16th Light Dragoons

so here are those Wargames Atlantic plastic horses painted up. I chose to paint most of them a bay brown.

My Dark tone dip wasn't as strong as I'd would of liked it, so I might have to put some ink washes on the figures later. 

I actually prefer the plastic horses to the ones they come with...

I did a little royal cypher using the fine point pen, I also used a blue one to add some quick saddle cloth details. I was trying to bash these out as quick as possible, but the level of uniform detail made it very hard to. I finally got there with seven painted and dipped.

The plastic horses certainly do the job and their new cropped tails really help the look.

UPDATE:

The last of the Dragoons are painted and dipped and put in the sun to dry. I find the Dark tone drys a lot quicker than the brown Strong tone. These nice warm days are perfect too.
 

UPDATE:

I went back to the sketchpad and took the time to learn the royal cypher. In the end it wasn't too complicated. After I had made a sketch of the cypher I went through the regiment and updated the squiggle I had done before.

The little elaborate swirls do catch the eye, so I think they work. I will give the crown a few marks of red with another fine marker pen to complete the livery.

It's almost time to ride out and bring back order in the colonies.

The fine point pens make this sort of detail very easy to do.

The next morning sees these guys matt varnished and based up on 60mm squares. 

I'm looking forward to giving these guys the American style bases with the fallen logs and leaves.

I always thought the crests on the Tarleton helmets were horsehair, turns out they are bear skin. After looking at some internet reference, I gave them a lick of brown to help with this fact. It also makes them look a little sun damaged too.

Creating ECW Dragoon Horses

After the success of the AWI Dragoons on these new Wargames Atlantic Horses, I thought I would try them on others. These are some horseless ECW dragoons from Foundry. The only difference is, these do not have saddles moulded on.

I was hoping the blanket that comes with the plastic set would fit these old Foundry figures, but it made the horse way too wide. So I went back to my old method of cutting away the plastic horse until the rider fitted.

I thought it best to roll out and cut a thin saddle cloth, then press the rider down onto it.

The rider pressed into place.

Once the rider was nice a snug on his new mount, it was time to make some crude sacks and bags to give the horse a dragoon look.

To add some interest, I put texture into the various sacks and bags using a sculpting tool. These should hopefully catch the ink wash and show the texture.

This helmeted dragoon has been lucky and carries a stack of supplies.

Adding Blackett rolls saves the job of modelling saddles.

These four Foundry dragoons will reenforce some Redoubt miniatures to create a full unit of twelve. Dragoon units are expensive to create, as you have to make mounted and dismounted versions of the troopers. So fixing up these old figures is a good way of saving money on the pricey horse troopers.

Above is interesting, it shows a plastic ECW horse from Warlord Games. The two are a nice match for eachother. Dragoons don't carry the pistols but tend to be stacked up with booty and supplies. Forming raiding and scouting units, tasked with foraging for the army.

Here is the Redoubt dragoon horse, I used this as a guide to create mine.

As all these Foundry figures are the same pose, it's nice to add variation with the horses and packs.