"Do these miniature conversions work?" Topic

Long story short I wanted the Westphalian Guard Grenadiers for my 1809 campaign. I haven't found any 28mm miniatures, other than those produced by Elite Miniatures, which sadly aren't my cup of tea style wise. The Westphalian full dress jacket (looks like Bardin uniform from the front but with long tails and lots of button lace) was making it really hard to do a paint conversion on one of the many, many bearskin wearing grenadiers available in 28mm as well.

I recently ended up with a set of Victrix Old Guard in greatcoats not really useful for my Napoleonic project but in a lightbulb moment I figured I might be able to use them to do Westphalian guard in campaign dress, instead of a full uniform, which then solved the full dress jacket issue. Westphalian guard Grenadiers didn't have front plates on their bearskins either which was another issue but the Victrix French Dragoons set has elite company heads in bearskins that are perfect and I had a stack of those heads spare after building my Victrix dragoons. So dragoon elite company heads on old guard greatcoat bodies and a paint job and voila! Westphalian Guard Grenadiers. here a couple of proof of concept photos I think they work well enough to make a full unit now. What do people think?

Yes they look great. Us old gamers of the 1970s are used to conversions.

Thanks TimePortal.

Coming from fantasy gaming in the 80s conversions have always been part of my hobby. It's just these days it's quite rare to find a historical soldier that doesn't already have a miniature version of themselves (especially in something as main stream as Napoleonics) so my conversion skills are rarely needed.

They look great. Painting is too.

Tom

Beautifully done.

Well done.

Thanks chaps. A quick picture of the Westphalian Guard Grenadiers uniform that I'm trying to capture (while cheating and putting them in greatcoats)

I think I could pick holes in your idea, but if you like them, they're your troops so why should I.

Mark@ have you not hung around the corners of the internet where Napoleonic gamers hang out? Pretty much whenever I post up my stuff to Facebook I don't get more than 2 comments in before someone points out the button are the wrong colour, the jacket is a shade to light, my flag is not to scale or I've used the wrong coloured cuff lace I thought it was a mandatory requirement to rip into people's Napoleonic miniatures 😆

Honestly it really doesn't bother me to much because Napoleonics is just a side gig to scratch my want to play some horse and musket stuff so close enough will do. I do get the button counters though. My big love is 19th century Colonial Africa I could spend a bit of time explaining to people why Zulus and Ngoni aren't the same or why using Foundry tribesmen to represent the Nkonde of northern Malawi is wrong but I'm sure no one would care except me.

In this case as no one makes actual miniatures these are good enough. I know they had double breasted great coats, in dark grey with brass buttons, the bearskins are as close as I'm going to find I reckon, and I've seen at least one painting of them wearing white overall trousers so close enough.

@ Rupert, I don't hang around these sorts of places, but I'm well aware they exist and my attitude is 'up yours they're my troops'. Hence my comment, I have some French Imperial Guard Grenadiers a Cheval, made from Perry Dragoons [because I bought them before Victrix bought out their earlier period figures]. They have Infantry bearskins, which are too tall, as your dragoon ones will be too short. The coat tails are lengthened by adding the ones cut off some line to leger infantry conversions and the pistol holsters are glued on paper. The lack of a proper waistcoat is ignored as it is the same white as the lapels; if had been a different colour I'd have just painted it on because at 2 feet on the table, you can't see that detail.
It's not 'right' but no one is going to notice at table range and as I said I don't post my figures on the internet for people to nit pick.