Wednesday 29 March 2023

28mm French and Indian Wars - British Light Infantry

 

I am pleased to report some more progress with my French & Indian Wars collection.  This time we have some British Light Infantry.  


These are based to maximise their flexibility. I can use them for Black Powder or in skirmish games for such rules as Muskets and Tomahawks and Sharpe Practice.


The figures are sold by Warlord Games (I think these were originally Conquest Games figures), but now boxed and sold by the former.


The figures are very nice, dressed as they are in their cropped down uniforms modified to be much more practical for the tough wooded terrain.  Tomahawks/axes are carried and native American Mitasses leggings worn by several of them.


To my understanding the troops carried cut down Infantry Tower Muskets but there seems to be some French muskets being carried by half of the troops.  I can't imagine that this would have been too likely as the calibres were different and the French muskets were even longer than the British Tower Muskets.  Logistics were hard enough without introducing additional calibre balls to the mix.  I removed the barrel bands on the French muskets to try to help them blend in with the British muskets.



I used my current painting method of applying 'mid-shades' neither dark nor too light of the main colours, and then applying Army Painter Washes to do the hard work of lowlighting the detail.  Finally finishing by highlighting and adding detail.


The circular bases are by Warbases and have a central hole in which I have inserted a magnet so that they can remain stationary in their metal sheet based plastic storage boxes.  As the bases are small I didn't use static grass but went for gluing on twigs as branches and various tufts.


The plan has been to continue painting FIW troops but wargaming WW2 in the last month or so has made me split my interests somewhat - this happens so often!  We shall see how this project continues.

4 comments:

  1. Good to see some " Light Bobs" on your blog, it seems so appropriate , somehow! Good spotting on the muskets...I don't think I would have picked that kind of detail up! I have to be honest and say, I don't really like the cut down hats. I know they are accurate and doubtless were more practical, but they look ugly...like modern day show jumping helmets...they are not military enough for my tastes, tricorns are far superior!

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    1. Thanks Keith, I get what you mean about the cut down hats. I did some reading about them and it turns out that one of the reasons for their shape is that they could be worn under the Canadian hooded coats, where as the tricorn couldn't be worn with it. A good idea, but I'm not all that fond of them. It's like the Household cavalry band with their Tudor riding helmets - it just looks wrong!

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