A Foray into Napoleonic Wargaming
Horses
I’m just putting the finishing touches on some British Light Dragoons. I experimented with some different paint colours for the horses, so wanted to make a note of the schemes for future reference.
I had a bit of a read around the different colours of horses used by British for their light cavalry, and couldn’t find a definite answer, beyond trumpeters riding grey horses (to help them stand out in the field so their officers could locate them in a scrum and thus get their orders signalled to the rest of the troop). I’ve previously read somewhere that the different squadrons within a cavalry regiment had distinctly coloured horses, but couldn’t track it down again, and I had an idea that this was more a Germanic thing than British. I expect that any sort of distinction of horse colour by squadron probably would shortly dissolve during a campaign, as getting a remount of any colour was undoubtedly more important than visual niceties.
Base colours (L-R) VJ London Grey; VJ Cavalry Brown; VJ Orange Brown. All manes/tails based with VJ German Camo Black Brown, hooves are VJ Buff
All colours washed with VJ Umber
1st highlight done using a thin coat of the base colour. White details like socks and stars and painted with VJ Buff. Mane and tails dry brushed with VJ Beastly Brown
Finishing touches. A very thin highlight (L-R) VJ Stonewall Grey; VJ Cavalry Brown mixed with VJ Brown Sand (50:50); VJ Brown Sand. VJ Off-white used for socks and stars etc.With hindsight, I’d wash the manes and tails with black instead of umber to get a darker colour, but I’m pretty happy with the end results. There’s a few more bits to finish on the riders before the regiment is ready for basing, but I’ll be putting them up as a next post soon.
A pointless fact to finish – the modern British Army has more horses on strength than tanks.
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