Scruby - British Staff Officer

I used the Scruby General officer figure to represent General Scarlett earlier this year. Over the last couple of days I have been painting a second figure to represent a British staff officer. He will act as an aide on the battlefield.

Although a very nicely moulded figure the Scruby offering is incorrect for the Crimean war. The problem lies with the plume on the high cocked hat and the shoulder accoutrements. General officers wore feathers on their head dress, although it seems that actually in the field all of the decorative items were removed. The Scruby figure correctly has the officer wearing the long double breasted frock coat, but this would not be worn with all of the gold shoulder decoration, this being normal for the full dress uniform. However, with a little bit of chopping and filing these odd issues can be easily resolved.  Here is the original figure as supplied:

Then the same figure is shown with a few adjustments:

Commanders and Staff Officers

Here we have a dilemma as all good armies need commanders and there is nothing in any of the Douglas Range that could be used or converted easily. I have searched high and low for solutions and so far there are two options. First it is possible to use 20mm Napoleonic Generals and staff, although the tunic from the early 1800s is quite different to the frock coats more commonly worn in the Crimea. I have found that the Rose miniatures 20mm figure of Wellington is a reasonable starting point. This figure is currently available from Garrison Miniatures. The horse on this figure is not good, but at least it gives a generic general figure. I have painted three, one British officer in full dress tunic, one in undress blue and a Russian in Green:

The second option is to use Strelets figures from the "Charge of the Heavy Brigade set" for British and the "General Staff and Hospital set" for the Russians. There are some more figures in the Light Brigade set too.

Here is a British general with aides:

And some Russian staff, with Douglas figures to give an idea of scale: