Big Men With Tall Hats

Hello again.

Another of the purchases I made from Ian at Eagle Figures back at the "Alumwell Show", aka, WMMS, in March, was a pack of his British Grenadiers, destined as with all my Seven Year' War purchases to date to feature in my burgeoning French & Indian Wars project.

Now, with 24 figures to a pack and four figures to a base (the way I am doing it, anyway!), that gives me six bases of Grenadiers to play with and, as an added bonus, I do not need to paint any flags!!! Using 24 figures also ties in neatly with my 24 figure line regiments.

So, with a plan to field six British line regiments for the aforementioned project, that neatly gives me six bases of grenadiers from six different regiments, each base representing a company. Job done!

Except, they all have to look slightly different, which is great to look at but a pain to do en masse...

I don't know if it is just me or something others find, but having to paint slightly different looking figures in a batch just doesn't work for me. I seem to spend ages doing the differences (blue facings instead of red, yellow lace instead of white, etc) and the whole thing becomes a chore.

To combat this, and with the limited time I have for anything at the moment, as well as limited daylight, I have been very slowly painting these up a base of four at a time. Although this is inefficient (I would normally work on 12 to 16 figures at a time), it does allow me to finish small stages at each short sitting so I can see some progress and do not feel like things are bogging down between increasingly rare and time-limited painting sessions.

So, for what I hope is your delight and delectation, I give you the first two bases of my Combined Grenadiers regiment (in fact, the only two bases I have done so far, though another two are underway!)

Both bases forming what would be a small regiment/ battalion in "Black Powder" terms.

 

The blue mitre caps and facings are the 60th Foot (Royal Americans), the white the 43rd Foot. I sourced details for the 60th from Osprey's campaign volume on Ticonderoga, which has a couple of decent colour plates in it depicting this regiment. I sourced details of the 43rd from Opsrey's "Combat" series volume entitled "British Redcoat versus French Fusilier", which again has colour pictures of both line and grenadiers for this regiment. NOTE: this volume also has some erroneous detail in it, so be wary of sources!

 

Grenadier Company, 60th Foot.

Grenadier Company, 43rd Foot.


What both source volumes also have is orbats for Ticonderoga in the case of the former and three separate actions in the case of the "Combat" series volume, as well as other colour details for a couple of regiments. As a result, you can expect to see both line infantry and grenadiers in the near (-ish) future for both 46th and 58th regiments of foot.

G