Sir Horatio Cary's Regiment of Horse

More thunderous sounds of hooves as from across the battlefield another regiment is re-vamped and re-based ready to join the action once more...(dramatic stuff!)

This is another regiment which I painted originally way back in 1995 or thereabouts.  Again, these had card bases with some awful green scatter stuff on as basing material.  I seem to remember that these were painted at a time that I deemed it necessary to try to speed up my painting, to try and get as many playable units on the board so I could get on with playing the big battles.  Thankfully these days, I accept that it's going to take a good few years before I'm ready for Marston Moor but in my more mature years, I'll not be rushed into doing half-baked paint jobs.  The pleasure now is to see figures painted to as high a quality as I can get them within reason...I'm not after prizes and life is too short to go completely OCD over them.

These chaps are of those earlier days when I used a black undercoat and then brown on the coats and attempted some kind of dry-brush exercise to build up the lighter colours.  I don't think it worked too well and so spent some time, as I was re-basing these, putting on a lighter touch of buff to give some 'life' into the painting.  I would originally have used enamels to have painted these, and it's noticeable that my enamel painted figures have a dull hue about them.  The next pic is a 'before and after' (Mr Broad-brimmed hat is after and Mr Helmet is before):

I accept that on campaign the darker shade might be more realistic,but rather like British Redcoats on the night of Waterloo, do I want tatty soldiers with a campaign look of white cross-belts dyed red from rain sodden wool or do I want decent looking figures on the board.  I opted more for the latter, with fresher colours breathing some life back into tired dull figures.  I did keep the original shade on gloves and cross-belts just to add contrast.

The figures are my second and last unit of Redoubt cavalry.  I probably won't add more from this company, but never say never :-)  They have their plus points and I remember that I loved building them.  Some of the poses are the equal (or better) than some of those produced by more recent offerings from other companies.  I thought the horse castings were pretty good too, with good animation and good proportioning.

From what I understand, Sir Horatio Cary fought originally for Parliament and then changed sides and fought for the King. The unit cornet (hand painted in this case) always amused me. It makes a pointed reference to the Earl of Essex with the words 'Come out you Cuckold' and a dog (if I recall correctly) poking his head out of a barrel, hinting at domestic strife within Essex's household!