"15mm French Napoleonic Minifigs?" Topic

As I've never seen 15mm Napoleonic Minifigs up close and personal, I'm wondering which habit is worn by the French figures? For instance is the "Fusilier Standing Firing" in the pre-1812 habit long or are they sporting the later habit veste?

I tried looking at the photos on the Minifigs website but they aren't detailed enough to be of help. I was hoping someone out there might have experience with these figures and could enlighten me.

Minifigs French line infantry are in a rather peculiar uniform that is neither fish nor fowl. The tails of the coat are quite short, which seems to suggest they are following the Bardin regulations but the figures are wearing over-the-knee gaiters, which suggests a pre-1812 uniform. Personally I get round this by doing a 'paint conversion' so the gaiters seem to stop below the knee.

I'd agree with the above – very odd uniform. I painted mine as above – stop the gaiter below the knee to suggest Bardin uniform. Then I discovered AB and never bought another MF.

Drat! I was wanting to have a few French fusiliers standing firing. If they are in short tails then they won't work for 1809 line fusiliers. I'm still considering using Minifig guard chasseurs for legere carabiniers. Short tails would be just fine and the Minifigs photo suggests they are in trousers.

I am very new to the Napoleonic period and I want to make armies that are quite close to the "old school" 15mm size. The reason for this is simple; I have lots of scenery for 15mm that would look too small with 18mm. So Minifigs, Battle Honors, Essex, and Old Glory should be fine; Blue Moon, Khurasan, and especially AB are too tall. Still, I hope someday to find 1809 French line fusiliers firing in the 15mm scale.

Thanks much, SJ and Timmo! Your advice will definitely be helpful when I order Minifigs.

Just as a possible way out, scenery is a lot more flexible than many people think. It has to be, as it kind of constitutes the bridge between figure and ground scale. The human eye adapts to such visual effects, or large chunks of Hollywood would be out of business. HO railway cottages look great with 28mm figures, and many gamers deliberately go "one scale down" : 15mm buildings 20mm figures, 10 mm buildings for 15s, etc.
- Your perception may vary, of course, but I honestly wouldn't worry about 15mm vs 18mm.

The other day I was able to find a pack of 15mm Minifig guard chasseurs. I was assuming that they would be quite a bit smaller than Old Glory or Battle Honors but I wanted to use them for legere carabiniers as stated in my December comments. Imagine my astonishment upon discovering that they were basically the same height as the two other figure lines! They are the largest Minifigs I've seen. It makes me wonder if all the 15mm Minifigs Napoleonics are of this taller variety. By the way, after checking out the figures thoroughly I've come to the conclusion that they may most certainly be used as legere carabiniers. Their coat tails are the shorter length as they would be in light infantry.

I was curious about the origin of these figures. They are packaged under the name "Dragonhead Distributors" I believe this company no longer exists but I wonder if anyone knows if the original figures were made in the USA (by Tom Dye's Co. ?) or if Dragonhead imported from Britain?

I love the fact that uniforms cost a lot of money and old servicable uniforms would stay in use until worn out or production had caught up with demand and old uniforms could be discarded, used for fatigue duties or forwarded to reserve units. It was not everybody discarding last season's uniforms because of the new fashion show in Paris.
If someone complains, I explain that these were veteran troops and they wanted to keep their old style that they won honors wearing.

That's right 1968billsfan. Exactly the reason I believe I can use the guard chasseur as a legere carabinier. They started out wearing bearskins and when the shako became part of their new uniform they simply refused to stop wearing their old headwear. Same thing with line grenadiers, I understand.

…but I still like when someone has done the research to point out the differences that happened…. I'm all ears