Prussian Army, Part 1 - Infantry

I should clarify, before this goes any further, that I am a lazy painter. The miniatures below were painted some years ago, and I make no claims of brilliance. As long as they looked realistic and the general right colour from above a tabletop, that was good enough for me. Now, I’ve had to take photos of them and it’s pretty unforgiving stuff close up!

As the figures will set the tone, I’m putting them up as my first post and saving the fledgling details of my ‘ImagiNations’ for a later post. My figures are based in DBA style of four infantry and three cavalry per base, but I intend to use several bases together to make up each unit. After much balancing out of different combinations against scarce resources, I’ve decided on the basic infantry regiment being a straight 4-base group, set up as two ranks of eight men. This should make my figures go far enough to provide several units, and still provide regiments with a believable chunkiness or ‘bulk’ to them. Units of 8 or 12 figures just felt too ‘fragile’ to me somehow, to take the punishing objectives they will no doubt be set!

Typical ‘Prussian’ Infantry regiment

With this basing system, I can get three line infantry regiments of Prussians, one Grenadier regiment, and one skirmishing regiment – a grand army total of five infantry formations. Sadly, the Grenadiers have only three painted bases, so I’ll need to paint up some undercoated figures to establish a full regiment.

‘Prussian’ Grenadiers,( with 25% of the regiment AWOL)

The skirmisher regiment is made up from regular infantry figures, but based individually (usually glued to a 5p coin). I’ve made it a much lighter six figures to a unit, because I want the main numbers to be in the line regiments and keep the skirmishers to being an annoyance rather than a decisive battlefield presence.

One regiment of line infantry, when I was basing them, found itself with a mounted officer being added. From what I remember, I just did it on a whim to add a bit of character, but the distinctive base soon became a Guards unit. As I know that I have more ‘Austrian’ infantry than I have ‘Prussian’, I’m tempted to keep it as an elite to balance out the more numerous opponents of the army. Here’s a snap of the potential Guards regiment, officer included. If I’m painting up some of the other infantry anyway, I may go for a repaint on the guards to mark them out (different coloured waistcoats and breeches, maybe?)

‘Prussian’ Guards Infantry Regiment

As this post has gone on for a bit (and given me an excuse to try out some photo postings) I’ll leave the cavalry and Artillery for another time.