My poor dragoons. I've fielded them in most of my battles, and every time this lonely little unit has been chewed up by enemy cavalry or infantry. And to make matters worse, they haven't even had proper officers to lead them, or trumpeters to make them look good! The line must be drawn here! This far, no further. It was time to crack up another one of Perry's lovely French dragoon boxes, and get to work. This batch was pretty pretty big, as I had a couple of unpainted minis left from the first box. First off I needed 16 troopers to for two more units. Some of these I gave the heads indicating the elite company of the regiment. The box comes with both bearskin heads, which were for elite companies before the 1812 uniform change, and the plumed heads for post-1812. I'm saving the bearskins for a possible future project, and went with the plumes. I only had enough for half a unit of elite company dragoons, though. Regular TroopersElite CompanyCommandAfter the troopers, I went for the command group. The officer and the standard bearer have the fake leopard skin covers on their helmets. The musician has the (honestly more boring) 1812 regulation uniform, where they kept the jacket green instead of using the facing colour. Maybe I'll paint up a second, alternative musician later. I didn't go with a flag for the standard bearer. Napoleon got fed up with cavalry squadrons losing their eagles in the confusion that is so typical of cavalry warfare, but a lot of cavalry regiments refused to keep them in safe storage despite orders. I've decided not to use the paper flags that come with the box, so now I've got to decide which brand of flags to go with. Then I'll order flags for all my regiments at the same time. Dismounted DragoonsFinally, my dismounted dragoons got a well deserved reinforcement as well. One more unit of skirmishing dragoons join the fray, and I also painted up a NCO (so no fancy leopard skin) to lead them, brandishing his sabre.
Altogether this increases my dragoons to five units, a much more respectable force. But will it be enough to finally see them win a scrap?
11 Comments
Jonas
4/8/2017 11:21:07
Thanks! They were really fun to paint. :)
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Andy
4/8/2017 01:13:01
Very nice your horses are well painted. The gold on the helmets have a very nice stand out shine to them and both your use of the green and cream colors spot on in terms of contrast. Not overly done yet enough to show dimensions to the figure.
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Jonas
4/8/2017 11:24:05
Thanks! I found the recommendation for the gold colour by another Napoleonic painter, and it's Vallejo's bronze followed by their Old Gold paint. I think it turned out pretty well, while being less of a hassle than their liquid gold series.
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Peter Kamp
4/8/2017 06:06:31
Nice. Do not feel bad about only having half a unit as elites. AFAIK the troops were formed in companies, but deployed in squadrons of 2 companies so that is most historical. I note that the bugler is on a white horse - Is that on purpose?
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Jonas
4/8/2017 11:32:52
Thanks! Yeah, these are the first squadron, so that would be the 1st company and I guess the 4th company riding together as they had 3 squadrons in the OOB for Borodino. I just think it would look grander to have a complete SP2 unit of eight.
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Jonas Svensson
19/2/2018 11:06:46
Thanks Carlo! Yes, I'm quite happy with how they turned out. I have yet to crash all of them into the enemy at the same time, though! Looking forward to that. :)
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Parmenion
20/11/2018 18:48:59
hi nice job.im new to miniatures,i moslty like to collect them and paint them and might in future play too some games. So i have a questions,i have bought 2 boxes of the dragoons and the first 13 riders that i made ,i used at them 12 helmets with plumes,and 1 with bearskin for the guy that holds the flag,and i used all 4 torsos with epaulets plus the one that is seperate for the commander. Did i do wrong? would i have problem in future if i want to participate at a game?
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Jonas Svensson
20/11/2018 19:11:48
Hi Parmenion!
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Parmenion
21/11/2018 21:07:08
Thank u very much Jonas for your reply. Do the elite companies have better statistics in a game (better attack etc.) ? or did u mean to have 8 of them so they can look all the same ,so they can form a group? Leave a Reply. |
"Glory is fleeting,
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