Off the Workbench - Late 17th Century Polish Dismounted Dragoons

This group of twelve figures has just been completed, they will fight alongside their countrymen against the Ottomans at Vienna, they are an eBay lot (as usual) and the figures are by Essex.

I don't have very many Essex 28mm figures in my collection, but after some conversion work they have ended up as being quite serviceable in their table top role.

Dismounted Polish Dragoons, in a variety of dress and poses.

The lot was a mixed bag of infantry and mounted troops, a half dozen Pancerni, Officer and Winged Hussar types that I'll take a look at later plus a bunch of rather disappointing Hungarian Hussar type figures, not really sure if I can make any use of these - although the horses will be useful.

Along with the horse was a bunch of Polish foot, many of those were actually dismounted Dragoons, so I have created a unit of these, the remainder will be made up into Polish Peasant Infantry.

So on to the figures, I will present these in batches of four, as each batch has a similar story...

Four Dragoons Firing

These are the most standard figures in the unit, I have simply swapped heads for more Polish looking ones from the less useful figures in the lot that I received. 2nd Left and extreme right figures are as delivered the other two have had head (and hat) transplants.

As ever the figures were undercoated white, I opted for blue coats and red trousers. Hats and some coats had fur trim and the guns are a mixture of matchlock and flintlock weapons.

Four running Dragoons

These four running dragoons had a badly moulded musket cut off, along with their left hands, the missing  hands were replaced by open plastic hands from various 28mm plastic kits and then a musket with sling from the Warlord Games 28mm plastic Marlburian Infantry range was added to each hand.

Command Group

The command group s made up of a Halberdier, Officer, Standard bearer and a Drummer. The drummer was created in exactly the same way as the running dragoons above but with the addition of a drum strapped to his back.

The flag is a generic Polish Cossack banner, I need to find out what Polish regulars used

I repositioned the sword arm of the Officer, to make the pose look more realistic, whilst I had to adjust arm positions on the standard bearer and turn his head, to get the look I was wanting. The Halberdier was as supplied, with the Halberd shaft straightened out as much as possible!

These guys are in the new basing format or dismounted dragoons, i.e. individually based rather than on regular multi figure bases. I have used round bases - previous ones have been square or oblong (for groups of two figures), aim here is to depict the loose order that these guys ought in.

I may go back and update the older figures one day....