Prussian Officers

So in my quest to catch up with the stuff I painted for the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge… here are some Prussian officers. In a recent game we played, I had to use some British officers as stand-ins which resulted in some jokes that I needed more Prussian officers to prevent the Brits from stealing the glory. Plus I need a few more officers for my Möckern game anyway!

One is a pair of artillery officers representing Oberstleutnant Schmidt who commanded von Yorcke´s artillery reserve that day. Schmidt was the officer in charge of one of the Prussian 12pdr. batteries when they were amalgamated on the day. He was given charge of the combined battery (well rather the large 12pdr. battery and the large howitzer battery). Now under R2E you usually do not have brigadiers (or higher) for artillery. They are either attached to infantry or cavalry brigade and act under their orders or act as independent unit and you have to pay command points for each battery. They exceptions are grand batteries and instances were actual artillery formations were used. Since the 12pdr.s at Möckern fall into that later category and since the two 6pdr. batteries were acting independently anyway, I felt it was time for one of those rare artillery commanders here. The minis and their Horses are from Calpe. I really enjoyed their businesslike simplicity. Since I could not find any information where Schmitz and the other ranking officers from the batteries came from, I took some liberties in their colour choice, going for Silesian yellow and Brandenburg red. While it might not show on the photos, I enjoyed painting the reflection of the sky into the telescope lens. I felt this gave a great counterpoint to that simplicity and serves as a good eye catcher.

Prussian artillery officers

Prussian artillery officers

Prussian artillery officers

The other one is a Prussian officer (Perry) meant to represent the officer who commanded the second detachment of the avant-garde. Unfortunately his name is unknown, but this also gave me the opportunity to choose his facing colours. I went for Silesian yellow, since there a lot of units from Silesia in the force and it gave a nice contrast with the blue of the uniform and the red of the turnbacks. Also on the base are a French artillery casualty and broken gun from Offensive Miniatures as seen on yesterdays review. I feel that piece has lots of character and they both serve to distract from one another, therefore creating lots of action on the base. The only mood point is that I arranged them in a way that it looks like the Prussian officer is shouting to get that dead Frenchmen moving again.

Prussian mounted infantry officer

Prussian mounted infantry officer

Prussian mounted infantry officer

Prussian mounted infantry officer (top view)