Completed Austrians

Two boxes' worth of Italeri Austrians = 3 units for Lasalle. The fusiliers have 23, the grenadiers 24 figures. The figures I preferred to exclude were the runners, with one foot on the ground - the grenadiers still have a handful and all three standard bearers are made of that pose. I have noticed that most Italeri sets have these similar poses, so the conclusion must be that their sculptor uses/used the same dollies for a number of sets.

The focus was on the whites of the uniform, ignoring detailed work on everything else. My trusted recipe is to prime white, coat in VGC Wolf Grey, drybrush with white, glaze black, drybrush with white and glaze again. This gives a consistent, if a little bit muted colour. The troops look like they had spent a little time on campaign. I blocked in everything else after the last white drybrush - as it affects large areas it could easily cover the rest of the equipment. Black was done the same way, with a dark grey base coat, glaze, highlight, glaze, together with the white. In the finish I highlighted the faces and the brighter colors on the helmets, then washed the faces with an umber shade. All three flags are hand painted.

I had no particular unit in mind, the two fusilier units are German, dark red facings, white buttons (although not many buttons are visible), the grenadiers, also German, have blue facings.

This unit (quite flexible on the terms of battalion, regiment or company) is more uniform in terms of poses. The long muskets do not ease stacking them up in column formation.

I organized the bases so the commander and the standard would be in the centre. I could have made a small, individual base, but then I would have had to juggle more with distributing the different poses amongst the rank and file stands. So there are two distinct 'flank' bases for all regiments, and two 'centre', one with the standard and one with the commander. The drummer figure, in this case, a conversion from the Russian grenadier drummer in the Italeri Austrian and Russian staff set, is placed behind the commander, while the line units have him behind the flag as the commander takes the space for two infantrymen with his horse.

The figures are based on 5x4cm plasticard pieces, using a base color roughly equal to a Flat Earth tone (1$ hobby store acrylic paint), highlighted with buff and washed with a brown ink. I have a technique where I hide the difference in height between the base piece and the small plastic blobs the figures have under their feet with static grass, and I did the same, although with some difficulties, applying the PVA between the figures. It is also possible to even the difference out with plasticine or green stuff.

I have a homebrew rule set in mind that will allow the use of varied unit sizes; and these fellows can be still used for Sharp Practice as well, as groups of six or twelve under a Big Man. I have a lot of other rule sets but I never played most of them!

I have also begun converting figures for the cavalry, a 8-figure unit of dragoons or chevauxlegers and another of cuirassiers, but I can't really tell when will I have the time to complete the task.