More Brunswickers and some Austrians

Well here is my 15th and final submission to the Painting Challenge. These figures just push me over my personal goal of 1700 pts and I have to say that I am done with the brush for a bit. Rather then finishing with the 18 figures I need for my Romano-British force or the 16 figures left in the Hobbit box set I decided to finish off some Napoleonics.

Here are the final 2 units needed for the Brunswick Light Brigade at Waterloo. The 2nd Light have yellow facings and the 1st have tan facings. They join the 3rd with orange facings as well as the Avant Garde and the Lieb battalion in the Light Brigade. All I have to do now to finish off the Brunswick Corps are the 3 Line battalions, they will be next up as I they really have great looking flags, which were not available for the light troops. I just received some amazing flags from Flagdude. so maybe I will be unable to rest the brush for too long.

The final two figures to get over the 1700 mark are 2 Austrian commanders. A couple of years ago I started an Austrian unit, I am not sure if I will ever finish it, but I have 2 battalions of line, 1 battalion of grenzers and 4 companies of jaegers done as well as some artillery and a regiment of cavalry. A nice brigade sized force, but no brigade commander. So here we have an Austrian Major General with his ADC. These are Front Rank figures and are just very nice to paint. As you could see from the close up of the face I could have easily painted some eyes, which I have not been keen to do, but thankfully I have still resisted.

Well where to next? Well it is time to start playing some games. We are having another weekend in Montreal in about a month time. We have been struggling a bit looking for a Napoleonic ruleset. We have had several games of Black Powder, 2 games of Piquet Field of Battle, and 1 game of Curt's Food for Powder. We like them all, but we are still looking (Curt's ruleset is not completely developed yet, so we will be trying it again). We did a poll of our rulesets and have decided to test a new ruleset on each of our next 3 outings with one of us acting as a games master and being responsible for the scenario and presenting the rules to the others. I am up first and I am hoping to do my next posts on the process and then a report on the actual game.

In respect to painting, I have pretty well accomplished what I set out to do with SAGA (painted three 6 point war bands) and Dux Britaniarum (only 18 figures left to go for two starter forces). I also have promised to do an ancients force to tackle Iannick's Canaanites. A lot to think about there, but where most of them will be half naked, I am hoping to be able to get them out quickly.

So really I am keen to get back to filling in the gaps in my Napoleonic armies. It seems I have really lost control of myself here, I have a lot of soldiers with no where to put them. The only new force I am planning and I am going to stop there is the 2nd Netherland's Division at Waterloo. Otherwise I have started to look at filling the holes, ie. adding units up to bring things up the armies to coherent division strength. Anyway that is the plan!

Finally I have to say that I am amazed at the number of page views I have had for my last post, the army of the Taifa of Seville. In eight days I have had over 4600 page views of this post alone! This is a 1000 more page views then any other post I have done in the last 5 years. I am a little puzzled, but thanks for looking.

(84450)

2/IR48

About 4 months ago, I bought 16 Hungarian infantry off ebay. I am not sure of the painter's name, but I had bought a French infantry unit from him a couple of years ago because I really liked his painting style. The method I use now (white prime, thinned paints with dark wash) is based on what I learned from studying these figures. I had a plan to paint an Austrian Avant Garde Lasalle division, and needed some extra Hungarians (only had 24 figure battalion pack), so this seemed like a good opportunity to cut some painting time and get the unit done. 

The unit came with green facings and a low porte attack pose. I am not wedded to painting specific battalions for my Avant Garde division, so that was ok with me as I had already painted a blue faced and had started a red faced German battalion. Red, blue and green, what more could you want! 

Green facings in a Hungarian infantry unit limited the choice to just 2 units, IR48 and IR62. Both had yellow buttons, I like yellow buttons. The specific facing colour is steel green.  The Clash of Empires website has a colour guide to Austrian facing colours, I used GW Knarloc Green which I believe to be a little light, but so be it. IR48 was called Vukassovich up to 1809 and Simbschen after this.

In line, great GMB flag. I painted 20 of the 36 figures all the rear rank as well as the officers on the right and left flanks.

 Square

I alway make the left most base in my infantry battalions using two 40x20mm bases rather than one 40x40mm base. The rear rank is glued to the thin square base, but the front rank base is magnetised so it can be removed to mark casualties. You can see that I did a pretty good job of matching the style.

The darkest Army Painter was used, a matt varnish was applied and the white areas were dry brushed to bring out the white again.

The great problem with pointy bits sticking out from the base is that it is difficult to have a tight column of march. If you are using the Republic to Empire rules though this is fine as it is recommended that you leave a base sized gap between each base when figures are in column of march.

Well that leaves just two more 36 figure infantry battalions, one 12 figure cavalry regiment and one horse cavalry gun to do and the Avant Garde division will be done.


35682

7th Jagers

The 7th German Jagers, presented in skirmish order. Front Rank as usual, again nice figures. Used GW Astronomicon Grey for the uniform and Knarloc Green for the facings. I felt my faces have been a little dark, so I diluted the GW Ogryn Flesh wash and then highlighted it with GW Elf Flesh. Then an application of the AP midtone.

Still can not get the white balance right, but I am working on it.

I am going to take a break from the Austrians now, I am half way through the Avant Garde Division, and focus my attention on the Hougomont Project. This will be my biggest undertaking to date, and I am quite excited about it. But, more to come.

(26303)

3rd Erzherzog Karl Uhlans

For my Lasalle Avant Garde Division, I needed a large cavalry unit of Uhlans (Lancers), the only unit I could find that were at the Battle of Wagram were the 2nd (Schwarzenberg), but I could not resist the 3rd, as they had distinctive red czapkas.

These are Front Rank figures and as usual they are quite good. The figures were pretty detailed, but I did enjoy painting them. I used GW Dark Angels Green Ink as the basis for the uniform. This was the first time I used a green ink and I was very happy with the result. Single coat over a white primer great two tone result. I used the mid tone AP on the figures and the light tone AP on the horses.

Here are the command stands, I could find no information on the trumpeter, so I decided to put him on an alternate coloured horse and paint his lapels and cuffs yellow. Also went ahead and attempted my first striped flag pole, needs a bit more work, but ok for first go. The flag and pennants are from GMB, the pennant have been heavily overpainted.

Side view, some day I will make an attempt to paint on a regimental mark on the saddle cloth, but not today.

Next up are the 7th Jagers, which is a bit of a relief as I am only painting 16 figures as they will be in skirmish order.

(25596)

13th Wallachisch-Illyriches Grenz

Here is my first unit of Austrian Grenzers for my Avantgarde Division of my Austrian Lasalle Army. Still working with photoshop to improve the lighting, I believe I could have gone a little further here. The Grenz were the border forces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They functioned usually as light infantry and served with advance guard units. I believe most of the details for the 13th are correct, they were first raised in 1766. The unit was based in Northern Moravia now in the Czech Republic.

I elected for this unit to have white leather, by 1809 the 13th were in brown tunics. I have tried to paint the drum correctly, but still have left off putting stripes on the flagpole.....next time. The buttons may be wrong, I painted yellow and I suspect they were white.

In line:

Back view:

There appear to be quite a few Serresaner (the fellows with the red cloaks) in this unit, Doc Smith tells me they were Balkan muslims who acted as sharpshooters, scouts and even police in the Austrian army.

Next up the 3rd Uhlans!

(24483)

1/IR4, the Hoch und Deutchsmeister

From Knõtel with Helmuts.

With Shakos

Thankfully, I have all that rebasing under my belt, so I have been able to start painting again. First up were some Austrians. I have all Front Rank figures, and they are really great for my painting technique. White prime, with thinned acrylics and then Army Painter. All units will be from FM Nordmann's Avantgarde at Wagram in 1809. This is my original attempt before I corrected the painting errors

Here are 1/IR4, the Hoch und Deutchsmeister. I used the soft tone Army Painter here, I am quite happy with the result. Their distinguishing characteristic is blue facings and yellow buttons. So I fixed the cocardes, they are now yellow with a black dot (don't laugh at my dots, I will use a marker from now on), flagtop is bronze and although you can not see it the musicians now have white piped shoulders. I know the flagpole and the drum are not correct, but I have to think about this a little longer.

A little dark maybe, but you can see the drummers.

Here is 2 bases of an eventual 3 base Light Austrian Cavalry unit. I really enjoyed painting these figures, I used the Army Painter midtone here. So you can see that for 4 of the 6 figures, I used the correct facings for artillerymen, I left 2 of them with blues facings and will treat them as handlangers.

Great figures are they not!

And finally to show that I am not slacking here is the command stand of 2/IR48, the Bellegarde. They have nice distinctive red facings with grey buttons.

(21,047)

Well maybe it will be the Austrians: Austrian OOB

As a followup to my Prussian OOB post, I thought I would post my planned OOB for my first Austrian division. I plan to work on the Austrian and Prussian divisions simultaneously; white-blue, white-blue.......I am sure you get the idea. Change from red-blue, red-blue anyway!

As previously noted I like to use historical OOB, while at the same time grafting them on to the Lassalle Army Builder. After a look through and a think, I decided to go with an Austrian Avant-Garde division as my core Lasalle unit with an organic choice being a Landwehr unit. This gives me an excellent cross-sampling of Austrian unit types.

After a lot of looking, I have decided to use FML Nordmann's Avantgarde as it was on July 6th, 1809 at the Battle of Wagram.

Commander: Nordmann, FML Armand von

Infantry Brigade Reise, GM Freiherr von

Infantry Regiment Graf Bellegarde Nr. 44: 3 battalions

Infantry Regiment Marquis Chasteler de Courcelles Nr. 46: 3 battalions

Landwehr [1,2/Wiener Freikorps]: 2 battalions

Brigade Artillery Battery Nr. 16

Infantry Brigade Meyer, GM

Infantry Regiment Deutschmeister Nr. 4: 3 battalions

Infantry Regiment Freiherr von Kerpen 49: 3 battalions

Landwehr [5,6/Wiener Freikorps]: 2 battalions

Brigade Artillery Battery Nr. 23

Light Brigade Vecsey von Hajnacskeo, GM Peter, Freiherr

Infantry Regiment Freiherr von Beaulieu 58: 2 battalions

1^st Jager Battalion

Landwehr [3/Meinharts-Berg]: 1 battalion

Hussar Regiment Palatin von Ungarn Nr. 12

Brigade Artillery Battery Nr. 17

Light Brigade Frelich, GM Freiherr von

7^th Jager Battalion

Grenz Regiment Nr. 13: 2 battalions

Hussar Regiment Freiherr Stipsicz von Ternova Nr. 10

Cavalry Artillery Battery

Light Cavalry Brigade Schneller, GM

Hussar Regiment Erbprinz zu Hessen-Homburg Nr. 4

Cavalry Artillery Battery

Reserve Artillery

I wanted an Hungarian infantry unit to paint, so I substituted IR35 for IR49, otherwise Light Bde Froehlich and Infantry Bde Meyer are intact. I then took Light Bde Vecsey and made some changes, an Uhlan cavalry unit was substituted for 12th Hussars and the rest of the infantry are 4 Landwehr battalions. I still have not decided about the 4th Landwehr unit.

Large Lasalle units will have 36 infantry on 6 bases, while regular units will have 24 figures on 4 bases, all Cavalry units will be large with 12 riders on 6 bases. I have decided to move my bases from 3 figure to 6 figures, so my smallest units will have 20-24 figures, but more about that later. So there we have it; FML Nordmann's AG at Wagram forced into a Lasalle Army List.

(17156)