All Change!

Well, the time has finally come for me to write my first post with the new WordPress editor! Hopefully, I’ll be able to contain me excitement!

Not too long ago, I finished this unit of French dragoons for the Franco-Prussian War (shown above – if you click here and it takes you to a page with a bit more info about them, it means I’ve worked out how to do the linking bits at least)!

Before I’d even started these dragoons though, I’d thought about also representing them fighting a dismounted action. In theory, dragoons were meant to operate as mounted infantry and dismount when they used firearms, but in the mid-19th century most dragoons fought as conventional shock-action cavalry. However, I’d read that some French dragoon units in 1870 did fight dismounted, so I thought it might be worth trying to represent them as such.

Although I couldn’t get Franco-Prussian War dismounted figures, Tumbling Dice Miniatures produce some 20mm scale WW1 dismounted cavalry, so I bought a handful of early war French dragoons. By 1914, the only real concession the French dragoons had made to their uniforms to make them less visible targets was to cover their brass helmets with drab light brown covers, so the WW1 figures looked fine for 1870 figures (see picture below, if my editing’s worked – otherwise I’ve no idea where the picture might be)!

Originally my plan was to just paint enough figures to replace some of the mounted figures in a unit to represent it fighting dismounted. In the end, I added some extra figures and spare standing horses to represent a dismounted unit in its own right. Finishing this unit doesn’t mean I’ve had a sudden blitz on painting either, since I started them way back before the mounted dragoons were finished! I painted the helmets brass with the leopard-skin band to represent 1870 figures, but otherwise the lack of red epaulettes is about the only fault with the uniform (although I’ve seen a period painting that shows that these weren’t always worn). Below you can see the original mounted unit with the dismounted unit in front of them (hopefully)!

I can also spread the dismounted figures across two units to represent them both fighting as dragoons rather than shock-action cavalry (see below).

Of course, since I hadn’t originally planned on doing a full dismounted dragoon unit, I don’t have enough unit movement bases to go round! C’est la vie!

As far as the new editor’s concerned, I didn’t really have a problem with the post itself, probably because I use simple formatting! However, adding in links to my previous posts was more difficult, since they used to just appear as a bulleted list and this time round I had to search for them. None of my tags appeared either, although I’m a bit slapdash about using them in the first place! I also found I had to edit any pictures before putting them into the post, whereas with the old editor I could do that anytime! I suppose if I’m not delivering a first class quality blog post in the first place, maintaining a relatively low standard of presentation should be within my capabilities!