Assault Parties (take 3)

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On one of the rare occasions that I visit Facebook I was perusing the Victory Without Quarter page, and saw some beautiful 28mm storming party figures. In amongst the pictures were three figures carrying a ladder. Obviously a storming party needs ladders, but I don't have any! An idea germinated...

Could I make a ladder party? Where any figures suitable to chopped and changed into what I wanted. I've got some ladders tucked into a corner of my Château Hougomont model, might have some spares somewhere.

A rummage through my spares box found some standard bearers from PP pack 17 'foot command advancing' and a lowland pikeman from pack 82 'Scots pike 45' open hand'. Both have potential. 

The 'raw materials'

Couldn't find any ladders, they were from Magister Militum, who have now shut up shop. So no more available from that source, PP make a pack, but I didn't really want to spend the best part of £10 on just a pack of ladders (the £4.50 post and packing charge deterring me from placing an order). So two were recovered from Hougomont (nobody will miss them, I'm sure)

The Scots pikeman: before (l) and after(r), obviously still needs a head

The pikeman was easy enough. Cleaned up, he was decapitated, and his drawn sword removed. His right arm was moulded to his body, so I carefully cut between arm and body. Gentle cleaning of the cut with a fine X-Acto blade separated the arm from the body, an even gentler twist with pliers brought his elbow and forearm out and up. Result! A new head was added. Then a little rounding out of things, and a sword hilt added to his scabbard with greenstuff. He also needed a bag adding as he has a cross belt that doesn't go anywhere, it has nothing hanging from it at all.

The standard bearer: before (l) and after(r), obviously still needs a head

The standard bearer was clearly going to be a tougher nut to crack. Decapitated and his flag pole removed. Then drastic measures. His right arm was cut off completely at the shoulder, cleaned up and a flat face cut to allow me to glue it into the position I wanted. I was going to pin the arm in place, but as I will need to fill in some pretty large gaps with greenstuff, I thought the greenstuff would hold everything in place once set.

Varnish looks a bit too shiny, might need redoing

Would the two figures fit together with a ladder? A dry run found a problem, the standard bearer's newly positioned arm wouldn't fit through the ladder. I'd only got two ladders, so I was quite nervous cutting a section of a rung away. Altogether they fitted together quite well. 

Now that I knew they 'fitted' it was out with the greenstuff and new heads fitted.

Parliament's ladder

If you think I am making this look easy, it wasn't. This is the edited version. The pikeman was easy enough, and the first standard bearer went smoothly. But then I took a break, thankfully I had a number of the standard bearers in my spares box. Second finished standard bearer not as good as the first, but once the ladder is in place he looks better.

In a bout of procrastination/task avoidance* (delete as appropriate) I was looking at the composition of my assault parties - 4 petard teams but only 1 ladder. That's very unbalanced. Surely I will need 4 ladder parties per army...

* I'm really dragging my feet painting Napoleonics, but W3K I jump at the chance

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