Hello everyone!
Well, I guess miracles do occur because my box of Strelets French Foot Dragoons arrived in the mail yesterday, so I happily spent the evening trimming, cleaning and painting a few of them. Today I present the command stand for the
16e Regiment de Dragons, en service a pied, as well as a quick review of the figures as a whole.
(Remember to click on the pictures for bigger versions.)
I based these fellows on my standard 50mm x 40mm cavalry base. Also like my regular mounted cavalry, there are three figures to a base, for a full regiment of 18 figures. They are after all dismounted cavalry and would have had the same number of men as a mounted unit; also, this will keep them distinct from my larger infantry units.
The command stand consists of the Regiment's colonel (in greatcoat) flanked by a drummer and a bugler, both in reversed colors. I love figures in greatcoats; they are so easy and quick to paint it almost feels like cheating. The colonel is holding a Year IX pistol, and his helmet is the standard officer's pattern with black horsehair crest and cheetah-fur turban.
I relied pretty heavily on Funcken plates for the musicians; the helmets of the drummer and bugler both have dark brown 'other-ranks' turbans and the white horsehair crests that distinguished musicians. The drummer is wearing a standard tunic with lapels in reversed colors for the 16th Dragoon Regiment (pink with green cuffs, collars and turnbacks), piped in white with white epaulettes. The drum itself is based on a number of different plates and seemed to be fairly standard across the regiments on foot service; dragoon regiments on foot service were given drummers, unique amongst any other contemporary cavalry formation.
The trumpeter's tunic is frogged across the front in white, as it lacked lapels, with green cuffs, collars and turnbacks piped in white. The anguillette hanging from the bugler's epaulette confused me for a time, until it occured to me (based on Funcken) that it was meant to represent the cord which secured the bugle to the bugler's person. Funcken showed this as being red, so red it it here. All in all, I'm quite pleased with how they turned out.
1/72 Review: Strelets 0009: French Foot Dragoons and Polish Grenadiers
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| The box. As usual, Strelet's box art is pretty neat. |
Initial Impressions
I purchased these figures because I had been hankering after this set for a good while after I had looked at them on
Plastic Soldier Review. Having no luck in getting this set on eBay I had a look around the Internet and finally found it in stock at Hobby Bunker, which shipped them the same day I ordered them. I probably would have gotten them sooner but becasue they are in Massachussetts the massive blizzards they have been having up that way more than likely slowed it down.
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| Sprue 1: Polish Grenadiers in bearskins. |
I really like these figures! The French dragoon regiments have always fascinated me, and I thought it would be really cool to have a regiment of Foot dragoons. As far as I know no one makes 15mm French foot dragoons, so these guys were my only hope to make my dream a reality. Additionally, because they are mixed in the set with Polish Grenadiers, I pretty much own every 1/72 Napoleonic Polish set that is out there; the grenadiers (with their bearskins) will form the grenadier company for the 1st Regiment of the Vistula Legion.
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| Sprue 2: French Dragoons. |
Scaleability
These figures are compatable with the vast majority of my 1/72 collection; smaller than some of the massive Italeri figures I have, on par with Hat, Strelets and most of my Italeri figures, and a bit larger than Revell.
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| Sprue 3: French Dragoons. |
Quality
Like most Strelets figures, these guys looked like hammered hell on the sprue but clean up and paint up very nicely. There are a few figures with mushy faces where the mould didn't quite fill and some areas of sloppy sculpting, but generally I like them. There is very little flash, and the figures are well proportioned and accurately equipped.
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| Sprue 4: French Dragoons. |
Price
These chaps were $16.95 shipped from a lovely little company in Massachussetts named Hobby Bunker. For 48 figures (plus a few accessories), this comes out to about $0.35 a figure, which is a bit on the expensive side for my 1/72 figures, but I had been wanting this particular set for a while and I was willing to pay a bit more to get it.
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| Sprue 5: Ladder teams. |
Coming soon: Not a whole lot. I leave bright and early tomorrow morning for boot camp, so these French Foot Dragoon will be the last figures I will paint until late this summer, more than likely.
Questions, comments and suggestions are always welcomed and appreciated. Thanks for looking!
-Chuck
