Painting Challenge - Royal Marines

At the end of the Challenge I was  at the point where I was struggling to get a couple of problem children ready for the big night.  First up, the set of 6 Royal Marines for my War of 1812 project.  These guys took me on quite a ride.

I missed two theme rounds with Epic Failures.  My 1:2400 scale Rock of Gibraltar eroded away and my Mousling Lovers had a primer failure.  Going into the Nautical Round (3 weeks back) I decided that I needed a back up plan to the Sternwheeler.  So I started a unit of 12 (yes 12) Royal Marines.  The figures are mostly Perrys with Brigade (ex-Victrix) metal additions, in the form of a drummer, sergeant and a bunch of heads with round hats.  They first gave me headaches as the heads kept falling off.  After much reglueing I had one stick of them (I mount figs on sticks and had 2 sticks of 6 figures each) were good to go and I had them painted by last weekend.  The second set were being problematic, but I got them in order this week and sat down to finish them this morning.  That's when I realized that I had miss glue the backside of the Perry officer - yes you need to glue on the officer's coat tails in the appropriate length for the era you want.  Hence the half-assedness of the unit.  I was in the process of removing said backside and applying a quick Facto fix when I dropped the stick of 6 figures, so the set of 6 is back to the workbench.

So anyway I based the 6 finished figures and left space for their AWOL brothers in arms.  I will give them proper basing when all are mounted, but have gone with a minimal base brown  for today.

I really like the Sergeant, there's some real swagger to his pose.

The Brigade (ex-Victrix) head are nice, but suffer from the c1969 fu manchu sideburns of all Victrix Nappys.  The drummer and NCO are really nice.  I think that there was an officer, but he got repurposed into another unit or command stand.  The round hats are meant for the Marines but do equally well for British expeditions to Egypt, South Africa, Argentina or the Caribbean.  Or for an army of leprechauns for that matter.  Things might have gone better if I had used Victrix bodies, but I like the Perry's better.

I took the canteens and cartridge boxes off of Perry backpacks (since Marines went without packs) but should have also done a better job trimming off the straps.  Of course had I used Victrix figs, the bodies have the canteens and cartridge boxes and only the packs are separate, sigh....And the officer has his backside attached already!  FYI, the truncated packs gave me tarps and a piece of luggage for the Jock Campbell figure.