3rd Battalion, 4th Silesian Landwehr Regiment Drummer

I finished off my 3rd Battalion drummer last night, which means his Dullcote is finally dry. So he’s finally ready for photographing!

I have to admit that I’d been putting him off for some time. In all my years of painting I’d never painted a drummer before and was agonizing strategizing over the best way to paint him up. Like my officers and NCOs, I went the extra step and gave him a bit of highlighting on the coat and trousers. Figured that eyes are going to be drawn to him so I might as well go the extra mile.

He also ties the battalion together quite nicely!

So with that, the 3rd Battalion of the 4th Silesian Landwehr Regiment is done! It only took about 2.5 years is all. 

Now moving on to the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 14th Silesian! My goal is to have at least one of them done before the shutdown ends and I go off to my wedding and honeymoon (which is 1.5 weeks away...ack!!).

"My sword, I say!"

Another Prussian Landwehr update! Just when I think I'm finally done with the 3rd Battalion, I notice something that I need to go back and fix. It's happened like three times in the past few weeks and will probably happen again. 

When I started painting my Landwehr back in 2016, I decided to give them black crossbelts. On this particular figure, I noticed something the other night. One belt attaches to the cartridge box on his right side. And the other?

There's nothing for his second belt to attach to. 

I went to my display case and double checked 3rd Battalion: I had eight versions of this figure without anything on the belt. Now, the figure sprues included a few swords, but sadly most of them have gotten mixed up and lost over the years. What ones I did have unfortunately kept breaking apart when I was cleaning them up with my X-acto knife.

So I sat and thought. 

I remembered that I have a ton of unused Early French Line Infantry sprues from Warlord! These came with the Polish Vistula Legion sets, but since I only needed the metal heads (another project that I'll get to someday) I therefore have plenty of extra bits. As you can see below, the grenadier and voltigeur knapsacks have swords suspended off of them. This was perfect because the Landwehr used a ton of French gear in 1813 due to supply shortages. Perfect! So I decided to go for it.

So I carefully clipped the swords off, which really wasn't tough at all.

Then I primed the swords in black gesso as is my style. I didn't want to glue them onto the figures first and then prime because I didn't want to run the risk of ruining their existing paint jobs.

Once the gesso was dry, the swords were painted accordingly (yet to be added here is the brass paint for the hilts and tips).

Actually gluing the swords onto the figures was nerve-wracking. I had to be extra careful on this step....otherwise I'd run the risk of ruining a perfectly good figure. Thankfully everything worked out just fine! Once the glue was dry, I did some touch ups and applied a black wash over the swords.  

Yes, I know the sword knots are sticking out at a slightly weird angle...but I'm telling myself that it's due to the momentum from marching. I'm actually really happy with this and surprised that this worked as well as it did! It adds a bit of variety and represents the common practice of using captured French equipment. I'm definitely going to repeat this on subsequent battalions. 

Thanks for reading! See you next time!

Turning those Shutdown Blues into Prussian Blues

Hi everyone!

Just a brief update. As some of you know, I work for the National Park Service as a Park Ranger. Because of the government shutdown, however, I’m unable to report to work. But now that the holidays are over I’ve been able to sit down and work on some figures this evening.

These are the newer Prussian Landwehr figures that Warlord put out last year (I think). I was excited that shakos were included in the set, so I put these guys in them because. Just worked on some basic block painting tonight which will be followed by shading tomorrow. Then it’s on to the second half of this battalion!

Form Battalions!

An update on the Prussians!

I've gotten all of my Landwehr together and placed in their proper battalions. This is about half of General von Horn's 7th Brigade. This is the first time I've managed to get all of the figures together in one place (though some still need assembling as you can probably tell). I decided to increase the unit size to 30 figures based on some things I was reading about historical battalion sizes.

Right before the above photo was taken, however, disaster very nearly struck. I had these figures on the second shelf of my display case when the first shelf (with my X-Wing Miniatures Game ships) decided to fail and fall right into them.

After a few terrifying moments and numerous curse words, I was relieved to find that the damage was minimal. Only three figures had broken off their bases, and they weren't even finished so it was an easy fix. A few others had some chipped paint and slightly bent bayonets, but these also proved to be quick repairs. 

After all the commotion subsided, Jimmy came down to see what was going on.

All told, I have 150 figures here representing the Landwehr. Needed still are 96 or so more to represent the regular army troops. And I have at least 100 more Landwehr figures sitting in boxes (think I got a little overzealous in collecting them over the years). So I may decide at some point to create another brigade from Yorck's Prussian 1st Army Corps....likely the 1st Brigade which was also heavily engaged in the assault on Möckern.

Prussian Landwehr: 2016 to Today

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I've been working on some Napoleonic Prussian Landwehr since mid-2016. I'd gotten some sprues of the Warlord figures on sale in 2013 but had neglected them until I decided that one day I wanted to paint them up. I decided to follow this awesome tutorial by Laurens Vannijvel (with a few minor modifications in paint colors) as it seemed pretty quick and straightforward.

I settled on Silesian Landwehr at Leipzig in 1813, since I knew there were a ton of them there. I've been fascinated with the battle since I took a French history class in college and it seemed like a good opportunity to eventually build forces for some of the other nations involved. But first, the Prussians!

The following images were taken at various times between 2016 and today. Hopefully they capture some of the evolution and progression they've gone through.

First step, of course, was to prime these guys in black gesso!

These figures' bayonets broke off, so they became test figures. The guy in the middle is wearing a brown coat that some Landwehr were reported to have worn in 1813. Sources say these troops would have been lumped together in the regiment's 4th Battalion.

Painting like a madman late into the evening.

Painting Prussians and watching Zulu!

A mostly-finished Zug (squad) awaiting grass for their bases. As my last blog post mentioned, this would later come back to bite me.

Reinforcements are on the way! All of these guys are now finished and make up my 3rd Battalion. As you can see, I ended up picking up a few more boxes of models to bolster the force.

Their numbers have grown from this:

A cleaner shot of my finished Landwehr troops from about October 2016.

To this:

Here are the Landwehr as of tonight! All it's missing is the drummer (who was primed last night). 

So after having done all these figures, I've decided to do more. A lot more. I'm planning to recreate General von Horn's 7th Brigade, which war part of General Yorck's Prussian 1st Army Corps and heavily engaged at Leipzig. These guys represent the 3rd Battalion of the 4th Silesian Landwehr Regiment. 

This battalion is primarily made up of the original Warlord Landwehr figures, with a few of their metal versions thrown in for variety (as the plastic set only has three poses). The sergeant in the back is from Front Rank, and the officer is from Perry.  

I also made a few distress markers a few months back. Since Warlord released some new Landwehr models that include shakos (which some Silesian units wore as late as Waterloo), I had to pick up a few boxes. They'll be incorporated into my brigade and will represent the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 15th Silesian Landwehr Regiment. 

These are bits of Warlord and Victrix gear on some 25mm GW bases I had laying about.

Finished markers! Looks like they were discarded in a bit of panic, don't they?

I'll post a photo of the drummer once he's finished. Then it's off to the 2nd Battalion!

Static Grass (Prussian) Blues

Hello! Long time no see!

I've been working on some Napoleonic Prussian Landwehr off and on (mostly off) since mid-2016 and am determined to finish them in short order. I'll give more details on that project in a later post, but they're going to be Silesian Landwehr from the Battle of Leipzig in 1813. 

But while picking up the project again, I noticed that the static grass I'd been using was out. Unfortunately the place that I'd ordered it from had gone out of business, so I got some Gale Force Nine grass thinking it was the same color.

It was not the same color.

It was not the same color, and my OCD would not allow me to just ignore it and use the new stuff. So I actually spent several months trying to find the original grass before finally saying "forget this" and adapted with what I had.

Thankfully I'd used good old Elmer's white glue, so all I had to do was soak the figures in water for a bit before peeling off the old grass. I was relieved to find that it came off pretty easily.

Enjoying some "Champagne of the North" while working! Totally appropriate as Prussia's King Frederick William I described it as "best for our climate" and had his son, the future Frederick the Great, learn how to brew it. It was supposedly a hit with Napoleon's troops when they went into Berlin after the Prussian military disasters of 1806. 

It was pretty tedious doing this for 30 figures in one sitting, but it had to get done. Berliner Weisse and Prussian marching music certainly helped speed things along.

A visit to the basement from my cat Jimmy also helped make things bearable.

After taking all that grass off, it was time to put on the new stuff. Tedious Fun times ensued.

But it was worth pushing on! Here the finished battalion is awaiting a final spray of Dullcote. Now the rest of the regiment can proceed as planned! 

Stay tuned for more updates on these dudes.

And to make sure this doesn't happen again any time soon, I bought all the grass that Huzzah Hobbies had in stock.

Napoleonic Russian Officer

I've not been sitting idle while waiting for the Civil War diorama figures to come in. Recently, I scored a box of Perry Napoleonic Russians for a very good price. These gents are going to be a part of a larger force representing the Russians at the Battle of Borodino in September 1812.

Having just picked up the Black Powder rules, I intend to have several brigades of these guys done at some point (and an opposing French force as well....but more on that much, much later).

I've just completed the officer, who is now ready to fight for his Tsar and motherland!

Royal Navy Officers

I've always had a special place in my heart for the Royal Navy - I think it has to do with all those hours I spent growing up watching the "Horatio Hornblower" series when it was on A&E.

These two chaps came from Black Scorpion Miniatures and are 32 mm in; a tad tall for my 28mm force but still certainly acceptable. They were both painted during the course of an evening while watching "The King's Speech" and "The Lost Prince" (I've found that watching historical films while painting helps me out tremendously).

The Captain is identified by all the gold braid on his coat and looks out of a telescope. His lieutenant stands with his sword raised high above his head and order the gun crews to fire on the approaching enemy ship.




They both stand of bases meant to represent a ship's deck. This was accomplished through the use of coffee stirrers which were then cut down, painted and sanded accordingly.

Overall I think these two turned out rather well! I do think that they are among my favorite figures to date.