Thursday 31 December 2015

Pole Position

The weather has been glorious in Wellington this week, so I've spent much of the last three days out in the front garden, stripping, repairing and repainting the front gate. However, I've also found a little time to do some painting indoors. As French light cavalry are on my official to-do list, I thought I'd make a start on some lancers.

Pink Poles!
Now some figures require a little more faith than others, and so it was when I came across these chappies. Decked out in a delightful pink, they certainly didn't look very promising. However, vintage Polish lancers are hard to come by, so I took the plunge.

The figures are Der Kriegspielers DK 39: French Line chevau-légers lanciers (Regiments 7-9). They are identical in almost every respect to the Hinton Hunt figure FN 43: French Guard Lancer, Charging, apart from one small detail: the lance pennants have been turned upside down!

Der Kriegspielers DK 39: French Line chevau-légers lanciersPictured is my first test figure, a trooper of the crack 7th Regiment, formerly the 1st Vistulan Lancers, fresh from the battlefields of Spain where they had virtually destroyed Colborne's Brigade at the Battle of Albuera in 1811.

He was not the simplest of figures, but I'm really pleased with the way he's turned out.


I should really be working on the rest of my Prussian cavalry, of course. However, a French squadron seemed like more fun, which is what the project is really all about!

Der Kriegspielers DK 39: French Line chevau-légers lanciers Happy New Year

WM




Der Kriegspielers DK 39: French Line chevau-légers lanciers

10 comments :

  1. Pole Position...excellent! And great job!

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    1. Cheers Phil. Nothing like a terrible pun to start the New Year!

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  2. Wow cool figure Matt! I didn't realise that the vustula lancers had thenlanyards like the guard lancers.

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    1. Thanks Roy.

      I think it was only the elite companies that had full plumes and all the stringy bits. However, I'm not complaining!

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    1. Thanks Paul. The details are rather 'subtle' on these figures (ie, hardly exist at all) so I had to invent quite a lot of it!

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  4. Very nice! I have a few of these myself in the lead pile, interesting about the upside down pennants - clearly considered enough to disguise them!

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    1. Cheers, Ian. I think the idea was simply to distinguish the line from guard lancers as the DK guard lancer figure has the pennant right side up!

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  5. Excellent work

    Paul

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    1. Cheers Paul. Very fiddly but more fun than Prussians, somehow!

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