The first units for my 1840s / First China War army are rolling off the production lines. I warmed up with a unit from the regular British Army, and thus painted the Princess Charlotte of Wales Regiment, the 49th. They were the first ziplock plucked from the box rather than there being any special reason for their selection.
The figures didn't need much cleaning up. One or two were a bit flash heavy, but mostly all they needed was a quick knife down the seam lines to neaten them up. It was then I realised that I don't have a uniform reference books for the British Army post Waterloo and pre-Mutiny. Unlike the Indian troops, for which I have Boris Mollo's venerable classic "The Indian Army". Luckily we are entering the period where contemporary illustrations are starting to become more plentiful, so I was able to pick up most of what I needed from the internet, supplemented by what I do have on my shelves (like Terry Wise's indispensable Blandford "Military Flags of the World"). Some illustrations of the period show the British troops in bell topped shakos, and some in Kilmarnock / Havelock caps, but for a bit of variety I've gone for the shakos.
The nice thing with Irregular to someone like me who likes things uniform is that mostly they do their figures in one pose style. The figures have little idiosyncrasies, like slight changes to stance, but all the infantry hold their muskets at the advance and I'm not trying to fit in figures with odd poses who mess up the firing line.
Despite having Terry's book I struggled to track down precise descriptions of the flags for all of the units I'm due to paint. The regulations were a bit vaguer at this time, before they were tightened up mid century. Still, I had enough to make a decent stab it it. I've gone for Colonel's colours rather than Queen's colours which just means a lot of union flags. It's nice to have some variety and colour.
The second unit was one on the Madras Native Infantry that I need. These are the 37th MNI.
My first issue with my choice of figures for these was the shako. Irregular only do one type of native infantry, and they wear the peak less bell topped shako, and I need the slightly odd shaped one with the pom pom on the top. QRF do one, but I didn't want to do a half and half order and I didn't like the look of the command figures. I thought I could get away with using the figure as it comes, but a quick clean up and undercoat check convinced me otherwise. I had at the back of my mind I could do a simple number on the shako, and so it proved to be. I took off the front pom pom from the bell topped shako and smoothed its edges and removed the cap badge with a quick going over with a Swiss file. I then crowned the result with a small ball of Miliput.
I think they're turned out okay, and will look different to any Bengal Native Infantry I put them next to, of which I have one battalion's worth in this batch.
And as a footnote I also put together and painted a couple of rocket launchers for the Chinese. I couldn't find a good picture or description of what the Chinese were using mid 19th century, so I just bought an Irregular medieval Chinese one. The crew aren't completely correctly dressed, but the "captain" figure in armour painted up okay as a Bannerman in padded jacket, so they'll do for whenever needed.
It's just a same that I stuck one of the crew on the base back to front and didn't realise until after the varnish had dried.
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