Hinton Hunt Vintage Wargame Figures

No, this is not a plug for IKEA this is an attempt to find suitable caring homes for the hundred-and-fifty or so 20mm Swedes I have packed away at the very bottom of the lead pile. Now I’ll make the point right away that these are NOT genuine Hinton Hunt castings they are figures based very closely on Hinton Hunt SW4 Swedish private charging & SW7 Swedish private marching and were produced in the US by an unknown maker – probably in the 70’s or 80’s.

I bought them rather naively in a job lot about six years ago (at the start of this project) in the hope that they would contain at least some genuine figures but sadly this was not the case. I did refurbish three units in an attempt to convince Mrs S I was thrilled to have spent our cash on them but lost enthusiasm to do any more (well, how many Swedes do you need?).

The castings I have available are good and flash free and have a very basic faded paint job (as pictured). Some of the figures were ‘converted’ to Jagers by the original owner who cut off their bayonets. The annoying thing about them to a purist like me is that the bases are overly thick being about 3mm which makes them look big stood next to their genuine brethren (Roy has suggested that I file the bases down but life is too short). Having said that, the figures that I refurbished have done surprisingly well in action (even though I usually rate them as ‘C’ grade) – click here to see what I mean.

The un-refurbished figures wanting a new home are:
39 x Charging (all with bayonet)
67 x Marching (all with bayonet but some are a bit bent)
49 x Marching (no bayonet)
+ various officers and flag-bearers (poor castings)

For the full Swede story click here.

UPDATE - THE SWEDES HAVE ALL GONE TO A NEW HOME...

Having only recently arrived in the display cabinet, Marshal Bernadotte thought it would be a good idea to hold a full parade of the Swedish Division to introduce himself as their new C-in-C. He was pretty pleased with the turnout – from left to right are Regiments Abo, Kajana and Alderkreutz.

This is Marshal Bernadotte aka Charles XIV of Sweden aka Carl III Johan of Norway aka turncoat. So just how did a French Marshal rise to become a top Swede? Well, I’m not entirely sure but he was brother-in-law to Joseph Bonaparte which may have helped. Later he turned his back on his old master when Swedish forces took part in the Leipzig campaign fighting along side the Allies.

Those of you who know about these things (and you know who you are) will be aware that Hinton Hunt never produced a personality figure for Bernadotte. This figure is actually a clever conversion given to me last year by Roy. The horse is APH/1 Ancient Persian Chariot Horse with a blanket added (how did you do that Roy?). The rider is PN60 Marshal Blucher with a different head attached.

I decided to paint the figure as Bernadotte to give me someone to command my Swedish contingent. The uniform is pure speculation although having just found a picture of him on Wikipedia I see I’m not that far off.

Now I did say a while back that I was working on some more Austrians. Well, I am but I remembered that I had prepared some Swedes for painting a couple of weeks ago and I don’t like leaving loose ends. This is another unit of marching figures to represent the 3rd Kajana Regiment, the officer is a Minifigs S range Tyrolean Jager.

For those of you who don’t know, I bought a load of these figures from the US last year in a moment of madness – enough for 9 units of 24 figures, and then some! They are not official Hinton Hunt and their exact origin is still a mystery, I am sure they are not Clayton or der Kriegspieler and (according to Steve) they are too good to be home-cast efforts. I know that other gamers have them in their collections so they must have been a commercial offering but who made them? Answers on a postcard please.

I don’t strip these figures and re-paint them fully as I do with my vintage castings because there are just so many and to be honest they don’t inspire me as much as some of the other items waiting in the painting queue. They get a clean up and touch-up although this is still pretty time consuming as the only bit I don’t repaint is the belt and hat badge. Together with the 3rd Alderkreutz and the 2nd Abo, the 3rd Kajana Regiment completes my first Swedish Brigade. Generals K & A are proud as punch and can’t wait to hold a full parade of the lads.

These are Generals Klingspor & Aldercreutz proud commanding officers of my Swedish army. Both figures are actually AN102 Austrian General mounted holding map from the horse-attached series. Mr A (riding one of my famous rocking horses) has had a new head fitted and the map removed from his hands. In common with my other Swedes I refreshed the original paint job on these rather than strip them and start again, although they were in a pretty bad condition so it ended up being more of a re-paint.

I received these lads with the rest of my Swedish army from the USA last year. Their origin is a bit of a mystery. They are not vintage UK castings and neither are they Clayton castings or the more obscure Der Kriegspieler Napoleoniques. There are quite a few knock-off Hinton Hunt figures about and most of those were produced in the USA so it’s fairly safe to assume that someone slaved away over a hot kitchen stove to make these from original figures – I wonder if they felt guilty? Although not official castings they are probably at least 20 or so years old and the quality is good. The only annoying thing about them is the extra thick bases which make them taller than their genuine comrades.

Messer’s K & A look a bit glum possibly because they have only just heard that Russia has knocked Sweden out of the Euro 2008 football competition. Perhaps a new Russo-Swedish war is in the offing?

For more on my Swedes click here.

This is the 2nd ABO Regiment just back from a refit at barracks. The figures are probably knock off’s of SWN4 Swedish Infantry Advancing. The officer and standard bearer are of unknown origin being poor quality and they may even be home cast figures (tucked away in the 2nd rank for this photo). The flag is metal and the puny standard bearer had to be jacked up on a plasti-card plinth to help him hoist the thing above his head.

The purists among you many wonder why I am including these impostors in the ranks of my vintage Hinton Hunt army. The answer is that I have a lot of them so what else am I going to do? En-masse they look fine (fantastic if I take my glasses off) so they will stay in the army.

The figure on the right is one of the Swedes as received and the one on the left is the finished version. The paint job is showing signs of age (I reckon the figures must be at least 25 years old) although the detail in some areas is still good. There was no way I was ever going to strip and repaint 300 of these guys so I settled for a refurb.

Firstly I brushed off any loose paint and dirt and then scraped the green flock off the base. I decided to concentrate most of my efforts on the flesh areas as the original colour was rather anaemic looking - not a lot of sun in Sweden I guess. I used Foundry flesh 5A washed over with copper wash 47A which gives a good result without much effort.

This is the first of my Swedish units on parade after refurbishing and rebasing. Rather than striping the old paint off and starting again (my usual process) I decided to give them a makeover as some of the existing detail is pretty good. I probably spent a quarter of the time that I would have if I’d painted them from scratch. This improves the chances of my completing all nine of the twenty-four figure units before my enthusiasm runs out (yeah, right!).

When the Swedes arrived I knew zilch about the Swedish army of the Napoleonic wars and my knowledge is still pretty sketchy. I did finally manage to track down a copy of Osprey’s ‘Scandinavian Armies of the Napoleonic Wars’ and have cobbled together some other uniform information too.

This unit is apparently the 3rd Alderkreutz regiment and consists of 23 x SWN7 Swedish Infantry Marching plus an S range Minifigs officer. Now I know that strictly speaking I shouldn’t have any Minifigs in my army but I thought I would preserve the unit intact. I am reliably informed (thanks Clive) that the officer is actually an Austrian Tyrolean Jager figure AN14s.

Plenty more Swedes to come…

Just in – about 300 Swedes all the way from the US of A. Don’t ask me because I don’t know why I took out a second mortgage and bought them. In total I have 9 x 24 infantry figure units plus 5 x 18 infantry ‘Jager’ units. No cavalry or artillery but I have Generals Klingspor and Alderkreutz, not that I have ever heard of them.

I must admit I was slightly disappointed when they arrived as none of the figures have turned out to be vintage HH – usually when I buy figures I find that there is a mixture of vintage, USA castings and knock-offs. These have slightly puzzled me as the castings are good quality but the very thick bases (about 3mm) are not like any Hinton Hunt I have seen before.

Anyway, they are great figures and are almost certainly taken from original Hinton Hunt moulds or models of:

SWN4 Swedish Private Charging
SWN7 Swedish Private Marching

This has put me in a bit of a quandary because I had already decided not to include any figures other than vintage HH in my army. However, I can’t bring myself to part with them so the current plan is to refurbish and rebase them for an instant army to fight my other HH’s. I won’t attempt to repaint them as there are just too many but they look like they have all been painted by the same person so have uniformity in appearance.