Bavarians - 3rd Divn Infantry now complete

Bavarian 10. LIR "Junker"

The infantry for the 3rd Divn of VII Corps of 1809 are now finished. Both battalions of the 10th line regiment were based and provided with flags and sabots this morning, and photos taken for the Catalogue.

1st Battalion - that'll be Oberstleutnant Von Poellnitz on the cuddy

2nd Battalion

The cavalry are still to be painted, as are the artillery, but I now have the figures in stock. I'll put some photos of the artillery castings up here in a day or so. I still need to paint some brigadiers, and some sappers would be nice. It's all gone rather well thus far - I'm not sure when (or if) the 2nd Divn is likely to get started, but I have figures ready for that as well. One project at a time, if you don't mind.

And because it seemed a suitable occasion, here's a picture of all the finished infantry - here you see General Deroy, with the 5th (Buttler) and 7th (Gunther) Light Bns, and the 9th (Ysenburg), 10th (Junker), 5th (Von Preysing) and 14th Line Regts, all the line units being of two battalions.

Deroy with the infantry of 3rd Divn, VII Corps, all ready for the Danube campaign

Ready for The Cupboard, with a Quick Flash of Nipple Pink

All based and flagged, the two battalions of the Grenadiers à Pied de la Garde are now finished and looking for a fight. The guardsmen are 1970s Les Higgins NF1, and the command figures are modern Art Miniaturen castings.

Also completed today are another 2-battalion Bavarian line infantry unit, this one the 5. LIR "Von Preysing", resplendent in pink facings (Nipple Pink paint, thank you Foundry...). Their command figures are a mixture of Hinton Hunt and Falcon (from Hagen), the other ranks are Der Kriegsspieler. Too late for Eggmühl, but I'm sure they'll be in action before long.

Bavarians - 3rd Division Commander

Needed for action on Saturday, here we have General Bernhard Erasmus von Deroy (on the nimble little horse...) and his General-Adjutant; the figures are both from the old Falcon range, now marketed by Hagen. The Adjutant has the Quick-Reference Sheet handy. The gentleman in the cloak is easily recognisable as the ubiquitous Minifigs FNX1, rescued from the spares box and repainted as an officer of cavalry attached to the Bavarian staff - he's obviously seen it all before. The white edging to the base allows quick location of a divisional general.

The mounted figure has a toy-like, Noggin the Nog air, which I find rather appealing. There is a joke here - one of the few stories about Deroy (who was an older officer, and a bit of a traditionalist) describes his fury when he found that his troops were growing all sorts of non-regulation facial hair on campaign - orders of the day appeared very quickly. This casting has a very luxuriant moustache, so poor old Deroy can hide behind a Full Groucho - maybe it's a move to gain the affection of his men?

Sorry the Arctic light has dimmed down the colours a bit - these Bavarian chappies are pretty vivid normally.

Deroy - no whiskers here

Deroy commanded the 3rd Bavarian Division in the VII Corps on the Danube. A well respected veteran and a good leader, he was mortally wounded at Polotsk in 1812.

Bavarians - More Light Infantry

I'm very pleased to welcome another unit for the 3rd Divn of Marshall Lefebvre's VII (Bavarian) Corps of 1809. This is the 5th (Buttler's) Light Bn. A bit of aristocratic patronage is very appropriate for the Bavarian army of this period, and it is a considerable privilege to have had these chaps painted at the studios of Count Goya - thank you, sir! I'm sure that all visitors will enjoy the Count's very fine brushwork.

Castings are, again, from the Falcon range, now manufactured and sold by Hagen.

More Bavarians Ready

Back to the toy soldiers. Some progress with painting this week - including the completion of two further battalions for the 3rd Divn of Lefebvre's VII (Bavarian) Corps of 1809.

Here are the second battalion of the 9th Line Regt Ysenburg, at the top, and the first of my Light Battalions - this one is the 7th, commanded by Major Günter, in the lower photo. The line infantry are Der Kriegspieler figures, with Hinton Hunt and Falcon command, and the lights are all Falcon.

 Photos taken by the light of my painting lamp are a bit washed out - the reds really are more vivid than they look here. The light infantry are shown with the skirmishers deployed - they get tucked behind out of the way when the unit is in close order column!

Bavarians - Another Test Figure - Lt Bn No.5

Really not making good progress with painting this week, but have produced another painted test figure - this time for Light Bn No.5 (Buttler). Again, the casting is by Hagen, from the old Falcon range. Nice little figures these, I think.

There is something psychologically more satisfying, when time is short, in producing a single finished figure rather than, say, painting (most of) the crossbelts of an ongoing battalion of two dozen.

More of Buttler's chaps will be seen before long. Apart from another two battalions which are dribbling along in the background at the moment, the next big intake of breath is scheduled to be two battalions of the 5th Line Infantry. Bad news is that these are more of the Der Kriegsspieler castings, which are eyeball-busters as far as I am concerned; good news is that the facings are plain pink, with no piping, which simplifies things quite a bit.

I won't do any more test figures until the current batches are finished. A cavalry test must appear soon, but I'll avoid getting distracted by that at present.

Light a candle to St Luke and press on. No-one said this was going to be quick.

Bavarians - Getting Back to the Project

I'm now trying to make a bit of progress on the painting front, after some weeks' interruption. Yesterday I completed a painted test figure for the 7th Light Battalion (Günter), circa 1809. The casting is one of the old 20mm figures which were formerly made in Germany under the trade name of Falcon, and which are now on sale again from Hagen. I like them. My current plan is that my Bavarian light infantry will be pretty much built from Falcons.

Skirmisher from the Light Battalion Günter - seems OK

I have become a firm believer in the value of producing a test figure for each painting batch - it's useful for deciding on shades (the sky blue collar here is a second attempt - I finished up using Foundry's Tomb Blue, which is much lighter than my first guess), and for identifying which paints to use, and in what order - and I then set the pots out in a row in my workbox (I don't always use the same logic - in my recent work using Der Kriegsspieler line infantry castings I have been painting the lapels and cuffs before the main coat colour, which to me seems unnatural, but it helps to preserve the rather sparse cast detail as long as possible - horses for courses). I also get a chance to find out which are the tricky bits. I think this chap shouldn't really have a moustache, by the way, but - hey - they're on campaign. He will be one of the 6 skirmishing figures included in the battalion.

Hinton Hunt BVN 44 - this picture is pinched from Stryker - I hope he doesn't mind. It
shows rather nicely the mysterious object under the trooper's right arm, which isn't a
sling but points down towards his carbine

Yesterday I also finally worked out what has been something of a puzzle. The time is coming when I'll have to start producing some Bavarian cavalry, and initially I'll be using Hinton Hunt's OPC Chevauxleger (BVN 44) as the mainstay of this. Work has been going on in the background, converting some of these to produce command figures (results should appear here eventually), and even some dragoons, and in the course of this I became interested in a mysterious object in the HH casting. Between the lower right breast of the trooper and somewhere near the muzzle of his carbine there is a straight, narrow object which I took to be part of the suspension system for the carbine, but study of uniform plates and so on indicates that it obviously isn't. I asked a number of knowledgeable people about the object, and did an amount of poking around before I came up with this plate by Knoetel, which is a definite clue.

I now have a proper answer. Sometime after the Rumford uniforms were scrapped, the Bavarian cavalry were supplied with a new, steel ramrod for the carbine - this had a loop on one end, and was suspended from a leather thong which was fastened to the stud which secured the two parts of the leather carbine sling. So Marcus was correct (I never doubted it) - the ramrod just dangled from the carbine bandolier. So now I know.

The Bavarians were beset by things which dangled, apparently - the badge of rank of the Unteroffizier was a cane of office, which had a wrist strap. The cavalry used to hang this next to the sabre when mounted, but in everyday dress it was correct for the cane to be suspended from the upper section of crossbelt for the cartridge pouch, so that would be swinging about too. I assume these gentlemen used to sit down very carefully.

Bavarians - 1/9. LIR ready

King Maximilian's heroes - Oberst Delamotte leads the Ysenburg regiment towards
the front lawn. Some fool parked his car in the wrong century.

Here we go - all based and flagged, this is the 1st Bn of the 9. Linieninfanterieregiment "Graf Von Ysenburg" ready for action on the Danube. I have another two battalions almost ready, and I was holding off to post a photo of all of them, but time is passing and I thought better of it.

The others will be along on the next bus. Two posts for the price of - well, two, I suppose.

These are a bit special - they were painted by the illustrious Count Goya, who - when he is not painting the horrors of war - can apply his skills to turning out some very nice miniatures, as you see. This allows me, now I think about it, to focus my attention on the horrors of war. Anyway, my grateful thanks to the Count - I'm delighted with these fellows.

20mm as it used to be - guilty as charged, Your Honour. The rank and file are Der Kriegsspieler, the mounted officer and the Fahnenjunker are from the old Falcon range, which is now available again from Hagen, and the foot officers and the drummer are Hinton Hunt.

They probably felt a bit conspicuous marching round the garden, being the sole representatives of the VII Corps at present, but some friends will join them shortly, and they were enjoying the sun.

Bavarians - Something Stirs

Still a lot to do before this gets seriously underway, but this weekend I've started cleaning up some infantry figures for painting, as part of my Napoleonic Bavarian project. The chaps in the picture make up two battalions - most of them are Der Kriegsspieler, though the command are a mix of Hinton Hunt and Falcon.

The first batch should yield three painted battalions - not sure of the timing, but at least things are moving now.

The infantry will be provided by castings from DK, HH, SHQ (provided the castings are better than the batch I received recently - legs missing etc) and the Hagen-reissued Falcon range. The gunners will be SHQ (since I can't afford the Franznap ones) and the cavalry are still to be worked out. Since the cavalry of my target period of 1809-12 all wore variations on very similar uniforms, it should be possible to recruit nearly all the cavalry from the Hinton Hunt chevauxleger OPC figures, with conversions based thereupon.

My target OOB is in two stages:

The "halfway-house" target is Deroy's 3rd Division of Lefebvre's VII Corps of 1809 - this comprises two brigades of infantry, plus one of cavalry, plus a couple of batteries for the Division. The cavalry brigade is of two regiments (1 Chevauxlegers + 1 of dragoons), and the infantry brigades each comprise 2 x 2-bn line regiments plus a light battalion - that's 10 battalions total.

The longer-term objective is to add Wrede's 2nd Division, which has a very similar structure.

The accumulation of figures proceeds - I have them organised into tubs within crates, as you see, but there's a fair amount to obtain still.

I confess to some nervousness over the small matter of painting HH or DK type figures. It's been a while since I did this on any non-trivial scale, and I am uncomfortably aware that the glories which we see weekly from the blogs of Stryker, Wellington Man and Mark D show how this should be done. I don't anticipate getting even close to that quality, so I'll just have to take refuge behind the old "effective in the mass" policy embraced by some of the wargaming pioneers.

Problem with DK and similar (obviously) is that the detail of the figures is to some extent implied rather than set out in crisp relief in the manner of more modern castings. It'll be fine, I'm sure, but I'm not going into this with any level of arrogance, I can assure you! Doubtless you will see some painted figures emerging fairly shortly, but if my painting is disappointing they may be standing in the distance, slightly out of focus, in Old School black-and-white.

Bavarians - Figure Samples

This is a little selection of figures for which I have already obtained samples. Here are some miscellaneous infantry poses from Falcon, including a rather charming mounted infantry officer, a couple of artillerymen from SHQ/Kennington and a charging grenadier and a OPC chevauxleger from Hinton Hunt.

The castings are resting on a cutting board, and the little squares are 5mm. All these ranges stand 22mm soles to eye, the hats and weapons match, they have sensible human proportions. It all looks rather promising, doesn't it?