1) Periodically I am drawn back to an ongoing interest in gaming the War of 1812 and have slowly been assembling a force of Americans for eventual use in Sharp Practice.
2) I hate painting horses.
The second fact explains why it's been three years since I last returned to the first fact, because what I needed to paint was these guys...
When I started working on a Sharp Practice force, my hodgepodge collection of miniatures best suited the 'Scouting Force' list in the War of 1812 setting book.
As such, I'd painted Line Infantry, Riflemen, Woodsmen and a few officers, leaving me with just some Militia Cavalry a couple more officers to do.
However, I did not have any Militia Cavalry models and so I decided to use such miniatures as I had to create the 1st US Dragoons instead, sacrificing the versatility of muskets for the hope of a glorious charge or two.
Button counters may wish to stop reading right now for the sake of their blood pressure.
The models that I had were half a box of Perry Miniatures French Dragoons that Matt had given me. Although at arms length they might pass muster as US Dragoons, to those who know what they are looking at these are all kinds of wrong.
However, as long time readers of this blog will be aware, expense is always a good counter to accuracy in the world of Cheaphammer, and the rest of my force plays fast and loose with mixing appropriate headgear in the Line Infantry.
The Perry miniatures themselves are nice enough, although I must admit that their age is beginning to show against some of the more modern plastics I've been painting recently.
The standard of painting on these is tabletop quality at best, as I'm never too keen on batch painting and older plastic models don't really play with my lazy painting approaches too well.
I still have three more models to paint (an officer, musician and whatever the Napoleonic word is for cavalry standard bearer) before the unit is complete, but I'm happy enough with them.
In addition to the Dragoons, I've also painted this mounted officer who I think will end up leading my Line Infantry.
The model is actually a British officer from Warlord Games (the uniforms were actually remarkably similar) and I've painted him in keeping with this painting of the Battle of Chippewa.
I'm still not a fan of painting cavalry, and probably Napoleonic cavalry more than most, this are nowhere near my best work.
However, I am pleased to be finally getting this monkey off my back after really quite a long time.
All this means that I'm making more healthy headway on painting more than I acquire, and I'm tempted to keep my focus on some older and unfinished projects for the time being, although I did by another model this week.
Acquired: 115
Painted: 178
I know nothing about Napoleonic stuff, but I think they look cool. I really like the blue and white outfits.
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