6mm Napoleonic British

 Another finished Napoleonic 6mm 'pocket army', this time the British. All freshly re-based, again (fourth time for these boys iirc). The British are that salutory lesson in always buying both sides. Back in the 1970s when I started with 6mm Napoleonics, I bought all the French, and my wargaming pal David, bought all the British. The inevitable happened and I was left with a French army with no opponents. I still had both sides in 20mm so it wasn't a problem for a while,  but at some point the 20mm figures disappeared (I can't for the life of me recollect what happened to them, as I still had them in 1987). Anyway, at some point I had to buy some 6mm British so the French had someone to fight.

Here they are in their bit of the box, plus some guns and leaders from the other box.

The British set originally had three artillery pieces and limbers. They are all from one of the Irregular Army Packs I bought from 'Gamers in Exile' back in the mid 1980s. As ever, if I need more guns I'll just grab them from another army, in 6mm I really can't tell the difference. I'll use the limbers if I need to indicate horse artillery units.

As with the French artillery, all the guns, gunners and horse teams were tarted up to a greater or lesser extent, in particular new brass gun barrels, complete overhaul of the horses and horse furniture etc and adding epaulettes etc to the gunners where appropriate. Their hands, faces and hats needed re-doing as well.

These are the only two explicitly 'British' leader stands I have, the other more generic ones in dark blue get added in as needed. The one on the right is Nosey. The original pack included five of these stands I think. Like the other leaders these were tarted up a bit, particular the bling like bicorne edging, saddle cloths etc. as well as hands and faces.

British cavalry. Just six stands in total, all that was in the original pack I think. As ever I can supplement these with other cavalry, as they are just blokes on horses in gaudy uniforms.

These were originally painted as heavies, and the riders just needed bit of touching up. I redid all the horses up to 21st century standards with manes, tails, socks etc and a brown wash.

Some of the infantry. I couldn't be bothered to get them all out of the box. For the last iteration of HFG I'd based these two ranks of six, and they were moulded that way on the Irregular strips. Back in the dim and distant past however, I'd carefully cut them into strips of four with my razor saw for WRG, and it was easy enough to pry them apart again and do them in two ranks of four.

I've done similar permutations of basing as the French. This lot have the rear rank in close order, and the front rank a bit more spread out to represent (some) skirmishing. Yes, the Union flags are all hand painted. I used to have good eyesight and a steady hand.

These guys didn't need much tlc as they had been renovated for the last iteration of HFG basing. I touched up their weapons, shakos and hands and faces and also added the pack straps using the same micro dot method as the French, and that really makes them pop. I also added their water bottles, which were unaccountably missing from the originals, another nice splash of colour.

The other major basing permutation was both ranks in close order, in which case the command stand was in the front rank. I've got a couple of spare command bases too so I can do various combinations of base type as a way of modelling troop quality or whatever.

They've only got four stands of riflemen, but tbh that is all I'll need and I already have a load of other riflemen in dark green in the Prussian and Russian armies, so if I ever need more (say for some of the CnC Napoleonics scenarios), I can just use them as a supplement.

The original figures were pretty awful in a pale green, so I repainted them completely, but after all that, they ended up looking much like their Prussian and Russian counterparts. 

So, that is the British 'pocket army'. The figures have seen much action in various guises over the decades including at least two Waterloo refights, lets hope they have some more fight in them in future.