Alfred Von Richthausen's Rote Reitter

As promised in my last post, I checked my new phone camera and it does a-okay. So I took the opportunity of fair weather today, and reinforced with camera flash, took photos of my freshly completed Warlord Cuirassiers.

Although I'm Hungarian and it's sort of against traditions, I like the concept of heavy cavalry in all of its forms. After attending a presentation on the subject before Christmas, I promptly got this box on my wish list. The Mrs and Santa coordinating their efforts, the dozen reiters were under the tree by the right time.

When I started painting the figures I had no clear concept in mind other than having one half with swords and one with pistols done. In good 'Cossacks: Back to War' tradition (where by default one faction is red and one is blue) my Imperialist infantry has a red/orange theme, so I chose to go with that. The rest is history.

Alfred von Richthausen is a reckless cavalry leader, perhaps falling from his horse one time too many. He rides in the rank of his ironclad fellows unarmoured, in a fashionable garb, on a black horse. Any semblance with the pilot Manfred von Richthofen is of course happenstance. The figure is made from the metal cuirassier trumpeter and a plastic rider's sword arm.

His troop consists of a group of shock cavalry and one of pistoleers. Here I must diverge a bit on the topic of 'trotters v. gallopers', which, for the most part, is something I believe later historians applied to period tactics without little thought on actual flexibility (e.g. that a trooper could just as well shoot a pair of pistols as swing his sword). 

Anyway, the figures are based for The Pikeman's Lament or other large skirmish games, so there is in fact a six-figure unit of Trotters and another of Gallopers, but only for game purposes: when I see fit I shall mix the two together. 

Dashing young von Richthausen leads his Red Riders into battle. I chose the more dynamic horse poses for this lot. The horses are mainly bay or chestnut, the two leaders' being a black and a dappled grey. 

I used my traditional methods, cutting some corners here and there to be done in time. So the paintjob may seem a bit rough at places, but from three to four feet they look the part, as was my intention.

This unit of Trotters is led by the trustworthy Sergeant Michael von Guggenheim. They have darker armour, in the tradition of German 'Schwarze Reiter', and wear yellow sashes instead of orange/red.

All figures are based on 60x30mm single pill bases, courtesy of MKZ Games in Spain.