HELMET Soldiers

Hello and welcome to the latest HELMET Blog. We start off this week's effort with a bit of HELMET PR in the form of our latest kit, Number K33, a French Infantry Officer in pre-1812 uniform. This can be painted in a number of ways including officers from the Young and Middle Guard, so you could use one to lead the Armies in Plastic French Napoleonic Infantry. Also in the kit I've included a few spare parts to enable the construction

of a mounted French ADC, again this figure can be used alongside the Italeri French General Staff set. We'll be launching the kit at the London Show on December 1st and it will be available from the website in the near future.

The next three pictures show some recent, I only finished the bases this morning, work where I have been looking at ways of providing opposition for the Americans I'm making for the War of 1812. The 6 figure picture is of a Canadian Fencible, a private from the 5th West India Regiment, and four men from the 95th Rifles, this hot is followed by close-ups of the two Redcoats and the Rifles. These are all basically HELMET figures as follows:

The Canadian Fencible, also can be a British Infantryman from the Peninsular War or even a member of Bernard Cornwall's South Essex, is a standard kit apart from his head, which uses a test shot of a stovepipe shako head with "standard" plate, we hope to have these available soon, as I think they'll open up a whole new area and can be used in America and Peninsular and elsewhere, for infantry and artillery models. The West Indian has his pack straps carved away and a bayonet scabbard added from scrap. Both have had their shoulder strap tufts built up from the ubiquitous greenstuff, always a challenge to my spellchecker! All the rest is achieved through paint.

The Rifles are pretty much basic HELMET kits, with an added waist belt and small pouch made from scrap plastic. The Baker rifle is just a cut down Brown Bess, shoulder straps ass before and one figure has shako cords in greenstuff. I wanted to add variety to the existing Riflemen that I already have ready to paint (Replicants and Italeri) and also I wanted a Bugler and Officer, you can see that latter on the Conversions page on the website. I'm quite pleased with the result, they look a bit different and to my biased eye, quite elegant.

I've mounted all the infantry models on small metal washers, which I bought very cheaply in a local "Pound shop", this provides a bit of stability and "heft" when picking them up and moving them.

Finally a taster, some cavalry from our Zulu War set-up, these are Natal Carbineers, mounted and dismounted. I really want to game in this period, but wanted to get away from hordes of Zulus attacking the 24th Foot in a defensive position so have started to build a few mounted units to have a more open type of game. The idea is to duplicate most of the mounted models so that they can fight on foot. The horses are Imex, although the Officer's mount has a metal head which I added as an experiment in variety, the dismounted figures are A Call to Arms British infantry with their kit carved away and new belts and bits from greenstuff. Pins and a dab of putty make the helmet spike. The mounted men started out as Cherilea Mounties, heads and gear as before with A Call to Arms weapons and boots added from other models as appropriate, all making up something a bit different.

Going now, have got stuff to do for the show next week. Comments and feedback welcome as before.

Cheers

Eric

www.helmetsoldiers.co.uk