Prussia marches to war

Busy week in real life again (the  joys of 4 children, scouting, football, junior school graduations and sports days!) so not a huge amount of paint splashed about.  Still, the skirmishers are done and based, and the next 8 infantry are about 60% done

Beyond that, a quick word on tufts.  So much easier to use than static grass!  I’ve, up until the above unit, been using tufts I’ve had for years.  Unfortunately they are running out so at a local club’s open day I bought the gamers grass and army painter ones below.  Love them both, for different reasons.

The glue on the gamer’s grass tufts means you just stick to the base and done, however I’m not overly enamoured with some of the irregular shapes.  nothing wrong with them, i just prefer round ones.  This is where the army painter ones are better (although nowhere near as good a glue, so a dot of superglue required to assist)

Happy to recommend both

Not gotten much painting done this week for various reasons, however this evening I finished undercoating all of the remaining infantry

I have got most of the base colours down on the Skirmishers, black and white straps to do, as well as the yellow and a bit of touching up. You have to love metal models

My mat from Tiny wargames arrived Saturday.  This meant I had to stop painting and see just how nice a 6×4 table I can put together

All in all, it’s not too bad.  Might revisit how my river is done but otherwise it’s certainly good enough to game on.

…back to the brushes this evening though

Well, that came as a surprise! Humbled and grateful. With so many great projects on the site I’m surprised I got one of these. Thanks !

Of course, it does put more pressure on me to finish the project now ?

See the other award winners for this week here, and read the really rather kind words about my project as well…

Community Spotlight: Prussians, Hellboy Heroes & Dragonborn Triumphant

So the landwher formation is done.

I’ll now concentrate on the skirmish unit I’ve started, then it’ll be a bit of a break as I’m going to paint up GW’s Lost Patrol board game using Contrast paints. Space Marine Scouts and Genestealers should the perfect test subjects I reckon

It’s a dull job, but it needs to be done. Just Tufts required now but the bases are at least coloured. Vallejo airbrush mahogany (applied with brush!) Followed by a Vallejo mid German brown drybrush and finally a gw bleached bone (or whatever the current gw term is).  Without the grass it looks like they’re all stood in the mud and rain looking a touch forlorn

I also got a bit more done on the next unit of skirmishers

After 2 days away from the painting table due to work and children I was back on it this evening.

I managed to get the basing material down on the landwher and their movement trays

I can’t stress just how much I like Tamiya diorama paint

As I needed to wait for the texture to dry ( tomorrow I should be able to get the bases finished) I made a start on the next 6 volunteer Jaegers. Got some base colours blocked in.  These are Warlord miniatures metal sculpts, really nice but even after a clean up, there’s loads of flash I missed ?

Finished the unit of Landwher tonight. The formation just needs to be based now. They won’t win any awards but a reasonable table top quality

5 hours and 17 minutes total for 9 models.

In an effort to keep my speed up, I’m timing myself for the next 8 landwher (and their officer).

Clocks ticking!

*Edit, too tired to keep going tonight, still most of the legwork is done

Some work in progress shots, mainly as a log in what paints were used

The second 8 landwher are painted, as is a musician.  16 down, 8 to go

After building/painting all of the first unit in one go, I decided to do the landwher in groups of 8. With the musician and officer as rewards for each 8 finished. This has kept me feeling much chirpier about painting this unit up. It also helps that I think the warlord games plastics have a little bit more character than the Perry’s.

I built the unit, along with the fusilier skirmishers that I’ll be doing next

After the first formation and the hate I felt for painting the Prussians I took a small break to paint up the Livestock.  The pigs are from Eureka as were the chickens which were a freebie at Salute if you muttered a phrase they advertised on Facebook earlier in the year. An evenings work with inks and drybrushing

The line infantry need a standard, but as the 15th didn’t receive their new standards until after Waterloo, I’m still musing on which one to use

I painted this unit last month (how else did the project get such a swanky title picture?) I found it to be a real struggle as I tried to paint a whole unit in one go.  I’ve learnt from my my mistake and from now on it’s 8 models at a time otherwise i lose all my mojo.

I started by undercoating them with my airbrush.  Vellejo US grey, followed by a nuln oil wash to bring out the details

After that it was a case of blocking in the main colours followed by a wash, flesh wash, nuln oil, devlan mud and druchi violet dependant on part

Finally I added the white straps and touched up some detailing

They were ready to be based up.  You’ll notice I did the Jaeger unit at the same time so this lot of painting was 34 miniatures.  They are too similar to do this.  It has to be broken up.  I took a step back and did some Burrows and Badgers miniatures after this just to refresh myself

I worked out what I was going to put together as an army list before I started painting, this let me research uniforms collars and cuffs…

Units to paint all taken from IV Army Corps, in and around Plancenoit. 16th Brigade with 14th Brigade in reserve
Initial Sharpe practice force:
15th Line Infantry 1st Battalion
points models
Leader status 3 9 1
Leader status 1 3 1
Musketeers 6 8
Musketeers 6 8
Musketeers 6 8

1st Silesian Regiment, 2nd Battalion
Leader status 3 9 1
Leader status 1 3 1
Landwher 4 8
Landwher 4 8
Landwher 4 8

15th Line Infantry 3rd Battalion
Leader status 3 9 1
Leader status 1 3 1
Fusiliers 7 8
Fusiliers 7 8

1st Silesian Regiment, 2nd Battalion skirmishers
Schutzen skirmishers 12 6
Leader status 2 6 1
15th Line Infantry 3rd Battalion Skirmishers
Fusilier skirmishers 8 6
Leader status 2 6 1

Points:112 models:84

I’ve also thought about future expansion for the army. These will wait until the infantry is all painted..
Not costed yet, or sorted but cavalry and artillery options: 6-pound Foot Battery No. 19, 6th Hussars
Regiment, 1st Squadron.

In the beginning….

I already had one box of Perry Prussian line infantry knocking about at home but I would need more to get close to a decent sized Sharp Practice force so at Salute this year I bought stuff.

I picked up a second box of line infantry from Perry, a box of landwher and some fusiliers from Warlord. Lots and lots of Warbases sabot bases and some pigs. I realise there aren’t any pigs in the Prussian army but there rules for livestock in game. Need models to make that work, so pigs