Steel Fist Harquebusiers on Foot

Bit of an eye candy post today; where I take a look at Steel Fist's new harquebusiers on foot pack.

For those of you new to KeepYourPowderDry, or the Civil Wars in general, you might be wondering why anyone would want dismounted cavalry. In a nutshell regiments of horse joined in the besieging of houses, but as horses weren't particularly useful when attacking a house, their riders dismounted to fight. They were often in the first wave of assault troops as their buff coats and armour afforded them considerable protection (in comparison to infantry). Plus it also gave them a share of any spoils if the assault was successful.

For more information about the role of harquebusiers in sieges, and a look at my existing assault parties see here.

So what comes in pack ECWF 09 and are they any good? For your money you get 12 dismounted cavalry figures,, 4 with swords raised, 4 with pistols, and 4 with carbines. Beautifully sculpted, as always. In the past my small orders from Steel Fist have arrived in padded envelopes and swords, guns and horses have been misshapen or snapped. I am happy to say that small orders now arrive protected in cardboard boxes, and all swords and pistols were mostly straight. However, swords are very thin in diameter, and by the time they made it to the front of the painting queue they were bent double. So I have replaced all swords with 26/6 staples cut to size. Hands were drilled out with a 1mm drill bit, and sword hilts augmented with a little greenstuff to help with the fixing of the new 'swords'.

Leaving aside my quibble with the delicacy of weaponry, these are beautiful figures. Too many ostrich feather bedecked hats for my liking, but some nicely animated figures (I even kept the kneeling figure, and I hate figures in a kneeling pose).

It would have been nice if a few of the figures had been given grenadoes, an essential tool for any storming party, I don't necessarily mean 'in the act of throwing a grenado', they could have been equipped with a bag containing grenadoes.

This pack will be joining my Parliamentarian assault party, a second pack sits patiently in my painting queue ready to join the King's forces.

With my Peter Pig harquebusiers on foot and grenadoes

Now all that Steel Fist needs to produce, to make me really really happy, are a pack of siege engineers (correctly attired, rather than lazily replicating the incorrect illustration in Haythornthwaite), and a pack of labourers. And maybe a pack of civilian drovers...

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