I havent done much in the way of painting lately, mainly due to work and work travel. I did try my hand at some of the older Warlord Games Landwehr, as a friend had some of these lying around. Theres a variation of stuff in various states of disrepair, but much of it can be put to use.
First, I will use some of these marching types, mostly in plastic, but some in metal as well. They will complement the newer style WG Landwehr I already have. I must admit that the newer ones are much improved. But with Landwehr, there is a logic to have them not look very uniform, and I think they will mix quite well. When painted, there seems to be less difference than I first thought.
Ive now finished a second unit of 1813 Prussians. As the first, these are Perry metal figures with an officer by Calpe miniatures. In about two months, I have painted 80 Prussians. In fact, I had hoped to have done even more. But with the practicalities of life taken into account, its a good number, and almost a third of the infantry I have planned to do.
Another Russian general has been sitting half-finished on my desk for a long time. There is no question, these guys dressed pretty smart. Its a good thing that the Russian army in the Napoleonic wars had rather a surplus of generals, because I have rather a good number of them at the moment. It did indeed happen that a major general would command no more than two battalions, so that I would be on solid ground having very small brigades. This goes for both the 1808 campaign in Finland and the 1813 in Germany for example.
The first battalion is the first battalion, first East Prussian regt. Lets hope I dont lose interest and keep at it at least until I have enough to be worthwhile on the games table (that would be about a brigade, at minimum 4-5 infantry units).
Not a very good photo, and it was taken before the varnish was applied. But these are the command group for my first battalion of Prussian line infantry, 1st bat., 1st regt., 1st East Prussian. The figures are Perry metals, with an officer by Calpe miniatures. The Perry long coated infantry are very easy to speed paint as I have described in previous posts. But there is only one officer figure, so the Calpe officers will give the units some variety.
The plan is to do around 8-10 battalions: 4 battalions of line (1st and 2d East Prussian); 1 (or maybe two?) of Fusiliers; 2–4 battalions of Silesian Landwehr; a battery of 6-pounders (3 guns). Most of the units will consist of 32 figures, with maybe one or two understrength units among the Landwehr. This will be about 200–250 figures in total, including a few skirmishers and commanders. When (if?) I get those done, next up will be the Mecklenburg–Strelitz hussars, I will need about 18–24 of them. At some point, half a battalion of volunteer jägers would be useful too.
As I am doing these, I am also re-basing a few Russians I painted a few years ago. To begin with, they are only 2 battalions of 32 men, but I have more that could be re-based although they would need to be complemented by some additional figures to make up full units.
The project is based on the 2d brigade of Yorcks army corps in the autumn of 1813. A “brigade” in the Prussian organization of that period was very large, equivalent of a French division of that period. This particular brigade consisted of 10 and one half battalions of infantry, 4 and a half squadrons of cavalry and one artillery battery.
At the moment, I have painted 40 figures, and I only started these around the beginning of february; even then, Ive painted a few other things in between as well. As long as I don’t lose interest, the infantry should be done by summer…
Some recent paint work, a few Belgian farm houses by Hovels model buildings. Excellent detail on these resin models, and a somewhat underappreciated maker. Prices are as low as mdf, which in itself is remarkable.
Some more Prussian infantry, this time its regular line infantry of the 1st regiment (1st East Prussians). The facings for this regiment is described as “Brick red”. Maybe that color ought to be more orange in tone, but i did them as orange-red. This give them a look which is close to some other regiments, which I see as a good thing, as I am not planning on painting all Prussian regiments 🙂 The Perry miniatures figures are lovely and well suited to a speed painted “campaign” look.
With the new year Im starting a new project. I chose to do Prussians for the Napoleonic period. To a large part I chose them because they seem to be easy to paint en masse and quickly because they have simple, unadorned uniforms. They should be a good choice for speed painting.
Another reason for doing these as a speed painting project is that these will be based in a more traditional way, i e close together, than the 1808 project I also work on (and no, I am not abandoning that!). So these will be in 32-man battalions with the same frontage (!) as 20-man units of my 1808 Swedes and Russians. The plan is to start with 5 battalions of regular line infantry of the 1st and 2d East Prussian regt. using the Perrys’ metal figures in greatcoats (especially suited for speed painting!). But I happened to have some Warlord Games Landwehr lying around, so I used them to test my speed painting strategy first. Id say they took around half the time, if not less, compared to other typical Napoleonic figures. And the Landwehr has more detail with the caps, legs and bare feet etc to do which the regular infantry dont.
I am very happy with them. Obviously, the clothes have a very simple appearance, but I think that works well on these. The secret to the speed painting is that I simply cut down on the highlighting, apart for some strategic areas such as flesh and black (black cant be shaded with a wash; because there just isnt anything darker than black!). I used the same wash all over (AP strong tone), but over the white/linen areas I watered it down quite a bit. More to come soon I hope!
Heres another Russian commander figure, this time a jäger colonel, if I remember correctly he wears the colors of the 26th jäger regiment. The figure himself has a very simple color scheme as you can see; the horse took quite a while to do, and even now Im not entirely pleased with it. It looks good enough from the one side, not so good on the other… The figure is made by Brigade Games.
I have started painting a few generals and officer figures, as I only had the bare minimum of what was needed to play. This one is a relatively recent release from Perry. Not entirely happy with my painting of the horse, but it will do.
Pancratist 