More adventures in VFM 28mm

When I get enthused by a project, I often want to produce more units for the project even when I've exhausted the available figures. Thus with my American Civil War Sharp Practice forces I've been casting around to see what I could use to create more toys to play with.

My Confederate force is intended to represent irregulars operating somewhere along the Mississippi River, It provides opponents for my Union's Mississippi Marine Brigade fellows. I have two Groups of line infantry and three Groups of cavalry. 

I want to have the option to deploy the cavalry dismounted so I've been gradually accumulating suitable figures. One Group of six came from a pack of Perry's metals (Confederate dismounted cavalry, civilian dress) I bought at Partizan. For the second Group I repainted some old Dixon's minis I got from Richard Phillips. I still "needed" a third Group though. These are they...

The marginal cost of these guys is negligible (at least in financial terms). Their existence depends on some key facts:

• The Perry plastic Zouaves box gives lots of spare heads
• The Perry plastic ACW infantry and cavalry boxes provide spare hats and weapons
• The Warlord War of the Spanish Succession infantry box provides a multitude of spare torsos, and
• The Warlord Gallic cavalry set provides a load of spare legs as it mates the standard infantry sprue with white metal horses with cast-on riders' legs.

I have all of those boxed sets left over from previous units.

In addition I had some Perry ACW wounded figures left over after creating wounded versions of my existing Leaders.

The figures are, left to right in the picture below:

First is a metal figure out of the "wounded" blister pack except that I replaced the right hand with one holding a pistol from the ACW cavalry box. I actually cut both recipient and donor arms at the top of the cuff to make sure there was sufficient plastic on the new hand that I could drill a hole to take a brass reinforcing rod.

The next guy is straight from the Perry wounded pack.

The remaining four are cobbled together from ACW, WSS, and ancient bits. I decided the WSS cavalry torso that has neither neck-cloth nor cuirass could pass for an ACW-era undershirt. These were grey by regulation but I thought it reasonable to change one of them to pink to give some variety. The torso has a cross-belt so I glued spare cartridge cases to the appropriate hip of each model.

Attaching hats to Zouave heads required a bit of careful carving away of the cast-on fezzes but nothing I couldn't happen. 

I squared off the pointed Gallic boots and decided the legs could represent trousers tucked into socks.

A bit of Greenstuff to fill I the gaps where parts didn't fit perfectly and I had another Confederate unit!