Sep 5, 2015

The Austrian army grows


Some humble additions to the Austrian army of the Napoleonic Wars: four commanders and a cuirassier unit.



The commanders are all from the Italeri Russian&Austrian staff box. I think one or two is actually Russian, but they all have the same design and who doesn't love a few gold laces and medals?
The figures were actually easy to paint, besides the standard painting procedures I had to add a second wash and highlight on the golden parts. I'm painting Red Lancers now and suffering with the gold a lot.


The cuirassiers are Zvezda saxons with Italeri infantry helmets, shoulder pads trimmed, on Italeri horses from the Prussian guard cavalry set. I had to add square tails to the saddle cloth from green stuff. I'm pretty content with the results, but I could have done a lot better. The theory that the Zvezda figures form a good base for Austrian cuirassiers works, though.

I'm currently stripping all my HäT Landwehr which will form a part of the infantry. This raises some questions with the compatibility of the crested helmets and the 1809 campaign, but we will just overlook it like good (or bad) gamers do. I have managed to find 58 out of 60 Landwehr figures from the set, which is quite a good score.
I'm thinking about rebasing the infantry completed so far: a small unit would then be 16 figures and a large 24, on 4x4cm bases. The reason behind this is twofold: one, less figures in more units lifts a burden from the wallet, and two, bases with less width require a smaller table. I mean I could probably borrow a ping-pong table or go play at a club, but the logistics to transport hundreds of figures sort of defy that notion.

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