Sunday 31 January 2010

Bavarian Infantry Regiment 1, 1st battalion

Painted earlier this month, photographed today, the Bavarian I/IR1:

Bavarian IR1/I

As said, I'm going to be expanding this with an extra three stands to bring it to 36 figures from the 24 it has now.

Wednesday 13 January 2010

Painting log: 12 Bavarians, and some musing on wargame unit structure

I finished 12 Bavarians last evening (well 11 Bavarians and one -- presumable -- Bavarian horse), which until about a week ago would have completed the 1st Battalion of the 1st Regiment, _König_ or _Leib_.

However, I decided that 24 figures is a bit meager for a single unit, and that at the 'classical' 1:20 ratio 36 figures better represent a battalion: the average Bavarian battalion that entered Russia in 1812 had about 750 men (they came back with a lot less, of course -- the Russian campaign was a disaster for the Bavarian army), which at 1:20 is 37,5 figures, close enough to 36 to not matter. So, both of my 'finished' battalions will be expanded with another three stands of 4 figures to bring them up to 36 figures each.

As to basing, I'm going to keep them as 4 figures to a base of 30x40mm (15mm frontage per figure). The rules I'm eyeing, [Republic to Empire](http://www.leagueofaugsburg.com), work with 'combat groups' of four figures, which fits perfectly with that basing, and it would also mean no rebasing of the figures (which I already did once for the first unit -- they were initially based on 20mm frontage but looked, in the words of a member of the [Steve Dean](http://www.steve-dean.co.uk) forum, looked like a skirmish line instead of a ranked unit).

Another advantage is that a number of formations in the rules actually look pretty good when executed with 4 figure stands. More on that later.

The disadvantage of staying with 4 figure bases is that this no longer reflects the theoretical company structure (6 companies, 4 of fusiliers, 1 of grenadiers and 1 of lights) of a Bavarian battalion -- 6 figure stands would reflect this perfectly. But as not all battalions would have adopted this company structure, and real life military units of course varied wildly from theoretical establishments, I don't feel that weighs heavily enough to abandon the 4 figure basing.

So, that's 12 points for January. Up next is another battalion of GNW Swedes, and probably the first GNW Russians after that (the Preobrazhenski Guard Grenadiers).

Monday 11 January 2010

Yes! Warhol was right.

Everyone gets their fifteen minutes of fame. Here's mine:

Bavarians in Lasalle rules supplement

Sam Mustafa's [Lasalle rules](http://www.sammustafa.com/honour/modules-games/lasalle/) have a new Bavarian (or, as he correctly refers to them, 'sausage heads') supplement, featuring some [familiar people](http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000359.html).

Schild en Vriend for world domination! :)

Sunday 10 January 2010

French 7th Cuirassiers, refurbished

Here are the [refurbished cuirassiers](http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000358.html):

7th Cuirassiers

As said, these were block painted in a single colour as I bought them. I touched up some of the paint jobs, shaded them with Army Painter Strong tone and rebased them (though looking at the picture, they could also have used a wavy sword replacement - it's not so bad as it looks in reality).