54mm AWI British Light Dragoons

Greetings fellow Grognards!  Presented for your enjoyment, another installment of Of Dice and Army Men!  (insert Twilight Zone music here).  As promised, this week I bring to you the completed AWI 54mm British Light Dragoons!

To be quite honest, I was in a painting funk.  Seeing these unpainted figures on the shelf was unsettling.  I really wanted to paint them, but just lacked the energy to 'git 'er done'.  These troopers are again from the Armies in Plastics line and I have wanted to add them to the army for a LONG time.  I had thought seriously about cutting the heads off some of my extra Prussian BMC/ Americana troops, head swapping them and then doing some Dremel work to get the helmet shape I needed for the Dragoons.  Maybe it was the conversion work that had me on pause.  Then it hit me; (insert flash and clap of thunder) being soft plastic, I noticed I could actually shape the tricorn hats with which they wore into the Dragoon helmets!

I usually like to start with one figure as my prototype and convert and paint them all the way to the pre-wash stage.  I work out the bugs and hopefully end up with something I can live with.  Well, after converting the first Dragoon and painting him out, I was quite pleased.  Now the fires were stoked!

I pressed on converting the head gear on the remainder and gluing on some fuzzy pipe cleaner to simulate the helmet fur/ tassels/ thingies....this technique seems to be paying off as I used it also on my Continental Light Infantry!  See previous post for more details.

Looks good to me, but you be the judge.  Only one hang-up issue was the sabers.  I knew they were going to be trouble in soft plastic due to the flexibility.  The base coat, although made to adhere to plastic, just didn't take.  I thought about cutting them off and cutting plasticard to shape of the blades and inserting them in the hilts, however, I thought I'd give the Mod Podge coating trick a try.  I painted on mod podge matte on the bare saber blades, let dry and then painted onto the mod podge.  So far so good.  There are articles about this method on the net.  Google and enjoy!

In Patriots and Rebels, this unit can be used as Light Cavalry or Mounted Skirmishers.  I have listed them below for both for reference.  The points work out the same as shown below, but the units due have some unique options and skills inherent with the troop types.  The Light Cavalry option gives them an option for Evade or Counterattack.  Mounted Skirmishers offers Evade only but you can upgrade to Sharpshooters for 4pts or Good Shooters for 2pts.

Light Cavalry (6 trooper unit)  4pts.

    Aggressive 1 pt.

or

Mounted Skirmishers (6 troopers)  2 pts.

    Mounted  2 pts.

    Aggressive  1 pt.

British Light Dragoons

There you have it, another one bites the dust! 

Until next time...GAME ON!

2021 Painted Miniatures Scoreboard:

Unpainted: 1620 (note: slight increase as I ran afoul of ebay treasures, again!)

Painted: 162

NEXT UP:  54mm AWI Continental Light Cavalry

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way...

At the end of our last episode we left our hero, the fearless Grognard54, headed to paint some 54mm AWI British and Continental Cavalry...well, as the say, the best laid plans go out the window when the battle starts...or something to that effect!

So too it was with my plan to paint some 54mm AWI Cavalry.  As I had much to base coat laying around, I figured I would kill two or five birds at one time.  Grabbing my trusty Krylon plastics gray primer, I lined up my Cavalry, some high elves, human archers, dark elves, frost giants and winter wolves for a primer firing squad.

Now, here is the important part...listen to manufacturers when they say that their minis need no primer, don't use primer and begin brushing on your acrylics without needing primer.  There is something to be said about following directions...

Yours truly, being the salty old Grognard, decided that the trusty gray primer for plastics had not failed him up to this point, so I threw caution to the wind (or selectively ignored the instructions) and fired away!

Let's just say that all but the Reaper Frost Giants came out of the primer application unscathed, even the Reaper Winter wolves!  The Frost Giants took on a tacky finish.  Knowing full well, I didn't follow the strong advice of Reaper, I went to their help contact e-mail and groveled for assistance.

Surprisingly, the Reaper Rep only gently slapped me on the hand and then recommended a few things to see if it would help "save" the models.   The word "save" was not something I had wanted to hear, as throwing away around $50 worth models was not on my "to do" list.

In the end, I started painting my acrylics over the tacky base and all appears to be well. No cracking, chipping or tackiness!  For those interested in Reaper's recommendations, besides tossing the models, they suggested hitting them with their matte finish and then seeing what happened or stripping them down.

So, having gone that far, I decided to hold off on painting the Cavalry and see what would happen to the Reaper Frost Giants.  Below are the results and the points I would use them for in Dragon Rampant as they are a warband unto themselves.

Frost Giant Warband (24 pts.)

Frost Giant King (Elite Foot/ Single Model Unit) ....6pts. 

Frost Giant Queen (Heavy Foot+Wizardling/ Single Model Unit)....6pts.

    Spell 1: Almighty Prod!

    Spell 2: Heal Thee!

    Spell 3: Power Bolt

Frost Giant Bodyguard (Elite Foot/ Single Model Unit)....6pts.

Frost Giant Bodyguard (Elite Foot/ Single Model Unit)....6pts.

Additionally, for a larger army or an alternate unit....

Winter Wolves (Lesser Warbeasts/ 6 model unit)...4pts.

    Skill: Cunning...2pts.

Frost Giant King and Queen:

Frost Giant Bodyguards:

Winter Wolves:

Frost Giant Warband:

So, that does check off one of my 2021 projects; Dragon Rampant - Frost Giant Warband.

Unfortunately, I added to my totals of unpainted troops with the purchase of a Perry Miniatures Battle in a Box Set and some additional old school Bretonnian Bowmen off of eBay.

2021 Painted Miniatures Scoreboard:

Unpainted: 1602 

Painted: 156

Frost Giant Warband Project....Complete (for now...I have my eyes on some Frostgrave Barbarians!)

Fear not true believers...I will be putting up some real numbers on the painted side soon!  Very soon! Unless of course something new comes up on ebay...ooooh shinny....

NEXT UP: (for real)  54mm AWI British Cavalry