Marechal Michel Ney and ADCs

Reading through all the theme round topics offered for this year Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, I think the second round was the easiest for me to make a pick. When I started painting napoleonics a couple of years ago, it be pace apparent to me that the one thing that would never be missing there was a wide range of spectacular cavalry and officers. One of my favourite sets from the moment I saw it was Perry Miniatures rendition of Marechal Michel Ney based on the Waterloo panorama at Waterloo.

What I really love about this set is all the dynamic and drive in the miniatures. Most napoleonic higher command miniatures are quite regal, watching the action from afar, but these look like they are in the heat of it (like Ney and his ADCs were that day)! And the last thing that always appealed to me is, that they are French officers, so there are is lots of gold and silver fabric in their uniforms and saddlecloths and therefore lots of opportunities for NMM gold and silver, which I have really started to like since I started with Napoleonics!

Michel Ney and ADCs

Michel Ney and ADCs

On a general note: in the past I have often had mixed feelings when it came to the Perry Miniatures casting quality. In this case I was really happy. Except for a bad mould line running over chef d’escadron Levavaseurs face, these minis were really perfect!

Michel Ney and ADCs

But I felt there was something missing in the set. If you look at the painting itself, one can see, that there is not just Ney, Colonel Heymes and Levavasseur riding close together, but another officer, too (plus a Cuirassier being shot from his saddle, but there was not enough room on the base for him). It is hard to tell from the painting but his uniform looks lighter in colour, so I assumed it was not one of the other two Colonels acting as Neys ADCs that day, but possible someone of lower rank. So I chose a miniature from one of the Perry’s ADC sets and painted him up as an imperial orderly.

Michel Ney and ADCs

Michel Ney and ADCs

Michel Ney and ADCs

I decided to keep very close to the painting itself while painting the minis. There are only two exceptions. Heymes horse is depicted as a white with dark grey socks. I personally wanted it to rather be a dappled horse and painted it up that way. The other exception is that I painted the leatherwork on Neys horse a dark brown instead of the red leather on the painting. At first I had gone for red, but it did not really look good with the mini and looked far too dandy for Ney. looking at Rousellot (Christmas present from my parents last year) he has him with brown leather work as well, so that seemed fine with me.

Michel Ney and ADCs

Michel Ney and ADCs

Michel Ney and ADCs

Well, this is it. Hope you like the results of my work! This will be the last miniatures post for this year, but fear not, this is not the last you will hear from me this year!

 

 

 

Duchy of Warsaw 3rd Line Infantry, 1st Battalion

So at long last, they are done. Well the minis have actually been done since the beginning of the month, but until yesterday I was still waiting for the flag to go with them. Grahame from GMB shipped them almost exactly two weeks ago… how long can it take to ship something airmail from the UK to Germany… thanks Royal Mail and Deutsche Post! 😉

Anyway, they are now complete. I really enjoyed painting them… well as much as I ever enjoy painting the first unit for any nationality in a historic setting, given all the looking up of details and eventually getting one or two wrong after all it involves. But the minis themselves were just great. Nice clean castings and lots of character on every single one of them. Having just finished a lot of my WWII Brits last month, it is amazing how Paul Hicks skills, especially at sculpting faces, have evolved in the last decade (actually far shorter, looking at the metal Romans he did for Warlord about six years ago).

So what do we have here. As many of you know, my interests lie with the late Napoleonic Wars period. So essentially the 1812 invasion of Russia, the subsequent Befreiungskriege and the 100 Days. For the former two, Poles are a must have in my opinion and so it the Duchy or Warsaw I am painting now. The biggest decision is whether I want some for Borodio or Leipzig first. Since I want to paint a lot of Russians next, it is clear that it had to be Borodino, or more specifically the 16th Div.. Most amazing to me is, how small this formation actually was. As I discussed with von Peter in private a few weeks ago, a lot of people just see the heavy toll the winter took and the Grand Armee on the retreat from Moscow, but few see the toll heat had already taken on it one the way there. But back to the size of 16th Div.. For example the 3rd Line Regiment (of which we have the 1st Battalion here, entered battle with just 1275 men of all ranks, decided into three battalions, so just over 400 men each. Not a lot and this about the biggest regiment in a Division that only fielded a Regiment or two per Brigade. But this will also allow a fast build-up of a substantial subunit of the Grand Armee. The only mood point is, that the 3rd did not fight at Leipzig, so they will other have to act as stand-ins or will not see use for that at all.

Anyway… enough ramblings… here are the minis:

Duchy of Warsaw 3rd Line Infantry, 1st Battalion

Duchy of Warsaw 3rd Line Infantry, 1st Battalion (Voltigeurs)

Duchy of Warsaw 3rd Line Infantry, 1st Battalion (1st Fusilier stand)

Duchy of Warsaw 3rd Line Infantry, 1st Battalion (command stand)

Duchy of Warsaw 3rd Line Infantry, 1st Battalion (2nd Fusilier stand)

Duchy of Warsaw 3rd Line Infantry, 1st Battalion (Grenadiers)

Duchy of Warsaw 3rd Line Infantry, 1st Battalion

Before anyone points this out… yes I know the Voltigeurs and Grenadiers are on the wrong side of the formation… simply botched that up during photography! 😉

 

Battle of Möckern AAR

The other week we finally got to give the Battle of Möckern another try. Before I start with the AAR I shall show you the force compositions, so know which forces faced one another:

French OOB
Battle of Möckern
Republic to Empire rules
[EDIT: Please note there is a typo in the name of Maréchal Marmont]

Prussian OOB
Battle of Möckern
Republic to Empire rules

Deployment was quiet straight forward. The French Troops under Lagrange were deployed inside the village of Möckern, with the Légère being deployed behind it as reserves. They could only be released after the first Prussian assault on the village itself. The troops under Buquet were deployed on the fields east of the village. The French artillery was positioned in between these two formations.

The Prussians under Klüx were deployed opposite the village, with the Leibgrenadierbattalion being kept back as reserves. They could only be released after the first unsuccessful assault on Möckern. The Second Detachment was deployed on the fields east of Möckern opposite the French lines. The Prussian 6pdr. batteries were deployed between the two formations with the cavalry behind them. Th horsemen would stay in reserve until von Yorck saw the moment fit to unleash them. At the earliest this could happen on the fourth round (they would be released on a roll of 6+ on a D10 with each previous attempt giving them a +1). The 12pdrs. were not deployed on table but off table and would start firing on the fourth round.

Möckern (French side)

The Prussians won the first initiative (they would actually did so each round) and began a general advance. On their right the Gardejäger had deployed the whole unit as skirmishers and it was behind them that the Landwehr advanced, with the Ostpreußisches Infanterieregiment to their left, both in line. On the fields Two regular and the reserve battalions were at the front deployed in Collums of Attack with the Landwehr battalions advanced behind them in line. The artillery opened up on the closest French infantry on the fields, without doing much damage.

Prussian Skirmishers advancing on Möckern

Initiative passed over to the French. While the troops inside Möckern naturally stayed put and those in the fields advanced slowly in line. The two French batteries split their fire between the Westpreußisches Grenadierbattalion on the fields and the Ostpreußen near Möckern. They too only inflicted moderate damage.

French Artillery firing at the Prussian lines

Now it was the Prussians turn once more. The troops opposite Möckern continued their advance with the Gardejäger opening fire at the defenders doing the first damage. On the fields there was a further advance with the 12te Reserveinfanterie preparing to charge. But before they could do so it was the artilleries turn. The left battery had to shift its fire to the French artillery on account that part of the Prussian lines now obscured the French and managed to put the crew for two of the French guns out of action, while their companions still created more damage for the infantry. Now the reservists charged the French to their front. The French fired a defensive volley at point blank range, but still they went on. Both sides already inflicted heavy casualties on the other, but not enough to send one running. But after continued heavy hand to hand combat the French broke and ran, never to return. But at a heavy price with the reservists having lost more than half their number. But still they stood fast.

First contact

On their next turn the French in Möckern still just held their ground. The troops on the fields contented with just firing at the Prussians to their front without doing much damage or with sending some infantry to re-crew the French guns. Only the French battalions from the second line (now front) opposite the 12th Reserveinfanterie charged them. The Prussians were still disordered from their own attack and while they managed to get some defensive fire off they were unable to break the French impetus and after short combat broke themselves. They would still be retiring at the end of the game. Again the French artillery fired at both the Grenadierbattalion on the fields and the Ostpreußen near Möckern inflicting more damage, having found their range.

Battle on the Fields near Möckern

Back to the Prussians the action went. Near Möckern they advanced further, but the Ostpreußen now decided to deploy as skirmishers to lessen the effects of the incoming artillery, which would work out, but at the same time meant they would be less effective assaulting the village.

On the fields the 14te Schlesische Landwehr got into position to charge the French who had just broken the reservists, but faild to get their morale up for the charge. Unfortunately the same happened to the Brandenburgisches Infanterieregiment. The Grenadierbattalion decided to fire at the regiment to their front, since the second artillery battery could now longer fire at the french infantry either. And their fire proved effective enough. With the second Prussin artillery battery now shifting its fire to the French artillery as well, they caused impressive damage, killing all the infantry replacements for the crew plus the crews for another 4 guns!

Landwehr vs. French Infantry

Now the French defender inside Möckern remembered that they could fire back, which they did causing minimal damage ion the Gardejäger.

On the fields most of the French proved happy firing at the Prussians with moderate effect and sending yet more infantry to help redrew the French guns. The French who had previously dispatched the reservists now decided to charge the Landwehr in position to charge them. Their superior numbers and quality proved decisive and after heavy losses of both sides the Landwehr pulled back.. The French artillery virtually did nothing this turn. One battery was in no state to cause much damage and the other failed to make an impression on the dispersed skirmishers of the Ostpreußen.

Advance on Möckern

On their next turn the Prussians did extremely well. Both the line Regiments on the fields charged their French opposites causing both to break and run. Together with the previous losses and those troops send to help the artillery this only left a nucleus of French on the fields. While the Gardejäger caused some further damage on the French defenders of Möckern the real star was the artillery. One of the Prussian batteries shifted their fire to the next French battery taking out the crew for one gun. But the other one annihilated the mauled French battery taking out the remaining crew and damaging the guns before the French infantry even got a chance to redrew them. To make matters worse for the French the next round would also see the Prussian cavalry released. At this point the French player decided to call it a day.

Opposing lines crash

All in all one very entreating game and we more than happy to pal it out this time without too much discussing of rules. Having read them again before the game really helped there! 😉

 

Some Napoleonic game shots

Late November we began our Möckern game. Due to vast amounts of chatting and calling an end early that day we only played one round and decided to pick it up last night. Well… while we played longer (real-time) we only got half a round done, due to rules discussions and discussing what would be historically correct. In the process we found that we had made a mistake during the resolution of close combat, moved the minis back, began the close combat anew, discussed what could be done differently as a house rule, tried that out and so on. Bottom line… we botched the evening up for good! So in the end we decided to reboot and start the game from the beginning either between Christmas and New Years or in early 2014. No matter what… I managed to take a couple of nice photos, that I want to share!

Möckern (Prussian side)

Möckern (French side)

Jäger approaching Möckern

Prussian and French lines closing in

Prussian artillery firing

Prussian left

So what is next? Well tomorrow Curt´s Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge starts. I already have a good amount of British Tanks and Infantry (all WWII), SS end a few Napoleonics cleaned up and primed ready to go. More will follow when we are off to visit my better halfs relatives over Christmas, so there should be plenty of stock to work from (plus I am expecting my Warzone minis any day now).

As I said in a previous post, the first fortnight theme (non-combatants) was giving me some headaches, but I think I shall have that sorted out with a nice Napoleonic entry. So stay tuned!

 

Of movement trays and sabots

I have to admit, when I started wargaming Napoleonics, I thought I had it easy. Lots of minis to play with, but with multi basing (= more than one mini per base) those should have been easy to move around. Real life told me, this was not the case.

But at least this was to be the only basing problem, right! No hassle with skirmishers since those are to based in a uniform manner. Well again life taught me this was not the case. But this year I came up with a couple of solutions that I want to share with you.

Movement trays

Given that there are a lot of battalions on the average Napoleonics table, it can take quiet some time to move them around. Especially if they are big ones. And even with small units, there is always the danger of stands touching in an undesired way and paint rubbing of. Movement trays are a neat solution for this. You will say that movement trays are no big Voodoo and indeed you are right. I have been using them in other cases, so what is the problem here. Well honestly… I did not think about them, until Victrix released their trays. Now since I use their 40mm x 40mm bases for my infantry bases, this was a logical solution for me. The only problem was… I do not base all my minis that way. In some cases I use bases 50mm wide (if there is one mounted offer on the base) or 60mm wide (in case the historical unit size ends me up with a 6 mini base). And there are other problems. The Victrix bases are 120mm wide (= 3 40mm bases), but since I use historical unit sizes, I will at times have a number of stands which cannot be decided by three. Now with most of my abnormal basing requirements I go to Warbases since they have never disappointed me. And they did give me just what I wanted in this case too. I gave them the sizes I needed, told them that these should match the ones available from Victrix and that was all that was needed. So I got me a number of trays that can hold two bases, as well as ones for 2 ½ and 3 ½ bases. The only thing I forgot to order was trays for the 2 ¼ and 3 ¼ trays (to fit the bases containing mounted officers), but that should easily be remedied with my next order! So here are the results:

French Marine Infantry in their movement tray
[left: tray by Victrix, right: custom tray by Warbases]

Prussian Jäger in movement tray
[both custom trays by Warbases, left: 2 ½ bases wide, right: 2 bases wide]

Sabots

Now the far more complicated problem for me are those units that can deploy the whole unit as skirmishers under the Republic to Empire rules (like Légère, Rifles or Jäger)… lets call them Lights. Now the rules do not give you a fixed base size or shape for skirmishers, but I chose double hex bases (custom-made by Warbases again) for this. When I started painting Napoleonics I wanted to do both regular and skirmisher bases for these Lights. But once the first few units were painted I realized, that this would mean a lot of extra effort and indeed cost. So I decided to base those lights on half bases, so I could just use them as skirmisher teams, too. Again I had Warbases cut me those half bases to match the bases I usually use. Now the only problem with this brilliant idea was that once deployed as skirmishers, they had a far smaller footprint than their skirmisher brethren from the regular regiments.

Skirmisher comparison
[skirmishers from a regular Regiment to the left, Light regiment to the right]

Some time this year I suddenly though sabots might be the solution, so I got back to  Warbases (you can see the pattern developing ;-)) and asked them to cut me custom sabots to match my existing skirmisher bases and able to hold my half bases. And again they delivered in no time and with virtually no explanation of what exactly I wanted. And here are the results (I did not add any grass tuffs to the sabots, since I want to stack them up when not in use).

Prussian Jäger in their skirmisher sabots
[custom sabots by Warbases]

I have to say, I am pretty pleased with my solution and hope you will agree.

While this post is in no way sponsored by them, I would suggest anyone who needs some regular or custom / special bases, movement trays or sabots give Warbases a try… I think you will not be disappointed!

 

Prussian officers

As promised the other day (and just a little late) here are some pictures of the last two Prussian officers I painted for the Möckern game. I have to admit, that with these two it is pretty hard to find some conclusive information on what they did before or after the battle. So I can not really tell which unit or province they came from. On the other hand this left me with some freedom as to how to depict them.

Up first is Major von Hiller who commanded the Prussian infantry at Möckern.

EDIT: I got some more information regarding Major von Hiller from Christian, a reader of this blog, which I wanted to share with you:

I have some information on Major von Hiller. His full name is Baron August Hiller von Gaertringen. His father is from Wurttemberg in the south of Germany. August was born on 11 November 1772 in Magdeburg and died on 18 January 1856 as one of the last veteran officers of the Waterloo battle. As he was wounded at Möckern, he did not participate at Blücher’s Rhine crossing, but joined the army laster and was engaged in the conquest of Paris. At the Waterloo battle he had a decisive role as he was leading the attack on Plancenoit.

[OK… I could kick myself for not seeing the Plancenoit connection! Rhanks a lot for the information Christian!!!]

Now rank wise he was not the highest ranking officer at Möckern. That was Oberst Katzeler (see below). Depending on what book you read, this also leads to some confusion as to who commanded the advent grade at Möckern as most authors choose one or the other to have done so. Reading through the Prussian after action reports you get the impression, that Oberst Katzler was in command of the advent grade, but passed command on to Major Hiller and did lead the cavalry instead. Some notes mention that he was  Oberst der Kavallerie (Colonel of cavalry), so he probably felt more comfortable leading the mounted troops than the infantry.

But this also presents a slight dilemma for me from a modeling perspective. Given that he was command of roughly three brigades worth of troops, he should have a medium sized base under the Republic to Empire rules. Given his rank it should be a small one. Since I was unable to find any historic drawing or paintings of the man I was aiming to keep his base rather generic anyway. So I chose the small base but put two horse mounted officers on it to indicate his higher responsibilities (with most brigade commanders I just use one mounted officer and one or two infantry minis). Both minis are from Calpe. One (who is to depict von Hiller) is wearing Silesian yellow. Given the number of Silesian troops in the advent grade, this seemed fitting to me. The other officer is wearing East Prussian orange. I really like the combination of orange and dark blue and since there was one East Prussian unit, I felt this would be acceptable.

Major von Hiller

Major von Hiller

Major von Hiller

I already said a few words about Oberst Katzeler when talking about von Hiller so I will mostly go into the the choice of minis here. Being an Oberst he was benefitted with a larger base and to fill that up, I put two more mounted soldiers besides him. Since he commanded the cavalry at Möckern, I felt that these should be men from a cavalry unit and which unit would be more fitting for that than the Brandenburg Hussaren. Those of you looking closely will notice, that the mins for Katzeler is actually the same as the one for von Hiller (just on different horses). I only noticed this when I was just about to start painting them. In all honesty, I should not really have cared, since they will most likely never be right to one another on the tabletop, but I was painting them both in one go and it bothered me. Now the easiest solution would have been to use a different mini, but since I was already hard pressed for time, I did not want to dig through my lead pile, clean and fill the gaps up and base coat another mini up. So I just kept him and sculpted a beard on the man. Very small addition, but it made a huge difference when it comes to his looks. Otherwise I just painted him up in Brandenburg colors, which seemed the right thing to do with the high number of Brandenburg units in the cavalry force. Again all minis are from Calpe.

Oberst Katzeler

Oberst Katzeler

Oberst Katzeler

Oberst Katzeler

 

 

Generic French Ligne Regiment

So as promised in my last post here are two more units of French Napoleonic Infantry. As with the last unit shown, these will serve as stand-ins for the Marine Artillery at Leipzig and otherwise will see service as a generic French infantry unit for a number of battles. A purpose made so much easier by their covered flags and fannions.
As before these two unit are pretty small with 20 minis (which equates to roughly 400 men under the R2E rules). When all that Leipzig rush for Crisis in Antwerp is over these two and the previous one will all receive another company, which will bring them to strength for use as an average French unit of the time I want to depict.

After I painted the last battalion up von Peter pointed out to me that according to regulation it was not the first company of a battalion that was carry the eagle/flag or fannion (as I had arranged them with that unit) but the second company. That way it would always be in the centre of the unit, no matter the formation. Now I did not go back and change that with the previously depicted unit (simply too many men with sabres on the bases in question where the tassels could not be corrected once multibased), so that was one unit that did not follow regulations. But with these two, I heeded to vP’s advise and their command bases feature the colours of the second company.

What else? Well I am usually a big fan of Calpe, but I had a hard time getting around these minis when I returned from my holidays. Even though the first unit was about 1/3 finished when I got back, it took me ages to finish it. Now Peter from Calpe has done some extremely detailed minis here! Which is fine unless you are a stickler for details (like me) and working on a tight schedule. This got me somewhat frustrated and as a result working slow. But if ones worst complaint about a mini is that it is extremely detailed… well there could be worse. On the other hand it was good to paint the second unit right afterwards since I managed to finish it in one weekend plus about a week with roughly two to three hours painting time a night. When I did the work on the bases yesterday though, I was extremely happy I chose Calpe for these battalions. They just look so immensely beautiful in my humble opinion.

I am not going to do photos of individual stands this time, to make sure I do not bore you with tons of detailed photos of marching men in greatcoats. If you want to see more detail, just click on the photos, since they are linked to larger versions:

Generic French regiment
[1st battalion, in line]

Generic French regiment
[1st battalion, in line]

Generic French regiment
[1st battalion, marching]

Generic French regiment
[2nd battalion, in line]

Generic French regiment
[2nd battalion, in line]

Generic French regiment
[2nd battalion, marching]

And I could not resist, but also take a photo of all three battalions in formation:

Generic French regiment
[three battalion shot]

I have to admit, that this progress was badly needed. I still have two Prussian commander bases (which will be next), the Brandenburg Hussars, two batteries of Prussian artillery and one battery of French artillery, and the village of Möckern itself to do. All in just one month. If push comes to shove, the Prussians could do without the two additional batteries, since they could be simulated with off-board fire and I could use a 12pdr. stand-in for the French, but after 2 1/2 years of preparing for this, I would hate it if I stumbled on the finish line. I shall keep you posted on the further progress!

 

Generic French Ligne battalion

Well, so I finally managed to finish these after all.

What can I say about these. Well first of all I plan to use these as a stand in for a marine artillery battalion at Möckern. As I said before, there is very little use for these men (marine artillery that is) outside this battle. So the three battalions already painted will be the maximum for me and the other six battalions will be served by stand ins.
Which is just as well. With the standardisation of the French uniforms during the later parts of the Napoleonic wars, the only difference between one unit and he other are the inscriptions on their flags. So having a generic battalion of Frenchmen comes in handy.
These Calpe minis here are just perfect for a generic unit. First of all their greatcoats swollow up what little difference there might be in uniform. The other thing is, that they come with flags and fannions covered up in oilskin. This easily masks the last destinguishing mark of the unit. Usually I would have removed these and replaced them with proper GMB flags (after all Napoleonics are about splendor, right!), but in this case I was just fine with that and kept them this way.
What else is there to say about these? Well as usual I loved to paint these. The detail of the Calpe minis is just great, as is the quality which makes the a joy to paint. While I keep repeating myself in this regard, I really mean it and I have to say with the Calpe French range expanding, I already regret having so many I unpainted Perrys lying around. (Face it… The animation on the Perrys is great and they are almost as detailed, but the casting quality is abysmal.)

Anyway, on to the paintjob itself. As usual I went for a muddied “on campaign” look, with greatcoats and trousers of different colours to represent men that had been everywhere for Napoleon and had to take what they could get, to replace lost items.
I painted stands for the Voltigeurs, Grenadiers and first to third companies. Right now I only need small 400 men battalions as stand ins, so this is enough. When done with the Möckern preparations, I shall return to these and paint them another stand for the 4th company to bring them to the average strength for the period I am playing, but this is the existence they will need to lead right now. So on to the minis themselves:

Generic French Battalion (frontal view)

Voltigeurs

Command – 1st Company

2nd Company

3rd Company

Before anyone mentions it. Yes, I know the Pom Pom colour for 3rd Companies should be rather a pinkish red. Not sure why I went for yellow here. I will change that soon.

Grenadiers

Generic French Battalion (march collumn)

Now those remembering my last post will ask “what will we see next and when?”.
Well in recent days I felt like I have gotten over my painters block. But you will not see anything new from me till late August at the earliest. We will be off to a three week hiking and festival trip to Scotland and Wales soon. After all the stress of recent months, I really feel I can use it! So if you see someone who looks like a Wargamers happy to unwind on a Ben or Munro in Scotland, up on Mount Snowdon or at the 40th anniversary concert of one of my favourite bands (Runrig)… say hi! 😉 When I return, there will hopefully be pictures of the next French unit, those riverboards I have bee working on or even better… another game report!

Take care!

 

Prussian Leib-Grenadiere König Friedrich Wilhelm III. (1. Brandenburgisches) Nr.8.

So slightly behind schedule here is the latest addition to my Prussian forces for Möckern… the Leibgrenadierbattalion. Now for those who are constant followers of this blog, they will remember them from last month post about the 1 / Brandenburgisches Infanterieregiement (also known as IR 8), for until June 1813 the Leibgrenadiere were actually their Fuisilier Battalion. They were also named after King Friedrich Wilhelm III, for he was their nominal chief from 1808 till 1840. For all their career during the Befreiungskriege they shared very close ties with their parent unit, fighting in the same battles as they did.

For a personal point of view there are a lot of things to say about this unit. For one… it is now the largest Napoleonic unit I own. They fought at Möckern with 682 men, which translates into 34 minis plus four skirmishers under R2E (they therefore surpass my previously largest unit, the 4. Bayrisches Linien-Infanterie-Regiment “Sachsen-Hildburghausen”, by two minis). As usual minis are by Calpe, who easily turned into my favorite Prussian minis around. As I said before these were painted in two large batches and I think this was just fine, because I think I could never have stayed sane painting them in one go.

But it is a bit sad to see these done, since they were the last Prussian infantry unit I needed to paint for my Möckern game. I have to say that I have grown dear to painting Prussians by now and since this means I will probably not paint more Prussian infantry for some time, I am a bit sad. No worries, I will paint more in due time, but I need to catch up on some other projects and some other allies before I can return to Prussians. But at the same time, when I put them into the cabinet after taking the photos today… all those Prussians were a really impressive sight and I shall definitely post some group shots once the remaining artillery and officers are done.

But now enough of this… here are some pictures (I have not taken too many shots of individual bases, since the poses of the minis meant that some bayonet was always obscuring the minis in the rear rank):

Leibgrenadierbattalion (front view)

Leibgrenadierbattalion (side view)

Leibgrenadierbattalion (side view)

Leibgrenadierbattalion (command base)

Leibgrenadierbattalion (1st Coy bases)

Leibgrenadierbattalion (2nd Coy bases)

Leibgrenadierbattalion (skirmisher bases)

Leibgrenadierbattalion (top view)

 

1 / Brandenburgisches Infanterieregiement

So as announced yesterday… here is the latest addition to my Prussian forces for Möckern, the first Battalion of the Brandenburgisches Infanterieregiment.

The Regiment has quiet an interesting history. It was founded on the 7th of June 1808. What is amazing about them is that they had to let go of two of their Battalions during their history, with those Battalions becoming part of the Leibgrenadiere (their Fusilier Battalion in June 1813 [when then also received their numbering as Infanterieregiement 8] and the Grenadiers Battalion in October 1814), which has to say something about their quality. And they saw action at virtually ever major battle of the Befreiungskriege period. In 1813 alone at Groß Görschen, Lindenau, Colditz., Königswartha, Bautzen, Hörselberg, Löwenberg, an der Katzbach, Bunzlau, Hochkirch, Bischoffswerda, Wartenburg, Möckern, Gohlis, Freiburg a. d. U. and Hörselberg bei Eisenach. After numerous battles in France, they ended their march in Paris. When called to fight once more in 1815 they did so at Ligny, Wavre, St. Germain and Chatillon. At Möckern they were commanded by an officer named von Zeppelin, a name which would make an impression on history later on for the airships the family invented.

Unfortunately there is no Knötel drawing for them, so you will have to make do with my minis here. As usual they are from Calpe and based for Republic to Empire.

Brandenburg Infanterie Regiment

All the minis are depicted in trail arms position, the standard position for Prussian troops moving into contact with the enemy. While most armies went for positions where the musket is across the chest, the Prussians wanted the soldiers to control their short swords with one hand to make sure it did not tangle up between their legs and made them stumble.

Brandenburg Infanterie Regiment (Command base)

At von Peter request they received tassels to their flag. Still not sure what colour they should be, so I went for black and white the Prussian National colours.

Brandenburg Infanterie Regiment (2nd Coy base with NCO)

Brandenburg Infanterie Regiment (2nd Coy base)

Brandenburg Infanterie Regiment (3rd Coy base)

Brandenburg Infanterie Regiment (another 3rd Coy base)

Brandenburg Infanterie Regiment (4th Coy base)

This is the first unit where I actually mixed a Freiwilliger Jäger in with the rest of the troops. I had initially planned not to do that, but had to find out I had ordered one mini short of needs and was in no mood to order one single mini to make up that error!

Brandenburg Infanterie Regiment (skirmishers)

Brandenburg Infanterie Regiment (skirmishers deployed)

Brandenburg Infanterie Regiment (casualty marker)

Now this is my first casualty marker I actually painted. In R2E you only start removing stands once a unit has received 50+% casualties, under the reasoning that until this point units would spread out upon receiving casualties to retain their frontage. Obviously you need a way to keep track of that, so I mounted the mini on an octagonal base, numbered one through eight.

Casualty marker depicting Rout command state

As those apt at mathematics will recognize has 26 minis and eight does not cover everything up to 50% casualties. Now my idea is to place the marker either at the left edge of the unit if they are in a Retreat moral state or on the right if in Rout state. If the number of casualties becomes larger than eight, the marker will simply be moved one base closer to the centre  and rolled back to the beginning. So if the marker is placed behind the second base and shows a three, the unit has sustained eleven casualties (eight for the first base it was or would have been placed behind, plus the three shown on the marker). Hope this works out as planned!