Plastic Napoleonic Spanish

Trent Miniatures make a top hat head, I use these with Victrix French Guard figures for the rank and file plus Perry top hat command figures to make up my middle period Spanish Guards brigade.

Your spares box and a needle file are your friends for building a plastic Spanish Army.

Any bell topped French shakos in your spares box can be reduced to simple ones by the use of a needle file.

Warlord late French Inf heads would work well with the Portuguese, being directly compatible having their collars on their heads as opposed to Victrix, Perry infantry heads and even Warlord French Light dragoon heads. You have to rebuild the collar with a little green stuff or milliput with the all of latter.

Filing off the brass band on the stove pipe shako  heads in the Portuguese sprue gives you the 1813+ uniform, the metal drummer and second standard figure don’t really work – either replace with Perry/Front Rank metal figures or get an extra sprue of Wld portuguese infantry to fill in.

For a ~ 1811 army (Albuferra, Barossa, Valencia) you can also consider the spare Tarleton head from the Warlord AWI American  box  for Light Infantry and D’Espana’s Division troops, again collars need rebuilding if you use Wld Portuguese bodies.(Trent also do a metal Tarleton head – I used those before discovering the Wld American AWI option ).

I actually used Perry Austrian bodies as the basis for my mid period Spanish line with French Bell Top/Tareleton heads, rather than Wld Portuguese.

As for cavalry, cut off the plumes from the other shako in the portuguese pack, stick these onto spare Wld AWI British/American tricornes then use these heads with Warlord Union Brigade cavalry – you get Line Cavalry or Dragoons depending on the paint job. These guys were OK at Talavera and Abuferra.

Warlord French lancers plus the spare AWI militia round top heads give you Guerilla lancers, I added some flat topped hats spares from Perry ACW cavalry for effect along with different shades of brown uniforms they look suitably unruly for the few turns they grace the table.

French Light Dragoons with a brown paint job would do for a generic Cazadore de Caballo, though I haven’t added any

Specific LC regiments ? – Fernando VII can be done with Perry British Hussars (or either Perry or Wld French Hussars ) plus a green and white paint job, Cazadores de Castilla , can be made from Perry British Light Dragoons with the appropriate light brown colour scheme.

Both of the above were at Abuferra, but Blake neglected to use them (along with most of the rest of his command)

Indeed none of the above will stay around long enough for your opponent to admire their diversity if you use Black Powder plus the Spanish stats from AT1 🙁

If the despicable French care to meet them on a table using Sharp Practice! ……… Don Sanchez awaits.

AB