Tweaking the Russians.

As it would appear that I'll be hanging on to these for while longer I decided to keep going with the painting. I decided to add command figures to the Russian hussars and lancers and add a few more cossacks including a command pack. I have in mind to rework the Cuirassiers slightly too

While I'm obviously a fan of Essex figures the Russian Dragoons castings had been bothering me for some time - the short sword attached to the helmet comb just looks wrong - so I took an intake of breath and snapped the swords from the helmet, bent the arms into a more convincing position and then cut off the swords. I then drilled a 0.5mm hole into the sword guard and inserted the pointy end of a pin into the hole, glueing with superglue. It was a fiddly job, I'd not done this with 15mm figures before, but went well, it took me roughly 45 minutes to complete this little conversion but I think the results were well worth it. The unit looks far more animated now. I might do more of this, in fact I have had a unit of French line lancers sitting in the box for weeks but have been put off by the position of the lance. A quick experiment indicated how easy it actually is to snap the hand off the thigh of the figure, give the arm a bend so that the lance will now be upright, much much better. They are now on the painting list.

Finally, a thank you to Michael Mills for the recent words of support and encouragement and the nomination for a Leibster.