1813-15 battles in 20mm for AoE and V&F - (part 29) British Light Dragoons

 

These are two more brigades of Light Dragoons (LD) for Waterloo exclusively with LD regiments, the 3rd and 4th Cavalry Brigades. From the recent exchange with TC I got a box of lovely KGL dragoons (12 figures). In order to make the total of 32 LD cavalrymen I used a trick I was planning a long time ago and that was to use the horses and figures of the Esci and Italeri Scots Greys. These, due to my usual eagerness, ended up being something like 7/8 boxes over the years, even after using several of them for the Union Brigade and converted Peninsular Dragoons.  So something had to be done with them and the Esci/Italeri figures would be the base but coupled with French shakoes. 

Here you can see the lot:

- the front Brigade (4th Brigade of General Vandeleur) is represented by the 11th LD regiment and has Esci/Italeri Scots Grey torsos with shakoes from Italeri late French infantry (from those repeated countless heads you get from extra drummers, eagle-bearers and officers). The shako was cut from the peak and the original head remained. Superglue made the joint but as the joint is quite big it seems to be well fixed and the final varnish does the rest. 

- the rear Brigade (3rd Brigade of General Dornberg, accused of being one of the culprits of Ligny defeat, after arresting a British scout who was bringing intelligence) is represented by the 23rd LD regiment with 12 Hat figures and 4 Esci/Italeri conversions. 

These are the Hat figures in all its glory. The shabraque on all of these guy's horses is the officer´s shabraque but even so they are nice figures. 

As I told you my true British LD ended in the above 12 Hat figures and a few conversions had to be made in order to finish that brigade. The Scots Grey of Esci and Italeri were pinned to the full head of the late French by Italeri with some reasonable results as the detail of the uniform is very soft and the cut in British cavalry uniform is virtually the same in most of the different types of British troopers. 

The 4th Brigade only has the Italeri shako glued to the head of the Esci figures but it works reasonably well. 

The 4th Brigade before painting. The face kept on being British with new French brains. After all, all of them are descendents of William I, so no big deal, at least from my Peninsular point of view.  

Some of the Esci/Italeri torsos don´t have the carbine and these were added from the spares. The problem with this particular conversion is the absense of epaulettes which were simply painted. In the end these are cheap conversions made from leftovers which allows for two more brigades. And  this is one of the advantages over 28mm figures as the small problems like epaulettes simply painted or uniform cut differences are barely seen in 20mm size but gigantic in 28mm. 

Next: More Waterloo with Vietnam and SCW stash sending me menacing looks