Finnish cavalry (once again)

In the past couple of weeks, Ive been re-basing my 28mm Napoleonic figures. The Finnish army was already re-based, apart from the cavalry. I waited with the re-basing as I was planning to add more figures anyway. Now that Ive painted some additional figures to these, getting them up to 9 men per unit, it was time to re-base them. The closer basing does look better for cavalry and it somehow seems that this is the way the Perry figures are meant to be based. Also, these 9-man units now take up exactly the same amount of frontage as they did before as 6-man units (based less closely together).

Someone also pointed out to me that having metal cavalry figures based closely together is a good idea for another reason than them looking good. Metal cavalry have a unhealthy tendency to bend at the hooves, and this can be pretty difficult to repair when the metal weakens and breaks. However, when based closely together, the figures can actually support each other instead of bending at the hoove – its takes a lot more force to bend the hooves of three horses at once. I was a bit sceptical at first, but it does indeed turn out to be quite true.