More troops roll off the Lead pile - French Carabiniers 1810 - 1815 and Empress Dragoons

Some more of my troops have escaped the lead pile - in this case French Carabiniers in helmets and French Empress Dragoons.  Both are nice, colourful units and both were conversions of a minimal sort.

Firstly the Carabiniers.  Way back in about 1980, a friend and I visited his local model shop.  There was a war-game set up with 25mm figures and the Carabiners caught my eye.  Black horses, white uniforms, buckets of shiny brass, red crested helmets!

So, here's my unit:

How are these conversions? you ask.  Well, they are not Baccus Carabiniers, which you can, of course, buy.  These are actually Russian 1803-1808 dragoons (NRU9).  I've used these figures for Saxon heavy cavalry as well.  IMHO the crested helmets are really great.  I may actually paint some as Russian Dragoons!

Second on this post and second French Guard Cavalry unit - the Empress dragoons.  Easy conversion - take a "bog-standard" dragoon and fix a plume on the side of the helmet.  Plumes being sourced as snipped off bayonets.  The rest of the conversion is a paint job.

As ever I hope that this inspires you to have a go at painting different units to put on your battlefields.  Figures Baccus, flags sourced on the internet.

Lancelot - or Lancers 4 ways and counting...

 I thought I would put up some of my Baccus French Guard Lancers (NFR36) showing some alternative colour schemes to that in the catalogue.

These figures are modelled in full charge mode - galloping towards the enemy with their lances levelled, pennants flapping in the wind.  I would not want to be on the receiving end of that!

Here's the troops from the catalogue:

As you can see, you get a lancer (with lance, obvs...), an officer and a bugler.  Sadly no standard bearer, but this is where you re-purpose a French chasseur a cheval trooper.  

To do this I added card shapes to make a shabraque, gave him a drastic lobotomy about half way up the shako and added a square of plastic card, set diagonally on his head.  This was then filed to make the card and shako blend and some teeny cords were added (wire from a bottle of wine that had a net on the top of the neck.  (Ooh posh! I hear you cry!)).  File off his sword (you already lost part of that when you sliced his shako) and add a wire flagpole in his right hand.  Careful painting will help him blend in to the rest of the unit.

Firstly, here's my go at Dutch Lancers of the Guard.  My uniform source was L&F Funcken supplemented by pinterest.  French lancers were created after the 1809 Austrian campaign, so I went with an 1812 flag (found on a flag website for free). 

A note of caution - when I first got this pack of figures I tried converting a lance holder into flag bearer (rather than repurposing a chasseur).  I used a dremel tool to try removing the lance, but the vibrations snapped the legs, so went with converting the chasseur.

I am also assembling troops for the Peninsular campaign and decided some Vistula Legion troops would look good, especially as they have bright yellow facings.  Here's how these turned out:

 Flag I sourced on the internet.

I also used these figures for Austrian lancers, which were used throughout the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.  The Czapka was slightly smaller at the start of the wars, but Hey!  this is 6mm!  it's really not a problem.

The two completed stands here will be joined by a third, once I get round to painting them...

They make for a vivid splash of colour and look suitably aggressive. 

I trust that this inspires you to have a go.  Most of the conversion work is in the uniform and shabraque colours - you don't have to make standard bearers if you don't want/need to.

Future plans are Polish Lancers of the French Guard, Lancers of Berg and I think I will still have enough remaining for at least one more unit.