American War Of Independence MPC Munchkins

 I got a lot of MPC Revolutionary figures some time ago, that had been painted. In the end I sold them because they looked too small next to my Accurate AWOI. I still had a bag full of unpainted ones and I looked at these in a new way due to my current interest in The Wizard of Oz.

  The recently released rules and figures, The Wizard of Ozz have the premise of a post apocalyptic world which takes on the semblance of Baum's world. The soldiers have Napoleonic type uniforms and weapons, no doubt strongly influenced by the occasional images of such in the Judy Garland film.

The Wizard Of Ozz army lists mentions Munchkin militia in light blue coats with red cuffs and black hats. Hmm, I thought, 'Here is a job for my MPC Americans'. Rather than paint them strictly historically as AWOI I followed the uniform description in the Ozz rules. So they have light blue tunics, white trousers and black hats. (There is no reason why I could not paint them any colour I wanted but I decided to broadly follow the rules book army lists). My own embellishment is to paint them with white wigs and to paint the frontiersmen in buckskins in the same way.

They are not truly Munchkin-like as proportions differ but they are more of a teenager dimension or similar to the Lord f the Rings Hobbits but without hairy feet. In any case they will be one two two heads smaller tan other armies soldiers, (considerably smaller next to my West point Cadets).

I do like to have at least 14 figures in my infantry units (or 'regiment') so I was looking for additional figures. Recently I realised that some undersized copies of Marx ACW would be good material. I decided to convert the hats and caps into tricorns and maybe leave one or two as slouch hats. As the figures have shell jackets I just had a small amount to trim at the front and I could just paint the rear of the trousers as tails. In fact the drummer already had tails. Well, the revolutionary troops don't exactly have tailed coats but turn backs but, combined with a lot of equipment, the difference is not too great.

So here they are below, undergoing conversion and with one unpainted MPC AWOI for comparison.