Saturday 9 May 2015

Airfix Waterloo British Infantry

As part of the Airfix 2015 Waterloo 1815 GB (Group Build) over at the  Airfix Tribute Forum
Rules;
"Any and all Airfix Napoleonic, no matter what scale, 1/76, 54mm or 1/12. They can be displayed as vignette, diorama or singly. In diorama; a depiction of Quatre Bras is permitted too. Conversions are welcome too, as long as the result is still at least 51% Airfix plastic."

My part of the GB with all the stages, from removing the paint to the final stand can be found HERE

Without going over the top and creating buildings or an exact historic Scene from the battle, I  decided to make a line of british infantry in Action and Keep  to using 100% Airfix  and using parts from within the set itself for conversions.

Instead of a set up of strict lines, firing, loading etc I´ve gone for a more fluid look, no strictly defined firing , reloading  lines.  They were going to be based as part of a small dio but I eventually based them as a unit for  wargaming. It was a Change painting napoleonic bods, so maybe I´ll add one or two stands when I get the urge to paint something different from my usual themes...
The set is pretty generous with the number of poses but I don´t really like painting the same pose over and over to get enough bods to create a decent enough grouping and, as it´s said, Variety is the spice of life,  so some knife work was called for.

Conversions.




After painting and basing I came up with another 4 conversions but adding them would have overloaded the base, making it too crowded for my liking. 

The Flags. They  Come from the Nap Flag site, a site set up by Alan Pendlebury who very generously has made loads of napoleonic flags he´s created available for free download. Please observe his conditions of use.

The flags (as does thier uniforms as far as possible) represent those carried by the centre Company from the 1st Battalion 1st Foot Guards Regiment, but as Alan notes on his site;
"I have been unable to discover which of the 24 possible Regimental colours was carried by the 1st Battalion 1st Guards at Waterloo. I have opted for that of the 2nd company which had the red and white Tudor rose as a central device."

If anyone is looking for a decent resource site for uniform plates for the 1815 campaign;
Les uniformes pendant la Campagne des Cent Jours - Belgique 1815
In French but it has (as far as I can see) every Regiment represented with line, Grenadier etc companies