Prosit Neujahr!

Bonne année et bonne santé,  あけましておめでとうございます, and Happy New Year!

Today I started on prepping the first of my Wurttembergers.  I'll begin with what will be either some skirmishers or part of an infantry firing line- I haven't decided yet, in large part because I'm not sure how the Wurttemburg line infantry organized their skirmishers. 

Being organized on a four-company model, the Wurttemberg line infantry didn't have a light company unlike some of France's German allies, so I'm unsure whether they called out men from the third ranks for skirmishers, relied instead on their own light infantry and jager regiments, or whether they had a different system altogether- or no skirmishers at all.

I haven't been able to find any concrete information on this, so if anyone out there can shed any amount of light on the subject, it would be much appreciated.  I've posted a query on TMP, so hopefully someone out there knows something!

Work on my French light regiment also continues apace.  The first complete stand should be ready tomorrow.  Also today I varnished the backs of the Litko bases, a necessary step to prevent warping once the  bases are textured (especially once the rainy season sets in here during July).

Here's a photo of the train wreck that is now my painting table, and you'll just have to take my word for it that there is some finished work emerging from all that chaos...

Grand Strategy

Hope all of you who do celebrate Christmas had an enjoyable one.  Mine was very relaxing, with good food and (of course) wine. 

I've already posted my painting target for the la Bricole painting competition on the forum, and I'll share it here.  It's a fairly tall order, too- at least for me.  Three separate tasks to the project, which means trying to get about one done per month.  

I'm almost sure that getting all three done by the end of March is unlikely to happen.  But if I can get at least two out of the three finished and out of the way, I'll be satisfied. 

TASK #1: For the French, more cavalry- the 4e Regt. Chasseurs a Cheval. These are in the 1812 Bardin regulation uniform, and are very nice figures. Along with my 7e Regt this will give me two regiments of light cavalry (not including my Guard lancers). They will look sharp in dark green with yellow facings.  Twelve miniatures.

 

Painting cavalry (especially the harness) is always a laborious task for me, so including these as part of the painting target should give me the motivation to grit my teeth and get on with it for the sake of achieving a personal victory over my perennial foe, procrastination.  I mean there are only twelve of them, right?  How hard can that be? 

TASK #2:  Wurttembergers! These excellent new figures from Front Rank will be the painted as Regt Nr.4 (von Franquemont).  Four stands of seven figures, with three stands of two skirmishers. I've yet to order the bases and flags, but no immediate hurry on those yet. 

 

These hard-fighting fellows will be sporting the latest in fetching pink facings!  Which should make for a great looking unit, especially as they are to be brigaded with the 1st (Leib) Regiment in their yellow facings.

The 1811-pattern uniform for the 4th Wurttemberg infantry is on the right.

(Image clipped from the Histofig plate.)

I've added a new page to this blog where I will post uniform, flag and other related information about the Wurttembergers. 

TASK #3: Not related to the French, but I thought I would post it here anyway.  I really need to get moving on my battalion of Nassau-Ringgworm Freikorps.  Never heard of them?  Not surprising,  seeing as they are completely fictional!  

You can find their "history" here, with that of their leader, the Black Landgrave.  This is to be their flag, which I modified from a design provided from Not by Appointment, David Linienblatt's excellent blog on 18th C. flags.

They are actually Lützow's Freikorps figures from Calpe Miniatures, with some metal Warlord Landwehr thrown in the mix. They have been cleaned, primed, and undercoated for about a year, but as the allies have been outnumbering the French, allied troops have been put on the back-burner. 

However, all those figures mounted on bottle caps really take up space, and I really need the more room on my painting desk.  Therefore I want to try and get them finished in the coming months.   

They are all in black with orange facings, so what could be simpler?  Well, they're not so easy to do convincingly.  Some time back I had painted a test figure, but I wasn't really happy with it; since then I haven't been quite sure how to approach painting black uniforms.