Little Shop of Horrors

With his dying breath a brave grenadier salutes his beloved leader. "Vive l'Empereur!" Nice to know someone stays alive...

 I got a bee in my bonnet to add to my growing collection of casualty markers last week, putting aside my half-finished 52nd Oxfordshire Light Infantry Regiment (the final unit needed to complete Craufurd’s Light Division) in order to do so. I find myself lured into wanting to convert figures these days, enjoying the process of sculpting as much, or even more, than painting. I find it very liberating not to be constrained by what comes in the box, and the initial drive to get as many figures painted as possible - 3000+ figures and five years later - has now slowed down to allow me to play around with conversions a bit more.

I have never been a fan of plastic markers or dice used as markers on the gaming battlefield, and have always opted for alternatives. Casualty figures were a relatively easy conversion to do, as half the figure is planted in the mud and there is no need to fuss with armatures, with all limbs and appendages supported by the stand they are mounted on. It was really just left to cut and paste the limbs and head in a believable pose, with perhaps a bit of sculpting on some hair or hands, and my earlier casualty figures were just that.

But in this last batch, I started to paw through some of my old Airfix figures from the early to mid-seventies. I dug out a handful of casualty figures, mostly from WWI Germans, Americans and Brits, as well as a WW II US Marine. My thinking was that the poses would need little work, and I would simply need to do a few head swaps and sculpt a bit of gear.

Can you identify these bits and pieces of vintage Airfix? The plastic is so old that it has become the consistency of hard toffee and bits kept snapping off as I worked with them!

I soon realized that sculpting the gear was infinitely more challenging than taking surplus Napoleonic figures and converting them, but I was now up to the challenge, sculpting new hands and limbs, replacing missing feet, and swapping a head here and there. In the end I was pleased with the results, and although my sculpting doesn’t stand up to too close scrutiny, I think all these later war soldiers have successfully time-travelled back 100 years!

The figures with head swaps, new sculpted bits etc.

Figures primed and ready to go

Finished French, along with a couple of earlier ones (two on right) that were converted standing figures from the HaT Light Infantry 1805 set.

Another view of same.

Figures in the obligatory pop-up diorama,with a few other casualty figures added from earlier sessions - including one of my all time favourites, the Airfix French figure of a soldier carrying a wounded comrade, that I bought in 1974!

Finished British. The top left was a conversion from the previous week. That one started out as a WWI British soldier (I think!)

Another view.

Obligatory pop-up diorama.

Close up of same, with a few other casualty figures added from earlier sessions.