing and exciting than Murat although apparently he was a pretty poor general – great taste in uniforms though.

I did eventually get to the Hinton Hunt model soldier boutique in Camden Passage in about 1974 but was disappointed to find it only stocked 54mm figures. For some bizarre reason I bought a 54mm Caledonian Warrior.

Click on the image to zoom in and read the text.

Seen any Frenchies?

Two British officers confer on my worktable whilst awaiting the issue of new uniforms. They may have to wait some time as there are quite a few fellows queued up in front of them.

The mounted figure is a one piece casting of a British General. This is one of the better of the Hinton Hunt mounted figures, full of character. The foot figure is a Royal Horse Artillery officer, quite nicely painted although not in my preferred style. The figures are:

BN107 General mounted, pointing
BN25 RHA Officer holding spyglass, pointing

I have decided on four figure crews for my artillery. The RHA officer currently has two gunners to command and is just waiting for one more recruit (and a cannon) before he can go into action.

Swedish Makeover

This is the first of my Swedish units on parade after refurbishing and rebasing. Rather than striping the old paint off and starting again (my usual process) I decided to give them a makeover as some of the existing detail is pretty good. I probably spent a quarter of the time that I would have if I’d painted them from scratch. This improves the chances of my completing all nine of the twenty-four figure units before my enthusiasm runs out (yeah, right!).

When the Swedes arrived I knew zilch about the Swedish army of the Napoleonic wars and my knowledge is still pretty sketchy. I did finally manage to track down a copy of Osprey’s ‘Scandinavian Armies of the Napoleonic Wars’ and have cobbled together some other uniform information too.

This unit is apparently the 3rd Alderkreutz regiment and consists of 23 x SWN7 Swedish Infantry Marching plus an S range Minifigs officer. Now I know that strictly speaking I shouldn’t have any Minifigs in my army but I thought I would preserve the unit intact. I am reliably informed (thanks Clive) that the officer is actually an Austrian Tyrolean Jager figure AN14s.

Plenty more Swedes to come…

70's Flashback 2

A second trip down memory lane with another photo from 1970 or thereabouts. These are Hinton Hunt Prussian grenadiers from my original collection marching through the snow on the trail of Napoleon, or perhaps running away from Napoleon – who knows? The abandoned Prussian field gun is a bit of a give away.

The snow was flour and the nice frozen pond effect was due to a clear plastic sheet being laid out on the table first (insisted upon by my mother to aid clearing up after the photo shoot).

The figures are:

PN16 Garde Grenadier Marching

It must have been snowing pretty hard as it seems to have settled on the men’s hats and shoulders as they march along.

Tell it to the Marines

One of my favourite films as a child was ‘Sands of Iwo Jima’ with John Wayne - from the days before we discovered WWII was actually fought in colour.

These Marines belong to a different era, one when Britannia ruled the waves and boarding parties took only the odd musket and cutlass with them – not an ipod in sight. The figures are:

BN114 Royal Marine Charging
BN116 Royal Marine Officer Marching

Nice little models in typical Hinton Hunt charging pose and a pleasure to paint. Ideal support for my Royal Navy Landing party.

Swedes, not turnips

Just in – about 300 Swedes all the way from the US of A. Don’t ask me because I don’t know why I took out a second mortgage and bought them. In total I have 9 x 24 infantry figure units plus 5 x 18 infantry ‘Jager’ units. No cavalry or artillery but I have Generals Klingspor and Alderkreutz, not that I have ever heard of them.

I must admit I was slightly disappointed when they arrived as none of the figures have turned out to be vintage HH – usually when I buy figures I find that there is a mixture of vintage, USA castings and knock-offs. These have slightly puzzled me as the castings are good quality but the very thick bases (about 3mm) are not like any Hinton Hunt I have seen before.

Anyway, they are great figures and are almost certainly taken from original Hinton Hunt moulds or models of:

SWN4 Swedish Private Charging
SWN7 Swedish Private Marching

This has put me in a bit of a quandary because I had already decided not to include any figures other than vintage HH in my army. However, I can’t bring myself to part with them so the current plan is to refurbish and rebase them for an instant army to fight my other HH’s. I won’t attempt to repaint them as there are just too many but they look like they have all been painted by the same person so have uniformity in appearance.

My biggest problem is that I have absolutely no reference material on the Swedish armies of the Napoleonic Wars.