Portuguese Cacadores and Highlander Conversions

Hello everyone!

 

I've been pretty busy as of late but I have been able to get a little bit of work done on my Napoleonics over the past week or two. I've been doing a little bit of buying, a little bit of converting, and a little bit of painting. First up is the fruit of my latest painting efforts, a completed command stand for the 11th Regiment of Portuguese Cacadores.

 

(Remember to click on the pictures for bigger versions.)

 

 

The Cacadores were light infantrymen that were nominally equivalent to the British Rifle regiments, and most were eventually armed with British Baker rifles by the end of the Napoleonic Wars. They wore brown uniforms and had black leather equipment. These figures are Revell 1/72 scale British Riflemen that I repurposed as Portuguese Cacadores. I couldn't find any hard and fast evidence as to what colored facings the 11th Regiment had (frankly I was lazy), so I went with blue as it contrasted the best.

 

Now on to my buying and converting. A while back I mentioned purchasing a bunch of British infantry off of eBay. I was hoping to use them to complete the 88th Regiment of Foot. When they arrived, however, I was a bit disappointed. Ten of the figures I ordered were not suitable for anything, as they had an odd light infantry helmet that looked as if it belonged in the American War of Independence than the Napoleonic Wars.

 

The anachronistically-helmeted Britons of mention.

The other twenty were wearing Belgic shakos, but that's not a travesty as they can easily be converted to Portuguese with a new paint job. But these weirdly-helmeted figures presented me with a dilemma. So I broke out the greenstuff and my X-acto and got to work converting them into Highlanders for the 74th Regiment of Foot.

The weird helmets were chopped off with my X-acto and a small blob of greenstuff applied to make a Highland Balmoral bonnet.

Once I got started I decided to go ahead and convert another twenty British infantry figures to complete the Regiment. All of the figures I chose (a mix of Eureka, Old Glory and Old Contemptibles) were picked because their heads were easily suited for conversion. The tops of their shakoes were subsequently lopped off and greenstuff applied.

The original ten with the "toories," or pom-poms, sculpted on after the main bonnet had time to fully cure. Tonight I will add the toories to the other twenty figures. 

I'm planning on painting all of these highlanders up in one big batch of thirty miniatures. I've never done anything like that before, but I've read in forums that this type of massive batch painting really speeds things along. We'll see... it'll be interesting to see how it goes. At least at the end of it all I will have another completed battalion.

On the buying front, in addition to the above figures that I converted into Highlanders, I went ahead and purchased enough figures to complete the 88th Regiment of Foot as well. I'm getting tired of blue, and I'd like to see a little bit of red paint thrown around the workbench. These newly purchased figures are a mix of Fantassin figures from Scale Creep Miniatures and some Essex infantrymen to fill them out.

Coming up: Highlanders and British... maybe some Portuguese while I wait for greenstuff to dry and for orders to arrive.

Questions, comments and criticisms are always welcomed and appreciated! Thanks for looking!

-Chuck