Ostpreußisches Jägerbattalion / Gardejägerbattalion

Gardejäger

So this is the unit I had been working on for my Völkerschlacht / Möckern project over the past week. It is a mixed unit of East Prussian Jäger and Guard Jäger. Why mixed? Well they both served at Möckern, but the Gardejäger only with 70 men, which would make them far too small to be effective on the tabletop. So I decided to amalgamate them with their East Prussian brethren. Upon further research this proved to be quite a good idea from a historic point of view as well. For when I was looking for information on their uniforms (more on this later), this proved a mixed blessing. While one could find a couple of prints showing the Gardejäger, only one Knötel / Letzius print could be found on the Eastprussians. There is some really good information on the Calpe homepage, but beyond that information on them is rare. Oddly enough there is lots of information on them when it comes to World War One, but that is about it. Still I wanted more. The best info in the 1920´s book “Stammliste der Königlich Preußischen Armee seit dem 16ten Jahrhundert bis 1840”. The book states that both units were formed from Feldjäger taken Prisoner during the 1806 campaign and returned by the French. They formed a new Jäger unit which was divided in 1809 into the Gardejäger (1st Battalion) and the Ostpreußisches Jägerbattalion (2nd Battalion). Now when it comes to their combat history the book simply sais that the Eastprussians share the combat history of the Gardejäger. To me this indicates, that they were not simply attached to the same army Corps, but rather amalgamated on the battlefield as well. The Prussians had a tendency to create ad-hoc battle groups if need be (the battle for Möckern actually is a fine example of that) and I think chances are slim that they would share the same battlefield history in that “environment” unless they were interlinked so close, that they could not be separated to be attached to different battle groups. I that sense it seems to have been a wise decision to amalgamate them into one unit on the tabletop as well.

Ostpreußischer Jäger

Now on to the uniforms. First thing, these men should not be confused with the Freiwilligen Jäger. Freiwillige Jäger were volunteers (as the name suggests) that were attached to infantry units. The units we are talking about here were dedicated Jäger units and had slightly different uniforms from the Freiwilligen Jäger. Their coats were dark green with red cuffs, collars and turnbacks. The Gardejäger also had brass coloured braid on their collars and cuffs. Their belts and such were black, the sword knots dark green (except for the officers). They had sword type bayonets, which were only attached to the rifles if needed. Please note that the print to the right is somewhat wrong in that they never wore their greatcoats or blankets wrapped around their bodies, but always attached to their backpacks to avoid entanglement.

Now I took one small liberty with these minis. Since this print to the right is the only one I could find showing a Eastprussian Jäger, there are none showing their turnbacks. It is likely that these were just edged red like they were with the Guards, but I still wanted a little variation on them, to set them apart from the Guard. So I painted their turnbacks completely in red.

Now the last issue with these was their basing. As you know I am using the Republic to Empire rules. With most units you can just detach a pair of skirmishers or two and that is it. As you might have seen, I usually just paint up two extra minis and base them separately on hex bases. (Hex bases are not required by the rules, I just liked it.) Now with units that had a proficiency in skirmishing like Légère, Rifles, Schützen or indeed Jäger, they can deploy the whole unit as skirmishers (minus a stand or two to represent their reserve). At first I had planned to just paint the extra minis and base them as usual, but then I got second thoughts. I would be fine with just a unit or two, but would I really want to do that for all those French Légère, this could easily turn into a pain in the backside, not to mention all the money sunk into it. So I went for something different. I approached Warbases and had them cut me some 2cm x 4cm bases with two rounded corners. That way they look like my normal bases when put one behind the other in normal formation and they can be used to deploy them as skirmisher pairs none the less. I know I could just have cut some Victrix bases in half, but I wanted perfect cuts.

So after all this ado… here are some shots of the finished unit (BTW… minis are all Calpe). Please excuse the poor photos, the weather is quite bad here in Germany right now and I had to work with artificial lighting.

Ostpreußisches Jägerbattalion - Gardejägerbattalion

Ostpreußisches Jägerbattalion - Gardejägerbattalion in Skirmish Formation

Command stand

Jäger loading his rifle

Jäger NCO

Jäger advancing

 

La Bricole Painting Competition (Part 1) / 4th Marine Regiment

A couple of days ago I stumbled over a nice little forum called La Bricole, which is completely dedicated to Napoleonic wargaming. Now they are running a painting competition right now, which is more of a friendly contest rather than anything else. All participants need to paint a unit of their choice, any given scale. The biggest rules are that you are not allowed to have started (except cleaning the minis and priming them) before the competition started around Christmas and that everything needs to be finished before the end of March. You can pick any unit as long as it is not elite (no guards, Rifles / Schützen / Jäger…).

I decided to pick the 4th Marine Artillery Regiment. Why… Well most of all, because I need to paint them for my Völkerschlacht / Möckern project anyway and since it would give me good reason to work myself through them at a reasonable pace, since I feel that this might be the unit that might get me bored most easily!

Since I only found the forum last week I am slightly late to the party, but on the other hand I have lots of time right now. So over the course of a couple of evenings I cleaned up the minis for this unit. Right now it is only the 1st battalion, but if I find the time, I shall try to do all 3 for the competition.

Marine Artillerie bei Möckern 1813

Marines and Brandenburg Hussars

Now at Leipzig these men were actually mistaken for Old Guard, since they wore dark blue greatcoats over dark blue uniforms. They had red epaulettes and pompoms, but wore shakos and (judging by some paintings I found) bicornes. Now this made the choice of minis easy. I used mostly Victrix minis from their Old Guard Grenadiers box with shakos from Victrix and Perry. A few men received the heads from the officers with slightly modified bicornes and one bicorne from Victrixs early infantry is in there, too. To add a little diversity there are also two plastic Perry soldiers in greatcoats and three men in normal uniforms. As you might be able to see on these poor shots from the various shades of plastic, all this came from a great number of boxes. They have now been cleaned up (a few slightly converted) and holes filled with greenstuff. After these shots were taken, I also primed them and I hope to put the first colour on them by tomorrow.

Minis before being primed

Skirmishers

 

Régiment Joséph Napoleon / Régiment Éspanol

So here it is… the next French unit for my Völkerschlacht / Möckern project. The Régiment Espaniol, also known as the Régiment Joséph Napoleon.

Now it has quite an interesting history. In 1807 the Bourbon Monarchs of Spain send an expeditionary force to serve in the Grande Armée. The around 10 regiments of all branches were split up and served in Denmark. They were still there when Napoleon forced the Spanish Bourbons to abdicate in 1808 and made his brother Joséph King of Spain. For most of the soldiers serving the expeditionary force this was disgraceful and an insult. So when their commander, the Marquis de la Romana, was contacted by a British agent offering transportation to Spain to fight with the allies, he accepted. Unfortunately he and his men were betrayed by one of their own regiments and over 3.500 soldiers became prisoners of war. Later that year the idea was hatched, that there would be enough men loyal to the French to create a unit to fight in the Peninsular. So by decree of 13th February 1809 the regiment was formed. It consisted of four battalions (three Line, one Depot) all organized to French regulations with four Fusilier, one Voltigeur and one Grenadier companies each. The only difference was that the official language of command was Spanish and that their uniforms were of different colour (white with dark green breast). Formation was slow, since the French wanted to be sure that only those would serve, who would not desert at the first possible chance. So the Regiment was only completely formed by spring of 1810. But Napoleon still did not trust them enough. They were not sent to Spain after all, but split up by battalions and deployed to France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.

During Napoleons invasion of Russia in 1812, the whole regiment took part. The second and third battalions as part of I Corps (Davout), first and fourth battalions as part of IV Corps (Prince Eugene). All four fought at Borodino, the third and fourth battalions taking part in the attack on the Great Redoubt. They were badly mauled in the retreat from Russia, just like the rest of the Grande Armée. They took part in the fighting in Germany in 1813, where they were decimated even more. So on December 24th 1813 the remaining troops had to surrender their weapons and were converted to a pioneer regiment, which was disbanded on 17th April 1814.

So now on to the minis themselves. At first I had though about using Perry Miniatures for them, since they had been issued with Bardin uniforms after Russia. But on the other hand, they are not only useful for Leipzig, but even more so for Borodino. So in the end I wanted to keep the option open to expand these minis to use them for Russia. So I went for Victrix minis instead, although with a few Perry heads and arms. Flag is from GMB. I was quite stereotypical with the hair this time, as I went mostly for blacks and browns.
I also wanted to use these as testbed for Austrians, since their uniforms were predominately white as well. Usually I paint white uniforms in shades of light grey, with a final highlight of white. But here I went for creme tones, also with a final highlight of white. Not sure yet if I like it or not. The big problem in my opinion is that it a) looks a bit dirty (which is not too bad for the campaign look) and b) that the dirt around the feet and knees does not really come out. So let me know if you like them or not!

Régiment Joséph Napoleon - Régiment Éspanol

Command base

Skirmishers

 

Brandenburg Uhlanen Regiment

Now as some of you might have noticed from some of the little remarks of mine in previous posts, these guys have been bugging me for some month now. They are part of my Möckern (Völkerschlacht von Leipzig) project. When based for R2E this unit consists of 19 minis. So far so good, but I made the mistake to paint them all in one go and not in little batches like I usually do. While I love to play cavalry, I really forgot what a pain they can be to paint since a) you always paint two minis (rider and horse) instead of one and b) they are usually more elaborate when it comes to uniforms. The later also held true for the Prussians that most people usually see as a boring and bleak subject. As a result I always got bored by painting the piping, lace, buttons (I could go on forever) on so many minis in a row and either got sidetracked to other projects like the french command or simply did other things. But last weekend I finally applied the finishing touches to them and here they are.

Brandenburg Uhlane (Knötel and Lezius Sturm cigarette card)

Their 1813 uniforms were quite straight forward… covered shakos, Prussian Blue Kollet jackets with red collars and cuffs as well as a Kummerbund edged in red and red piping to their grey overall trousers. The “saddlecloth” was black wool skin with red edging. Now what caused me some problems were their shoulder boards. There is a Knötel and Lezius Sturm cigarette card depicting a trooper from the Brandenburg Uhlanen with red shoulder boards.

Now all other sources state the shoulder boards for the Uhlanen were coloured in order of seniority (just like the battalions within a regiment of Landwehr infantry). Now since the Brandenburg Uhlanen were the Third regiment in line, theirs would be yellow and in the end that is what I went for.

What else is there to say about the Regiment? The official title is “Uhlanen Regiment Kaiser Alexander II von Russland Nr. 3 (1. Brandenburgisches)”. It was created on 11th of May 1809 from those members of the first Hussar regiments Nr. 1 and Nr. 2 that did not go on campaign or remained behind as replacements. They were expanded to 4 squadrons in the process. Since the Hussar regiments Nr. 1 and Nr. 2 were the Leibhussaren, the nucleus for the regiment was formed by some of the best troopers Prussia could muster at that time. In 1812 they provided two squadrons for Napoleons campaign against Russia where they took part in eight battles including Borodino. During the 1813/14 campaign the complete regiment took part in a total of 21 actions beginning with the siege of Glogau and ending in Paris. Obviously they were also at Leipzig. They saw action once more in 1815 including Ligny and Waterloo, although by that time their uniforms had changed.

The minis themselves are Calpe Uhlanen on standing horses. As usual they were a joy to paint (from an artistic point of view not from the time they took me) and I have to say I am loving this range ever more! During the painting process I was not too sure, if it was such a good idea to paint such a large unit in standing poses, but in the end I am happy with them. You can just imagine them standing up on a hill waiting to charge down at the French. But now on to some photos (which are all thumbnailed to larger versions):

Brandenburg Uhlanen command

Brandenburg Uhlanen troopers 1

Brandenburg Uhlanen troopers 2

Brandenburg Uhlanen troopers 3

Brandenburg Uhlanen troopers 4

Brandenburg Uhlanen troopers 5

Brandenburg Uhlanen group shot 1

Brandenburg Uhlanen group shot 2

Now that they are finished, I turned my attention to something new. In this case it is the Régiment Joseph Napoléon also known as the Régiment Espagnol. Not sure when they will be done though. I got an early birthday present from my better half this week… Modern Warfare 3 and Assassins Creed: Revelations for the PS3. that might distract me a little in coming days. 😉

 

Warlord Plastic Russians Review

Warlord plastic Russian box art

Well it seems to be a case of another day, another review. This time it is going to be Warlords new plastic Russians. I bought all three of their recent box sets and since their contents are vastly similar, I am going to review them all in one go, like I did with the Victrix Austrians the other day.The box sets in question here are:

• Russian Pavlovsk Grenadiers
• Russian Line Infantry 1808 – 1815
• Russian Line Infantry 1812 – 1815

Contents of the box:
With all the box sets you get a total of 32 minis. 28 of them are plastic and four are a metal command (officer, two standard bearers and drummer), all in marching poses. Just as with their plastic Prussians the metal command also contains sharpened brass rods as staffs for the flag and metal finial with tassels. The brass rods seem to be thinner though and all off them were already bend to some degree when I opened the boxes. Regardless of the box set they all come with separate heads, the drummers and officers with a separate right arm. There is some variation within the metal contents. All three boxes had different drummers and officers (although with both the drummer and officer two of the poses are quite similar). One of the standard bearers was the same in all boxes, one was the same in both the line infantry boxes. With the officers there is a clear difference of uniform, so I assume, that this is due to the different boxes. With the others there is no difference in uniform, so I assume that this is a chance variation.
The 28 plastic soldiers are spread out over seven sprues, each containing four different minis. They all come with separate heads and backpacks. Each infantry sprue comes with both four heads with grenadier and musketeer shakos. In case of the 1812- 1815 infantry all shakos are uncovered, in case of the 1809 – 1812 box two of the musketeer shakos are covered. The sprues for the Pavlovsk Grenadiers are identical to the 1809 – 1812 sprues. In return there are 64 metal heads in Mitre (half are the grenadier variety, half the fusilier variety). The backpacks are all cast with the swords and ammo pouch hanging down from them. The ammo pouches all have grenadier markings (the leaflets included in the boxes state which parts you have to cut away to turn them into fusilier ones).

Although only four different poses per box might seem few, I do not think that this is the case here. The poses are varied enough and with the separate heads, one should get enough variation out of the sets. So one really has to applaud the fact that they seem to have learned from the shortcomings of their Prussian Landwehr set.

Sprue front

Sprue back

Pavlovsk Grenadiers metal heads

Also included in each box is a two-sided A5 sheet with a few photos of painted minis, basic historic information and flags. In case of the Pavlovsk Grenadiers these are their regimental and white colours. The 1809 – 1815 set contains eight flags, the 1812 – 1815 set ten (one of them is the white flag in both boxes). Since the sheet is printed on heavy and glossy paper one would need to photocopy the flags for use. The flags are OK. Unfortunately the contrast is even lower than with their Prussian set and the details on the flags designs are a bit undefined. All in all the sheet makes for a nice addition, but I would really advise the use of aftermarket flags.

Price (as in Nov. 2011):
As mentioned the Warlord sets contains 32 minis. The two infantry sets retail for 18 GB£, which means a price per mini of 0,56 GB£. The Pavlovsk Grenadiers retail for 20 GB£ due to the number of metal heads, which means a price per mini of 0,62 GB£
This puts them on the expensive end of plastics (although the 4 metal minis in there blur the equation somewhat). For example the Perry sell for between 0,45 GB£ (British Infantry) and 0,39 GB£ (Prussians) and those boxes include bases. Victrix sell for between 0,39 GB£ (Austrians) per mini and 0,36 GB£ (French Guard) .
But they are still cheaper than metals. For example Front Rank are 1,10 GB£ per mini (or 1,03 GB£ if part of a Battalion pack) and Foundry are 1,50 GB£ per mini.
So in the end they are more expensive than other plastics but still cheaper than metals.

Detail:
I am going to sub-divide this into the metal and the plastic minis.
The metal minis are very crisp and clear in detail. Unfortunately mould lines are strong on some of the minis. There are no casting imperfections to be found, but a lot of the minis contained vast amount of flesh (I removed some of this before taking the pictures to give a clear view of them). Most of the officers and drummers have nice energetic poses. I especially like the option to have the drummers carry their shakos / Mitres under their arm. The standard bearers still come with closed hands, like the one in their Prussian set. It still irritates me, that Warlord state they want to keep the number of parts minimal for those who lack the assembly skill and still force them to drill the hands of the standard bearers open.

They all are similar in size and heft, with one exception. The standard bearer I only got with the Pavlovsk Grenadiers seems much bulkier then the rest of the minis.

Pavlovsk Grenadiers metal command

Line Infantry 1812-1815 metal command

Line Infantry 1809-1815 metal command

Now on to the plastics. There is some scale creep between them and the metal contents of the box. The bodies are bulkier, but not enough to really stand out on the table. The heads on the plastics are larger and I think it will be noticeable on the bare heads. The detail is good although not as crisp as with the metals (or indeed Perry or Victrix plastics). The crossbelts and especially the buttons make a softer transition into the coat. The hands still look large, although not as bad as on the Prussian set. The sides of the minis have good detail as well, but the definition deteriorates on some of them. This is still due to undercuts from the process of plastic castings. Again they have clearly learned from their Prussian set since they have now made the heads and backpacks separate, but it is still not as good as on Perry or Victrix minis.

Compatibility:
Size wise these minis should work well with the Napoleonic minis produced by the other mayor companies. Obviously the real test comes if you want to mix them in one unit or even on one base.
When compared to Foundry they are a little taller, which will be enhanced by the fact that their bases are thicker as well. The heft is stronger on plastic and similar on the metal minis. The heads on the Foundry minis are slightly smaller when compared to the plastics. The style of sculpting is vastly similar. So one should be able to base them together without either standing out if you slip a card under the Foundry minis.

Conclusion:

All in all one can see improvement in the Warlords plastic Napoleonics. The variety has grown better and so has the detail on the minis due to the fact that they made them multipart. On the other hand the general detail is still not as good as it is on both Perry and Victrix plastics and the same goes for the undercuts. Given the fact that they are still the most expensive plastics out there, one could hope for better.

Given the fact that Warlord and Perry have a strong cooperation on their Napoleonics sets, one can hope that these will mix nicely with the Perry Russians when they come out. But given the fact that the Perry´s will most likely be cheaper, have better detail and more variety in their boxes, Warlord will still be the junior partner in that relationship.

 

Victrix Plastic Austrian Review

Well I am down with the flu and on sick leave. Not much I can do right now (except watching TV), so I thought I should use the time and write some posts for my blog. Now last year and earlier this year, I wrote a review of Warlords plastic Prussian Landwehr as well the Perry plastic Prussians for Martins Befreiungskriege blog. Both went down well with readers so I thought I would do the same with future releases from other manufacturers as well. Now I know the Victrix Austirans have been out a couple of weeks, but I wanted to pick mine up at Crisis last weekend. Since Victrix could not make it, they shipped my order (a whole 10 boxes plus some metal) out to me and it arrived yesterday. To cut a long story short… here is the review!

General notes:

Now I bought these three boxes:

• Austrian Napoleonic Infantry (1806-1815)
• Austrian Napoleonic Grenadiers (1798-1815)
• Austrian Napoleonic Infantry (1808-1815)

Victrix Austrian boxes

Now they have one more set and that is the Austrian Napoleonic Infantry (1789-1805) since all three boxes I got are vastly similar (more on that later), I shall review them all in one go.

Contents of the box:

The box contains a total of 56 minis, two of them horse-mounted. There are two different types of sprues in there. The command sprue (included twice) and the infantry sprue (included eight times). They are all cast in a light creme coloured plastic, which is a nice touch, since I suspect most people will prime these white anyway and there is less chance of dark plastic shining through this way.

The command sprue contains two officers (one on horseback), one drummer and one standard-bearer. The horse-mounted officer has his left arm (holding the reigns) molded on, the standard-bearer both his arms (the hands are part of the separate flag pole). There are ample arm options for all of them. Now this sprue is universal for all four of their Austrian sets, since it includes heads for Landwehr, infantry in helmets and shako as well as grenadiers.One more word on the horse. I felt that it looked strange in some of the pre-view shots Victrix released a couple of month ago. So I removed one horse from the sprue and dry fitted it (it comes in two halves). And it looks fine in real life. My better half, who understands more about horses then I do, said that the pose is fine, too.

Victrix Austrian command sprue

The infantry sprues each contain 6 men all in marching poses. Each pose is represented twice giving you three different poses in total (B1, B2 and B3). Each of them comes with separate heads and backpacks. Now the backpacks are actually irritating me quite a bit since there are twelve on each sprue, giving you twice as many as one needs. [Edit: Half of them have sabres attached, so they are for the grenadiers and for NCO’s] But these can always be used as battlefield debris or to convert a mini from another nation that “foraged” an Austrian backpack. B1 comes with separate arms, B2 has his left arm cast on cradling his musket (shoulder arms) and B3 comes with arms cast on (shoulder arms).

I know the Perrys have caused quite a stir about the Victrix set when they showed previews or their upcoming Austrians stating that a pose similar to B3 would be wrong since the right arm would be too close to the body under Austrian drill regulations. Personally I could not care less, since I really doubt that a soldier marching into combat and being fired at would have cared too much, how much sunlight would pass between his arm and body.

But back to these minis here. There are enough arm options for both B1 and B2 on the sprue, with all kinds of options (firing, loading, shoulder arms, attack, musket butt resting on the ground). B1 one is an excellent pose in a sense that it will look believable in any pose from firing to marching. While only three different infantry poses in a box is little, the variety of arms and separate heads will prevent a cookie cutter look.

Between all three types of boxes I have the infantry sprue was the same, with the exception of the heads, which were unique to each box. Since the heads are always in the same spot on the sprue, I assume the early infantry will share the same bodies, arms and gear as well.

Victrix Austrian Grenadiers infantry sprue

Also included is a flyer with assembly instructions (which arms fit which mini best) and 6 flags. Since the sheet is printed on semi glossy paper and I would advise you to photocopy the flags for use. The flags are nice and have a good contrast. The detail is good so one does not really need aftermarket flags to go with these (no big surprise since one of the owners of Victrix also owns LBMS). Included are the Leib- and Ordinarflagge for the 1792, 1804 and 1806 patterns.

Historical information and information which regiment used which facing colour can be found on the back of the boxes.

Price (as in November 2011):

As mentioned each box contains 56 minis. They retail for 21,95 GB£, which means a price per minis of 0,39 GB£ (cost of the horses not taken into the calculation).

This puts them on the cheap end of plastics.

How does this compare to metals? If you only compare them to the manufacturers that offer Austrian (to my knowledge Foundry)… Alban, Foundry are 1,50 GB£ per mini, Elite are 0,97 GB£, Old Glory between 1,16-1,25 GB£.

So all in all, these are the cheapest solution out there. But how good are they?

Detail:

The minis are very crisp and clear in detail. Opposed to some other manufacturers out there the level of detail is almost equal to that of metal minis. Now this level of detail applies to the whole of the mini. You do not get the flat areas required to remove them from the mould (undercuts) that you see on some plastic minis, due to the fact that they are mildly multipart. Separate parts are so few, that even those who have no modelling skills at all, should not be too challenged.

Mould lines are minimal, and they always run over the easily accessible sides of the minis. The poses are fairly dynamic for marching poses.

Compatibility:

I can not compare them to the Foundry Austrians out there, since I have none. Comparing them to the Foundry Bavarians and Russians… they are slightly slimmer and taller, but not so much so that they should stand out when mixed in a Brigade. I would not mix them in one unit thought since the Foundry muskets are a good deal bigger.

Unfortunately I have none of the others (Alban, Elite, Old Glory) so I can not give you a comparison for either of these.

In general terms they should fit in well with the other 25mm miniatures for the Napoleonic period on the market.

Conclusion:

All in all this is a great set. The level of detail and quality is real good and they offer great value for money. Like all later Victrix boxes they require minimal assembly, which should calm those who had problems with the multitude of options in their earlier boxes (although I miss it).

So if you are not one of those people who hate plastics just for the sake of it, this should be a good set for you.

 

Napoleonic French command base

As promised in yesterdays post… here are the shots of the finished French command base. The minis are based to represent an army commander in Republic to Empire.

Command group

Many thanks to Davout on the Sweetwater Forum for pointing out that I had painted some of the minor details wrong… that way I fix those mistakes!

 

French Napoleonic high command (WIP)

While I was waiting on the greenstuff to dry on my elephant for Wargods of Ægyptus the other weekend, I wanted to paint something none the less. Now I have to admit, that I needed a break from the Brandenburg Uhlanen that have been on my desk for some time (I really should have split such a large unit of cavalry into a number of batches). So I decided to paint some more French officers and staff up. I finished these last weekend and want to show you some WIP. Now these will go onto one base with the messenger, staff officers and tables already previewed in this post.

As I said before, these were either meant to be used a command base showing Napoleon or as a diorama for my showcase. In the end I decided differently.Napoleon himself will not feature on this base, but rather on another one, mounted on his horse. These minis will go onto a generic command base for an army commander. Now I know that one of them is meant to depict Michel Ney, but since I wanted this base to be generic, he received grey hair instead of red.

Now on to the minis (please excuse the poor photos, they were taken in bad light):

The "not" Michel Ney

I know I forgot to paint his shirt collar white. This was corrected after I saw this picture.

French Maréchal

I am not entirely sure on this one. I think he bears a resemblance to Nicolas Jean-de-Dieu Soult, the first Duke of Dalmatia, but the Perry twins never said if any of the minis from the pack he comes from represent real people. He was meant to be generic anyway!

Another French Maréchal

French aide-de-camp

Now this messenger forms a little minis diorama with the officers writing orders from the post mentioned above.

Staff officer

Now I am not sure, what kind of position he is actually to represent. At first I thought he was a commissariat official, but then the bars on his collar would have been wrong. In the end I decided to just paint him up with lots of NMM bouillon and hope it fits.

Empress Dragoon officer

Red Lancer officer

Now he was part of the reason I decided to paint these minis now. I had received my Andrea Red paint set the week before and simply wanted to try it out. This guy was just lovely to paint up and I am really looking forward to painting a unit of Red Lancers in the future! Oh and the paint set is fabulous, too. I just made the mistake to think that I could just skip every other colour in the set and dry-brush these on… it does not work that way! 😦

Anyway… these minis have progressed since I took these photos last weekend (I actually started typing this post last weekend… man I really need a holiday ;-)) They are now based with the previous minis and have been varnished. I plan to do the base this weekend and show off the finished product. If I do not forget to do so, I will also take some pictures to show how I do the decoration on my bases.

 

French Foot Artillery

Finally finished these. They must have been sitting on my table for about a month, but somehow real live always seemed to intervene. But to be honest… I should have known, for these minis seemed to be cast under a bad moon from the beginning.

I had bought these used in 2009. Back then I was no big expert on the Napoleonic era (I am probably not one now either), but back then I did not notice that the seller had given me British guns to go with these. So when I took them out of their bag, this was one of the things I noticed. But there was worse to come. When I looked at the minis themselves they looked horrible. They had been half painted when I bought them. But during the time they had spend in storage the paint must have reacted with the primer or something else. As a result the minis looked like they had been rolled in sawdust while still wet. So they spend a couple of days in acetone, were brushed off afterwards and detail-cleaned with a sharp knife. Not that it worked 100%, since in some spots flakes of the old paint had lodged that simply would not be removed.

Anyway, I started to paint them so many weeks ago, and I have to say it was a mixed blessing. While these Perry miniatures have a great animation, some of the faces were not really my pot of tea and there were some things that did not make perfect sense. Like one mini having a canteen strap but no canteen. But I am happy with the results and these should form a nice nucleus for my French Artillery for Möckern. So here come the pictures.

French 6pdr. gun

French Foot Artillery crew loading 6pdr.

Loading 6pdr.

Gunner

Priming 6pdr

Priming 6pdr

Firing 6pdr (absolutely hated the guy on the front left... horrible face to paint)

Loading Howitzer

Loading Howitzer

Loading Howitzer

Loading Howitzer

Infantry helping hand looking amazed at the commotion by the gun

The whole battery

The whole battery

As usual, these are based for Republic to Empire.

 

2tes Battalion, 14te Schlesische Landwehr

This week everything finally came together. The weather turned good enough to for me to varnish my minis and I had the time to finish the basing and take some pictures. This will lead to a number of posts over the next couple of days, but I felt that I should post pictures of my 2nd Btln. 12th Silesian Landwehr first, since they had been finished (or at least painted) for a couple of weeks now.

As usual, the minis are all Calpe Miniatures. This might sound like a cheap line, but the more I paint them, the more I am in love with these minis. They are full of detail, nicely defined and just a joy to paint. I am really looking forward to painting the next unit of them, although right now I have a unit of Perry Artillery on my painting table.

Anyway back to the unit itself. This is the smallest of the three Landwehr units I will need for Möckern and the second I have painted. They went into battle with 299 men. At the 1:20 ratio for R2E this means 14,95 minis. Now that I am writing this, I am not sure why I rounded that down to 14 minis. I must have thought that this gave me a nice even number of minis, but as you will realise… 14 does not divide by 4. Since I am usually basing my minis 4 to a base I either had to do a two-mini-base or a six-mini-base. In the end I went for six minis on the command base, since I felt that a two-mini-base would either look strange with the unit in line or in column. But realising now that I could just as well done a 15 minis unit which would have translated into three four-mini-bases plus one three-mini-base (possibly with a mounted officer), I feel that this should have been the way to go. Well I will keep that in mind in case I have some time left in 2013. In that case I can simply paint a 15 mini unit and turn this into a different unit of Landwehr for another battle (Ligny or Waterloo for example).

After all this rambling, there is not much more to do, but to show you some pictures of them.

2tes Battalion, 14te Schlesische Landwehr

2tes Battalion, 14te Schlesische Landwehr

But as I mentioned in a previous post, I also painted the skirmishers for this unit and the other two Landwehr units while I had these on my table. So here they are:

Skirmishers for the 2tes Battalion, 14te Schlesische Landwehr

Skirmishers for the 3tes Battalion, 13te Schlesische Landwehr

Skirmishers for the upcoming 4tes Battalion, 15te Schlesische Landwehr