Thursday 16 August 2007

American Generals (2)




These three Continental generals are all Old Glory sculpts. Old Glory's figures generally can be rather hit-and-miss, although their AWI range is one of their best. The range includes many more types of American troops than the Foundry/Perry range (such as Continental marines and figures in light infantry caps). Old Glory also do French troops, the British Legion and lots of personality figures. The two figures shown below are from the pack "Continental Mounted Colonels" whilst the figure on the extreme right above is actually from the "British Mounted Colonels" pack. I bought the two packs at the same time and they became muddled together, but I don't think it makes any different - the uniforms were much the same. That said, the two "Continental" figures have button-hole lace, which I'm not sure they should do as the Americans generally did not wear it. Even British officers tended to remove their lace as the war progressed. I don't think generals should be wearing cummerbund sashes either, although they would be correct for infantry officers.

One of the weaknesses in the Old Glory range is the horses, most of which are in rather strange poses. They usually look as if they are just about to fall over a Grand National fence, the upper legs often have large chunks of metal on them which can take ages to scrape away and there's always the problem of the saddles not fitting on the horses properly. All that said, I think these Old Glory figures have "character". I don't mean that in the euphemistic sense of them being rubbish sculpts, but rather that they do capture something that can often elude other manufacturers. Not in the Perry class certainly, but then the Perry range only has one pack of generals for each side and you will need a few more. These figures are advertised as "colonels" but I have painted them as generic generals.

Painted June 2007.

2 comments:

AJ (Allan) Wright said...

Very nice work Giles. It's nice to see you painting some Old Glory: figures I'm familliar with. It just makes me appreciate your painting skill all that much more. I can't look at them and think 'well of course the bloke is using better figures than I am'!

Expertly done. If you ever decide to pawn your collection - you have a buyer!

nigelb said...

there would certainly be a fight on if you ever did pawn your figures, I've had 30 colonials (old Glory) that i'd decided wouldn't match up to the perrys, guess I better paint em now