Reduce, Recycle, Reuse

When I started getting into shiny, old school 40mm figures, I was thinking about various historical, mid 19thC, campaigns, British wars in India, the various rebellions in Canada and the US Mexican War and the Oregon Crisis over the west coast border between Britain and the US. In my eagerness to do them all at once, in no time I had parts of all of these ready to go, BUT none ready. Well, the toy soldier approach was starting to appeal to me and so I made up a fictional setting and bent the narrative to justify finding ways to find a place for all. 

Faraway's Belmont Fusiliers, and the Young Buffs have been ordered to trade their old Havelock's for ordinary Pork Pie forage caps.
These OS 40mm figures are from Historifigs War of 1812 range. They are listed as Americans since that's what the Scruby catalogue said, but are actually wearing British uniforms with the Waterloo shako. The Havelocks and Porkpie Forage cap are epoxy putty over a trimmed down shako. 

The idea worked once I adapted my brain to the setting and I still think its a useful approach but since I'm trying to reduce the size of my combined collection and to focus on a smaller number of settings so I can go a bit deeper, I decided to rethink some parts of the plan. The result is that the "Colonial" theatre is now the unique setting for the early 20thC while the  mid 19thC will be constrained to the Oberhilse and Faraway wars. A few units will need a bit of tweaking, but nothing serious.

A shot from my 2009 playing of 'Forlorn Hope' from Asquith & Grant's Scenarios For All Ages
See my 'Playing The Redbook' blog series

Slowly, the plan is forming!