Fife & Drum Continental Regt - Hunting Shirts

New Fife & Drum Continentals in Hunting Shirts with GMB Designs Flag. (click pix to enlarge)

I put the finishing touches on my first unit of Fife & Drum Continentals, in firing line poses, this evening and quickly applied the basing material and fine grit so that I could shoot some pictures and get them ready for the final basing step tomorrow (inking the bases, applying static grass). A GMB Designs flag (Grand Division Flag - Red) was added to spiff it up a little bit.

Click on the pictures on this page to enlarge the view. Click twice to maximum enlargement.

Best Historical Figure Range Update

The final round of the voting for Best Historical Figure Range of 2011 is on-going through January 10, 2013. If you have not voted yet, you only have a few more days. Click on the link below to go to the poll page so that you can cast your vote. Hopefully, you will vote for Fife & Drum Miniatures.

TMP Poll - Best Historical Range of 2011

So far Fife & Drum is in first place, but there is a lot of good competition and I expect the voting margin to narrow. We are at 49 votes so far, compared to a total of 97 votes in the preliminary round.

Close-up view of the three of the stands in the regiment.

I had to paint at least one stand in purple hunting shirts; afterall, where else are you ever going to have the opportunity to use the color purple in a horse and musket era regiment?

4th Pennsylvania Regiment with mounted officer.

Royal Artillery Amusette and Crew

What's Next On Fritz's Painting Table?

I have a regiment of Fife & Drum Continentals in hunting shirts, marching pose. I plan to mix in a few men in uniform coats so as to mix things up a bit. I'm looking forward to working on another unit of these figures.

After that, it will be back to the SYW as we have a game scheduled for early February in Brown Deer, using our various 1:20 ratio 28mm armies. This battle will see my collection of Minden figures taking to  the field for the very first time. I have to paint a few more Austrian cuirassiers to even the forces out a bit.

Final Round Voting Begins - Best Range 2011

Fife & Drum British "Light Bobs" light infantry.

I want to thank everyone who voted for Fife & Drum Miniatures in the TMP poll for the best new range of 2011. With your help, Fife & Drum placed second with 97 votes, behind Perry Napoleonics with 119 votes. That is a pretty impressive showing given that the Perrys have a well deserved reputation for excellence and that Napoleonics is a more popular period than the AWI.

So now we are in the final round of voting, with winner take all, so to speak. You can cast your ballot by clicking on the following link to TMP:

TMP Final Round Poll

I would be very appreciative if you would take a few moments and place your final vote for Fife & Drum for the Best Historical Miniatures Range of 2011. (Presumably, after catching up, TMP will launch its Best of polls for 2012 :)  ).

Painting Table Update

Der Alte Fritz contemplates developments in his game at the 2012 SYW Assn Convention in South Bend, Indiana.

Last evening I finally carved out some time to do a little bit of painting and so I finished off a stand of five of the new Fife & Drum Continentals in hunting shirts. One stand of five figures -- painted in purple hunting shirts and red cuffs and collars, as worn by the 4th Independent Company of Maryland State Troops, circa 1776. I assume that these independent companies, which numbered about 100 men, were eventually disbanded and amalgamated into the Maryland Regiments of the Continental Line in 1777. I have to figure out what to do with these guys. Should I keep them all on one stand to represent a discrete company, or should I mix them in with other guys wearing white and light brown hunting shirts? What do you think?

Another Lobositz Game

Prussian cuirassier regiment CR2 Prinz von Preussen attacks the Croats in the wolf pits at Lobositz - battle fought in February 2009 at the Little Wars convention in Chicago. Wolf pits were made by Herb Gundt. The figures are RSM (Croats), Crusader (hussars), Elite (the yellow cuirassiers), Old Glory (hussars shown on the right) and Suren (second cuirassier unit in support). click to enlarge.

A reader sent me an e-mail today inquiring about the Batailles de l'Ancien Regime (or "BAR") rules and how they could be used for units that are smaller than the 60-figure infantry and 48 to 60 figure cavalry units that our Brown Deer group regularly uses. He wanted to know whether or not the rules would work with smaller units of, say, 20 to 24 figures.

The answer to that question is an emphatic YES!

As a matter of fact, whenever we play The Forty- Five Jacobite Rebellion games with BAR, our Highland clan regiments are typically 30 figures and we downsize the Government redcoats from 60 to 40-45 figures. And guess what? The rules work just fine with the smaller units.

With this in mind, and considering that the Lobositz game played last week is still set up in my basement Man Cave, I am thinking that I might want to refight Lobositz one more time using 30 figure infantry and cavalry regiments at a 1:20 ratio.

If I can find the time, I might be able to set the game up this weekend and go at it as a solo game. I will report the results with both pictures and commentary. It should be an interesting game.

What Lies Ahead in 2013

I am a little bit disappointed that I was not able to hit my target of 100 blog posts in 2012. I fell short with only 90 posts by the end of the year. I started out 2012 fairly strongly, but then tailed off the production during the Spring and Fall months. In the end, however, I decided not to post just for the sake of posting and increasing the count, but simply post an article when I had something to say.

Now that we have turned the page on 2012 and enter the New Year, I am starting to think about the wargame projects that I want to tackle over the next twelve months. These include:

Seven Years War BAR sized Armies (1:10 ratio)

British Cavalry - 2 to 4 squadrons of heavy Horse or Dragoon Guards

British Artillery - a pair of 12-pounders

Austrian Cuirassiers - add another squadron of Hinchcliffe cuirassiers to bring a unit up to 60 figures.

Croats - one never has enough Croats.

Austrian Artillery - add a couple of 12-pounders and 6 crew per gun model

Prussian Musketeers - add IR13 Itzenplitz to replace the same unit that I sold two years ago

Prussian Dragoons - perhaps start on the 10 squadron Bayreuth Dragoons (120 figures)

Prussian Pontoon Corps - I have two Berliner Zinnfiguren pontoon wagons

Seven Years War - Minden Figures (1:20 ratio)

Prussian cuirassier regiment - 32 figures

Prussian fusilier battalion IR49 - 30 figures, second battalion to complete the regiment

Prussian hussar regiment - 32 figures, kolpaks, so probably HR1 or HR2

Austrian cuirassier regiments - 2 regiments of 32 figures

Austrian hussar regiment Baranyay (green dolman/pelisse, sky blue breeches

Austrian supply wagons to go with each artillery piece

BAR Napoleon - Peninsular War in 1:10

British 88th Regiment (Connaught Rangers) - Elite Miniatures -- 84 figures

British 42nd Regiment (Black Watch) - Connoisseur Miniatures -- 100 figures

French chasseur a cheval regiment - 36 figures in three squadrons, old Elite Miniatures.

American Revolution (AWI) in 1:10 ratio - Fife & Drum Miniatures

British infantry regiments - 3 regiments of 32 figures

Continental infantry - 3 regiments in hunting shirts (20/24 or 30 figures each)

British 16th Light Dragoons - 36 figures, once the figures are sculpted and in production,

Odds and Ends

Claymore Castings  Otterburn range - I would like to paint some of these terrific looking castings. Maybe 1 to 2 "battles" of 24 figures of Scottish infantry and some mounted knights once they become available. A friend plans to start a Medievil campaign in 2013 and I would use the figures for this project.

That seems like a fairly ambitious list of things to paint. It is more of a wish list than a road map as I doubt that I can paint that many figures in one year. Well, I used to be able to paint that many figures in one year, but I think that Mrs. Fritz would not approve. I quite agree with her on that score.

I also want to start doing some more solo AWI and SYW battles using my 1:20 ratio armies of Fife & Drum and Minden Miniatures, respectively. I will probably take the AWI collection to several conventions in order to stimulate some figure sales, but the SYW collection will not make it into the public arena for awhile, I am afraid.

Fife & Drum Range: I am guessing that I will be able to add two more sets of 16 figures over the course of 2013, depending on Richard's schedule. In that event, I would add some AWI cavalry to cover the British 16th Light Dragoons as well as some Continental cavalry in various head gear. The second set will likely see either more American militia, some special figures and more horses, or I could go with 6 to 8 personalities for each side.

I would like to be able to make it to Historicon in 2013, both to host some AWI games and to have a dealer booth at the show.

It looks like a very busy year ahead for me, to say the least.

Voting Ends Tomorrow

Austrian Headquarters Camp during the SYW. The General Staff are cooking up ideas on how to get more votes for Fife & Drum in the TMP Poll for Best Historical Range of 2011. click pix to enlarge the view.

Your Vote Is Needed

There is currently a poll being conducted on TMP this week to choose the Best Historical Miniatures Range for the year 2011. One of the ranges under consideration is my own Fife & Drum Miniatures range of AWI figures.

TMP Poll Link

I want to thank everyone who has taken the time to vote for the Fife & Drum range of AWI figures. We are currently in second place (91 votes for F&D - good for second place behind Perry Napoleonics at 106 votes). Earlier last evening, we had closed to within 2 votes of the Perry Machine, but a late surge of votes has probably pushed first place beyond our reach. So If you have not yet voted, please click on the link and cast your ballot.

400,000 Visitors Milestone Passed!
Oh, by the way, we passed 400,000 visitors somewhere around December 28, 2012. That is a staggering number of eyeballs that have viewed my little blog. Thank you to everyone for your support.

Prussian Cuirassier Regiment No. 2 "Prinz von Preussen" uniform from the book"Uniformen der Preussischen Armee 1758"

I was surfing the net today looking for an on-line version of the Bautzen Manuscript of the Austrian SYW army. I did not find a copy, but I did find this very interesting manuscript  depicting all of the Prussian infantry and cavalry regiment uniforms circa 1758.

Uniformen-der-Preussischen-Armee-1758

The book is from the collection of the Sachsische Landesbibliothek-Staats-und Universitatsbibliothek Dresden. It indicates that the author was Cerino Badone, but I can not verify the author. Does anyone know any more information about this uniform manuscript?

Austrian Pontooniers Corps in the SYW

Austrian Driver of the Pontoonier Corps in the SYW

Another view of the driver (part of the first picture above) plus two of the Pontooniers wearing a different uniform than the train driver.

Let us start of the new year, 2013, with something from the Seven Years War. I was talking with Stokes Schwartz during my recent visit to the Grand Duchy of Stollen, and he expressed an interest in adding a pontoon corps to the Grand Duchy's military establishment. Naturally, he wanted to know what the uniforms looked like.  So with that in mind, I present some pictures that I scanned from the book "Die Osterreichische Armee Im Siebenjahrigen Krieg" by Lars-Holger Thummler.

The pictures are all from the Bautzen Manuscript, which depicts every regiment of infantry, cavalry, artillery and support establishments that were in the Austrian army during the Seven Years War. It is interesting to note that the drivers for the artillery train, the commissary train and the pontoon train have similar, but different uniforms.

Pontooniers (top) and Sapper Corps (bottom) uniforms.

Driver of the Austrian Provision Corps.

Inspired by the Grand Duke of Stollen, Irwin Amadeaus, I think that I shall create my own pontoon wagon train for either the Austrian or Prussian armies of the SYW. One can purchase the pontoon train from Berliner Zinnfiguren at a very dear price. I think that Hinchcliffe might also have pontoon trains and pontoons in their fine range of figures.

Or, if you can wait for a bit, I intend to add pontoons and pontoon wagons to the Fife & Drum artillery equipment range in 2013.