Prussia Forever by Lady Butler?

 

Prussia Forever !  (painted by Der Alte Fritz)
The charge of the Zieten Hussars
Minden Miniatures figures

Today I was scrolling through some of the pictures in my iPhotos library (there are nearly 28,000 pictures in all) and I found this one in my album of "Favorites". It is my recreation of the famous painting by Lady Butler called "Scotland Forever!" which features the epic charge of the Scots Greys at the battle of Waterloo in June 1815.

Instead of British Napoleonic figures I used Prussian Seven Years War hussars from Minden Miniatures.

Inspiration: the original painting of the charge of the Scots Greys at the 
Battle of Waterloo by Lady Butler

Here is an overhead view of the figures that I set up for the photo shoot a few years ago. The figure leading the charge is Hans von Zeiten, Himself, and he is one of the special personality figures that are available in the Minden Miniatures range of Seven Years War figures. The H2 von Zieten Hussar Regiment leads the charge. I added some H5 Black Hussars in the background to pad out volume of cavalrymen to make a better picture.

Here is a close up view of the "Heroic Zieten" figure from the Minden range.

Heroic Zieten Personality Figure   (PER-011 stock number)

PER-011 "Heroic Zeiten" personality figure from Minden Miniatures

This exceptionally animated figure was sculpted by the late Richard Ansell as part of a Kickstarter campaign that we did a long time ago. An individual donor's award at a high level was the ability to have several figures of his choice sculpted for him. He chose this highly animated hussar officer leaping into a charge as his figure of choice. In my mind, this is probably the best figure in the entire Minden Miniatures figure range.

So that is the story behind this exceptional figure and he looks quite spectacular when painted and leading the charge of Prussian light cavalry into a tabletop battle.

Lt. Colonel Charles Mawhood

 

Lt. Colonel Charles Mawhood
Fife and Drum Miniatures

Here is a picture of the command stand for the British commander at the Battle of Princeton, Lt. Colonel Charles Mawhood (pronounced "Ma-Whooo-D"). One of the books that I read mentioned that his dog accompanied him into battle. 

The mounted officer is the Fife and Drum Miniatures Briish mounted officer wearing a round hat. The dog is from one of the Perry Miniatures AWI vignette sets of figures.

I have not done the snow basing for the command stand yet.

Click on the link to the brief biography of Mawhood on wikipedia.

Charles Mawhood Wikipedia bio

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Perry 16th Light Dragoons, Dismounted

 

Perry Miniatures dismounted 16th Light Dragoons

I needed some figures for the 16th Light Dragoons at the Battle of Princeton, and since Fife and Drum does not make these figures, I purchased the dismounted figures from Perry Miniatures. Yes, Old Fritz does use some of the Perry AWI figures from time to time in his collection. They are a tad more robust than my figures, but to my eye the two ranges fit together quite nicely.

Note: Fife and Drum does have the mounted versions of the 16th LD, but not the dismounted or foot dragoons. Early in the AWI there was actually a battalion of dismounted dragoons, or foot dragoons, comprising the 16th LD. There weren't sufficient horses transported from England to the Colonies when General Howe's army landed in New York. Undoubtedly the plan was to secure the mounts in the Colonies.

At any rate, these are fun figures to paint and there is a nice variety of poses, four in all. They will be fighting for King George at Historicon this year when I host The Battle of Princeton.

Perry dismounted 16th Light Dragoons
Colonial Williamsburg gunpowder armory made by Herb Gundt.

Here is a picture of the armory that Herb Gundt made for me. It hasn't made it 
out on the table for very many games so I thought that I should post a picture of 
this fine work of art. It is modeled after the building in Williamsburg.

I have been busy painting figures for a small British army at the Battle of Princeton scenario that I am running at Historicon this year. There will be more pictures posted over the next several days.

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New Winterized Roads for Trenton Game

The town of Trenton, NJ in the winter

 

After looking at various pictures of winter terrain, specifically the roads, I decided to change the look of my roads from a light brown under color with snow flock to a black underfloor with snow flock. I think that the black roads give the desired effect of a cold, dark and freezing winter environment.

Closer view of the streets with the black and white snow motif 

A view of my game room

Battle of Princeton table top mock up

I have two game tables in my basement and now that Trenton is nearly buttoned up, I am turning my attention to the terrain and figures for my Battle of Princeton game. This one features my colorful Redcoats against the Continental army.

This is not the final tabletop set up, just a mock up to give me an idea of the spacing that is needed for the game. I only have one table at Historicon so I will have to tear down my Trenton game and then set up the Princeton game on the same table. Thus I will be able to use all of my winterized trees and roads in both game.

The pictures below show the brown roads that I previously had. You can compare the brown and black styles by clicking on the pictures in this blog post

The British 27th Regiment using Fife and Drum "Continentals" figures in tricorn hats for the British.

Battle of Princeton: the Clarke Farm. Both sides will fight for control of the farm area.

A small detachment of British 16th Light Dragoons

The 42nd Highlander Regiment
Fife and Drum Miniatures

I am not using British regiments that are specifically set for the British order of battle at Princeton, but rather, I painted units for which I already had the GMB Designs flags in my stock of flags. And of course, I had to have the 42nd Highlander regiment in the game.

I recently purchased some of the Perry dismounted 16th Light Dragoons to use in the scenario since Fife and Drum Miniatures doesn't make these particular figure - yet  LOL!

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Fife & Drum British in 1768 Warrant Dress (?)

 

British 20th Regiment
Fife and Drum Miniatures

I decided that I would need several British Redcoat regiments wearing cocked hats for my Princeton 1777 game that I am running at Historicon this year. They had to be Fife and Drum Miniatures figures to maintain the consistent look of all of the figures in the game. While we don't officially have British wearing cocked (tricorn hats if you will) it occurred to me that we had something very close in appearance.

And that would be the Fife and Drum Continentals figures, as shown below:

British center company infantry from Fife and Drum Miniatures
These are actually some of the Continental figures painted in red coats.

To my eye, the Continentals look very similar to the British 1768 Regulation and so I thought that I would paint a unit of them in red coats and see how they turn out.

I think that they look pretty good as shown below.

I am no expert on the 1768 Regulartions uniforms other than to notice that they wore breeches and hosiery and some half-gaiters at their ankles whereas the early 1776 campaign uniform has them wearing the one-piece "overalls" and the tricorn hat. The Fife and Drum British wear the overalls but sport the round hat, which was more practical to wear in the field as it provided better protection from the sun. I noticed that the Continental uniforms of the 1776-1777 period look very similar to the early British uniform so I think that it is perfectly fine to use them as British soldiers.

Now we do have the British grenadiers that would be correct for 1776-1777. I painted a small unit of 16 figures using the Fife and Drum grenadiers in firing line poses. I don't see many AWI firing line painted regiments on the internet and my own unit of grenadiers are marching, so I decided to use the firing line poses for my winterized Princeton British Grenadiers.

British Grenadiers in bearskin hats
Fife and Drum Miniatures

In conclusion, if you are already using Fife and Drum Miniatures in your British armies and you would like to have some of the figures wearing the cocked hat, then consider using the Continental soldier figures in our figure range.

One of these days we will be adding "official" redcoats wearing cocked hats.

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I Like This Picture

 

I

I was scrolling through my iPhotos library and this picture randomly popped up on the screen this morning .

The picture is from my 40mm Sharpe's Peninsula game at the Little Wars convention this past April. That's the convention where they stuck my game table in some far away back room that nobody could find. Grrr.

At any rate, the photo shows the Vistula Lancers riding down a company of the British 45th regiment that was attempting to withdraw across the Coa River bridge. Alas, they didn't make it. Some other Lancers are trying to ride down some other Redcoats, but they were made of sterner stuff and shot down the charging lancers to the man. A little help from some of Sharpe's riflemen helped too, although both Sharpe and Harper were either killed or captured during the game.

However, one way or another I suspect that Sharpe and Harper will march again.

New Products: Hessian Fusiliers and Continentals in Round Hats

 

Continentals in Hunting Shirts and Round Hats

We are happy to announce the addition of 14 new packs of figures for the Fife and Drum Miniatures American Revolution (AWI) range. There are 8 new packs of Continentals wearing round hats with some wearing uniform coats and some wearing hunting shirts.

There are also 6 new packs of Hessian Fusiliers wearing miter hats. These arrived just in time for me to paint a regiment for my Battle of Trenton game at this year's Historicon convention (July 15 - 19, 2026).

Here are the links to the Fife and Drum webstore where you can take a look at the new figures, and dare I say, order a few packs and start building your AWI regiments. Note that each Continental product code has pictures of the new figures whereas the Hessians do not yet have their pictures. I recently finished painting the Hessian samples and still must snap some pictures and upload them to the web store.

Hessian Fusiliers in webstore

Continentals in webstore

The new Continental in round hats

CA-029 Continental Command in Round Hats

CA-030 Continentals in Round Hats Firing

CA-031 Continentals in Round Hats Advancing

CA-032 Continentals in Round Hats ram rods

CA-033 Continentals in Round Hats cocking muskets

CA-034 Hunting Shirts with Round Hats, cocking muskets

CA-035 Pullover hunting shirt with round hat , firing

CA-036 hunting shirts open in the front and round hats, firing

New Hessian Fusiliers in Miter Hats

Note: no pictures yet, but coming soon!

HP-010  Hessian Fusilier Command, Standing

HP-011  Hessian Fusilier Command, Marching

HP-012  Hessian Fusiliers Marching

HP-013  Hessian Fusiliers standing firing

HP-014  Hessian Fusiliers 2nd rank for firing line

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