French Cuirassier Head Swap

 I have been collecting Del Prado Relive Waterloo cavalry since 2000, planning to use them in my Shiney Napoleonic Armies project. The horses are truly great and some of the riders are nice as well. 

The challenge is that compared to other lines I want to use: Minifigs for Infantry and Hinchliffe and Connoisseur for cavalry, the heads are very small. 

One possible solution is head swaps. I identified 2 Del Prado Cuirassier Flag Bearers that I quite like due to their metal flags (very retro), and bought a pin drill and some expendable riders (victims/ donors) and got to work.

I really like the results.

Here are the original Del Prado figs:

And the converted version:

Here is the direct comparison:

The new conversions are somewhat bigger than Minifigs cavalry and slightly smaller than Hinchliffe and Connoisseur, but not much.

Maps of Waterloo, Ligny, and Quatre Bras

Following up on my post from yesterday about the antique map of Ligny from a German book from1880 that I discovered when researching maps of the 100 days battles:

The reason for my research/ rabbit-holing was that I wanted to commission maps of all three battles from a very talented map artist that I’ve worked with on my games: Jared Blando.

The result of our collaboration, and his talent was three pretty beautiful maps. I printed up a hundred of each (higher definition than shown here, obviously), and still have a bunch. Maybe I’ll make them available on ebay…

Battlefield Map of Ligny

 A few years ago (2017), I went down a rabbithole researching maps of Waterloo, Quatre Bras, and Ligny. During my adventure, I learned about a very rare book on the subject written in German in 1880 that contained a very rare map of the battlefield dispositions of the Prussian Army at Ligny. The only known surviving copy (that I was able to track down) resides near me at the Northwestern University Library.

I contacted the librarian, and she was good enough to agree to scan it and send it to me. Now I’m back down the Waterloo rabbithole and was thinking about it. It seemed a shame that it only resided on my PC and wasn’t more widely available. So, here it is:

Die Tage von Ligny und Belle-Alliance, published in Hannover in 1880

By Bruno von Treuenfeld

Shiney Napoleonic Infantry

Here are my first Infantry units. These are all refreshes of long ago painted Minifigs miniatures. They all had been based and flocked for gaming and had to be carefully pried off their bases, somewhat cleaned up, touched up, and re-based. They retain the essential feel of their original paintjobs, which were quite nice.

 I’ve been experimenting with different unit compositions for my bases: 

My Infantry bases will have 6 foot figures (2 ranks of 3). The French Grenadier and British Foot bases are represented as a company of the same type, whereas the Nassau base is a battalion of 6 different companies. I think that this latter method makes more sense for me due to the scale of the battles that I want to fight (entire major battles rather than smaller engagements). It also looks rather fun and colorful with the various plumes, etc.

Shiney Napoleonic French Dragoons

After a crazy five year delay on this project, I’ve gotten back to my true 25mm vintage napoleonic miniatures.

I’ve been collecting painted and unpainted Minifigs, Del Prado, Connoisseur, and Hinchliffe figures. I’ve cleaned up, repaired, touched up, and rebased old painted figures from the 70’s and 80’s. It feels good to rescue these classics! Though I try to improve what needs help without changing the original artists work too much.

This set is the venerable Hinchliffe 25mm French Dragoons in Bardin 1812 - 1815 uniforms. (Note: The original painter designated them as the 9th Dragoons, which historically were converted to Line Lancers before the Bardin Regulations went into effect. So this unit never really looked like this…but I don’t mind.)

These figures were beautifully painted by the original owner, so I didn’t need to do much work on them. I refreshed the helmets with brighter bronze (actually used gold for this) to help them pop more on the table. I refreshed-painted the horsehair plumes and horse tails as the black had faded. I painted blankets red that had been left white. And I repaired a few spots where the paint had worn down to the metal. And then a fresh coat of gloss. 

All figures are Hinchliffe except the Eagle Bearer’s horse, which is Connoisseur. I’ve got flags ordered from Jim Cotton, which I’ll add soon.

10mm Lord of the Rings Project: Mumak

 I’m starting a new minis project for a game design I’m working on: Lord of the Rings.

Here is a 10mm Mumak that I just finished: