Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Cuirassiers!

As I wrote earlier I am planning to expand my 18th century cavalry options. For this I need more hussars and dragoons, but especially the powerhouse of all 18th century shocktroops: the cuirassiers.  

Of course no cuirassiers are made in 1/72 plastic and even metals are rare. I found the Outland games ones but so far have failed to acquire any. So I turned to conversions. 



I started with Zvezda and HaT Napoleonic Russian Cuirassiers, removed their heads and replaced them with heads from the Imex AWI British infantry. The horse harness seemed appropriate enough and so a further paintjob led to the results below. The one with the raised sword is Zvezda, the other one HaT. After the headswap and the paintjob they look remarkably similar and I am quite pleased with them. Another 22 to go to finish the two Cuirassier units I have planned. 

Hussars and dragoons are to follow. These are both made by Zvezda for the Seven Years War and the Great Northern War. Wait and see! 

10 comments:

  1. Nice sets and well painted!
    Do you show them on june 3th on FIGZ?

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  2. Alas, I am playing BlackPowder on Impact in Uden on june 3th. Well, alas.... I am looking forward to it actually. I only learned recently that FIGZ was on the same day....

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  3. Nice stuff who needs premoulded figures when you have conversion skills ?

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  4. I think they look terrific. Did you find any problems with size / scale issues? People keep describing the Zvezda currassier as being unusually large for 1/72.

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  5. Zvezda has indeed made a few sets that are humongously big, especially the Prussian grenadiers and hussars. However, I use them for wargaming on the tabletop and find that if you use them en masse and view them from over a meter away, the height difference of a few millimeters that is very obvious close up completely disappears. See the Cavalry charge in the Kronstadt message for example. The blue hussar unit is part Revell, part Zvezda and the large size of the Zvezda figures seems hardly noticable.

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  6. And btw, the Imex heads come from normally sized figures and do no look strange to me.

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  7. no indeed they look great, I really hadn't expected you'd be at them in so short notice! Great work yet again. And I too am looking forward to June 3rd!

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  8. What an effective conversion !, an idea I may have to copy.

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