Five Kilometres from Leipzig

It is 1810, Lieutenant Richard Sharpe of the 95th Rifles, having distinguished himself in battle and in some other admittedly odd situations, is assigned with a small group of his men to Major Michael Hogan, on the understanding that “Major Hogan's coat buttons up tight over a number of other duties”. 

I’ve wanted an excuse to paint up the Chosen Men ever since first spotting this Wargames Atlantic kit, and first I planned to use it for The Silver Bayonet (TSB), but I kept coming up with a variety of reasons for not to want to play it, until I eventually admitted to myself it would like ly never happen.  Then I was looking through the Nordic Weasel back catalogue and found Five Kilometres from Leipzig (5KL), based on Five Leagues/Five Parsecs but for historical games in the age of black powder.  Perfect for Sharpe and his men!

32 figures is way more than I need, a 5KL unit is maximum 8 figures.  However I rationalised it like this, I like posting photos of my games so if I made different poses of the same character I could mix things up a bit for the game reports.  Makes sense to me ;-)

The box set and the rules went on my Christmas list, and Santa was kind enough to deliver, so away we go!  Three days later all 32 figures were constructed (have I mentioned how much I enjoy the plastic multi-part kits?) and I’m really pleased how I managed to get not just the 8 characters looking different, but a pretty characterful mix of 32 poses.

Of course one of these was clearly built for TSB, but just maybe I’ll find a use for that at some point?

I added a post on my process (https://horrendousgaming.blogspot.com/2025/01/why-i-enjoy-plastic-kits.html) so I won’t go into it here, but here are the results, every character has four poses - kneeling, on the march, in action, and ‘character’.

Captain Sharpe with Rifle and the obligatory straight heavy cavalry sword (which wasn’t on the sprues as lots of people like to point out, on there is a curved sword like a real 95th officer would have had).

Sergeant Pat Harper, with his Volley Gun for close work, and Rifle for longer shots:

Chosen Man Harris, a “courtier to my lord Bacchus”:

Chosen Man Daniel Hagman, crack-shot Rifleman:

Chosen Man Francis Cooper, a bit handy with a picklock, and always on the lookout:

Rifleman Isiah Tongue:

Young Ben Perkins:

Last is Tobias Moore with his mutton chops:

I need some enemy figures now and there is plenty to do in other areas so it might be awhile before I get back to this, but I also wrote a major update to the rules and passed them to Ivan, so will definitely return to this.