More Finnish conversions – and a milestone reached!

With these figures I have completed the first and most important goal of my 1808 Finnish war project. I have painted all the figures I need for the first three brigades of grey-uniformed Finnish troops, i e the core field army that fought the Russians in Finland. Some basing is still to be done and there are a couple of flags to finish, but all the miniatures are painted!

Together with one Swedish brigade that I also have painted up so far, this amounts to 16 battalions, four of which are jäger units. This totals over 400 figures, including around 25 artillerymen, and a few cavalry and commanders. There is also a number of bases of skirmishers for both the infantry and jägers, in addition to the basic units.

My further goal is to do the equivalent of two more brigades: one Swedish brigade and the Free Corps (volunteer militia). There are also some unbrigaded units and at least one battery of Swedish artillery. But even so, I have painted 2/3 or more of the whole lot, and I have in fact started on a couple of the additional units already. I also feel that the infantry that remains should be relatively easy to do considering that I have learned to speed paint the basic figures better than when I started out 4-5 years ago. I have painted the equivalent of 6 or 7 battalions only in the last year and a half or so – and I was doing hundreds of other miniatures during the same time. Most importantly, what I have now is a fully playable army which covers major battles such as the one at Lappo very well.

I hope to soon be able to take a few shots of the whole army, but we are in the middle of moving house at the moment, so that will have to wait a few weeks.

The last bunch of figures for my Finnish army (or the first three brigades of it at any rate) are some more converted figures in greatcoats. The conversions are based on Foundry ACW figures. That is, except one – the guy holding his hand over his eyes, the body of which is made by Raven Banner (also ACW union infantry). I replaced the heads with heads from Perry figures, I added bayonets and I sculpted a collar and the gaiters (stibletter) on a few of the figures. The most difficult of those details by far was the gaiters. I am no pro when it comes to sculpting, and the gaiters caused trouble in several ways. I found it difficult to sculpt the buttons in a way that looked reasonably convincing, but most annoying was the tendency of the green stuff to stick to everything but the metal of the figures.

However, I am very happy to have done this. Converting a large number of figures is a daunting task and there is a risk that youll get stuck. I managed to get through what I had planned: two units with around 1/4 of the figures in greatcoats.