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.