Perry French Hussars

For the last couple of weeks I have been building an prepping lots of models.  One set that I have been wanting to build for a long time is the Perry French Hussar set.  I have known for a long time that these are really great models but it wasn't until I built some that I truly appreciated just how great these are.  I have built and painted lots of Perry plastic miniatures as well as from some other manufacturers.  Plastic has lots of advantages and a few disadvantages.  One of the big disadvantages of plastic is the inability to do undercuts and the loss of detail towards the sides of pieces.  These minor disadvantages can be overcome by good model design.  In the case of these Hussar models the design is just about perfect.  Outside of an actual model kit built by one of the large model company, I don't think I have seen a better design or execution of a plastic kit.

The kit has some really nice features that allow you to build a huge variety of uniform styles.  There are four different styles of head gear with enough heads to do the entire box in a single style.  You also get two sets of legs, one in dress style and the other with the coveralls for campaign dress.  I am not a Napoleonic uniform specialist, but to my relatively untrained eye you should be able to do just about any unit from 1798 to 1815.  There might even be uses other than French for these as well.

You also get an amazing set of painting guides that cover more than a dozen different Hussars units and shows uniform differences in different campaigns or periods.  This set is so well done that I feel like, as a complete Napoleonic novice, that I can built great units and have a very close uniform accuracy.

This first set has been built as the 4th Hussars sometime around 1812.  This is one of two units with banners included in the box.  Unfortunately, since I am not really focusing on Napoleonics this year I am not sure when I will paint these figures but they are so nice I just had to share.