Rebasing my Napoleonic British and allies army

[Fire at Will]

I've been a bit tardy posting pictures of this project so I'm trying to catch up.

The army itself was painted in the late 70's and was mainly 20mm hard plastic Springwood figures for the basic infantry pose with various additions for standard bearers, drummers etc. from Airfix and Italeri. The cavalry and guns are all soft plastics.

A start to my Napoleonic British army rebasing - all the skirmishers including those for Portugal and Brunswick.


I increased the base depth to 25mm, which allowed the figures a better fit and also rounded off the corners, which I feel looks better on skirmishers


Each brigade has its own unit of skirmishers, plus one extra unit each of rifles and cacadores


As I started with one unit on new bases

[Fire at Will]

my next target was rebasing my British Napoleonic cavalry.


These are large 16 figure units, The Inniskillens followed by the Scots Greys.


A pair of 8 figure units, the 3rd light Dragoon and the 2nd KGL Light Dragoons, Followed by the 16 figure strong Horse Guards

[Fire at Will]

The Hussars needed quite a bit of work as each of the 7th, 10th and 1st KGL Hussars were 16 figure strong units. Luckily with a bit of historical fudging I created 6 different units.


The "newer" units of each pair are at the front, from right to left
* 15th Hussars became the 10th by adding yellow facings
* 7th Hussars becane the 18th by adding white facings and a light blue busby bag
* 1st KGL Hussars became the 2nd by adding white facings


My 7th and 15th Hussars were probably created shortly after Airfix released the figures in 1972 and they needed a lot of work to get them up to a passible standard.

[Fire at Will]

The Revell British Artillery has provided both British and Portuguese gun crews, limbers and a couple more 9pdr guns. All the old guns were touched up, my old Airfix converted Foot Artillery gunners have been retired


Should have been Portuguese guns, but somehow a British gun crew swapped over.


The British gun crews with the stray Portuguese.


I had enough gunners to provide a couple of individually based gun crews for skirmish games. Three of the RHA are old Hinton Hunts.


RHA batteries mainly rebased except a few extra new gunners.


Two new limber teams


The only odd thing is the blue uniform colour which looks a different shade in the pictures whereas in normal light it looks the same.

[Fire at Will]

Rebasing the Brunswick cavalry, I think I originally built this unit at 1:30 scale for Waterloo hence the three units of the 2nd Hussars and the Uhlan unit. They were originally painted with enamels so I did have problems with paint flaking as I worked on them necessitating some repeat rework.

[Alanmccoubrey]

Very nice Will.

[Mahti]

Lots of work but it really is worth the effort. With new bases this old gems really shine.

[Trockledockle]

Very nice Will. You must have the world’s largest collection of Springwood figures!

[Fire at Will]

Cheers guys, I forgot an earlier piece of work on the limbers


Some Foot Artillery with Revell figures, I am painting more of these these to replace my old Airfix conversions. The command stand is Strelets.


Rocket Troop from HaT, the rocket trailer was made many years earlier from an article in Airfix Magazine I think.


The limbered version of the trailer

[Fire at Will]

A bit more light cavalry, I had a lot of debate on my part about the rebasing of my large unit of Light Dragoons, in the end I decided on a compromise, the originals were all Airfix RHA officer figures and looked very old style as they were all the same pose. So I decided to mix in the Strelets British Cavalry in Egypt set. But I still kept all the common rider poses in one unit, but mixed up the horses.


At the front of the pair is the new 14th Light Dragoons with mixed horses, followed by the older 16th Light Dragoons. To the left is my new 26th Light Dragoons for Egypt in 1800 with their French grey uniforms again containing a mix of figures

Ideally if I had thought to purchase another box of the Strelets British Cavalry in Egypt when they were available, they would have been far better.

[Bluewillow]

Nice work Will, something I have ahead of me soon also

[Fire at Will]

The next stage over more than a week was the infantry.

The first batch of my Napoleonic British infantry to be replaced was my Kings German Legion Infantry Brigade. In addition to rebasing I also added in the missing command figures from the HaT Napoleonic British Command set. This also included carefully swapping over the old hand painted flag to a new standard bearer.


The Guards were in need of some TLC as they still had Airfix drummers and a standard bearer. I replaced these and a few other Springwood figures with some HaT command figures, which are better proportioned compared to my Springwoods.


Next after the Guards is the Highland regiments, these just needed rebasing. They are all Springwood except for the Airfix standard bearers and Italeri bagpipers.


Finally, the line infantry, like the Guards there were a few old Airfix figures in the units and these were replaced by figures from the HaT command set. I also replaced a few more so that with the left over figures from the Guards and KGL I could create another battalion, the one at the front.


Regrettably, I couldn't transfer a couple of the old hand painted flags so they have been replaced with printed versions.

I'm now up to date, still to do: Commanders; Portuguese and Brunswick Infantry.

[Fire at Will]

It's now the Portuguese turn to be rebased. my brigade comprises the 5th Cacadores and the 11th and 14th line infantry regiments each of 2 battalions.

[Trockledockle]

Very nice.

Can the flags be slipped off? If so, you could put American flags on and have 4 line and a rifle battalion for the War of 1812?

[Alanmccoubrey]

Will, Lovely work, I'd be terrified to even touch them, never mindgame with them.

[Fire at Will]

Very nice.

Can the flags be slipped off? If so, you could put American flags on and have 4 line and a rifle battalion for the War of 1812?

It's a nice idea but regrettably no, I used very thin piano wire and it has slightly rusted and firmly bonded to the flag adhesive

[John]

Lovely stuff as usual Will ....looking at the prodigious amounts of kit you have consistently produced through the years..which i know runs in the thousands of figures...where do you keep it all Will cheers John

[Fire at Will]

Lovely stuff as usual Will ....looking at the prodigious amounts of kit you have consistently produced through the years..which i know runs in the thousands of figures...where do you keep it all Will cheers John

In plastic crates hidden in the attic so my wife can't see how much there is

[John]

Thats not an attic Will...that's a Tardis