Friday, January 29, 2010

IR1 Winterfeldt Regt. Completed


Two battalions of IR1 Winterfeldt Regiment - Minden Miniatures (click pix to enlarge)

Last evening I completed the basing and glued all of the flags for the first regiment of my new SYW Minden Miniatures Project. All of the infantry, cavalry and artillery units will be comprised solely of Minden Miniatures. There is a link to the company's web page on the left hand side of this page. ( I still need to touch up the edges of the orange flags with some orange paint, in order to hide the white paper that shows through along the edges).

My plan is to paint both battalions of each Prussian regiment (and each Austrian regiment) that I paint for this project. The regiments will also have a mounted colonel or inhaber. The first regiment in my army is, coincidentally, the first regiment in King Frederick II's Prussian army: IR1 von Winterfeldt. (the "IR" designation stands for "infantry regiment" and the number is the regimental number -- during the 18th century, the regiment was known by the name of the inhaber; they did not use regimental numbers until the early 19th century).

Given that Major General Hans von Winterfeldt was one of Frederick's senior officers, he would more likely be in charge of an independent command or a wing of the army comprising some dozen or more battalions of infantry. So he was unlikely to be in direct command of his own regiment. Christian Rogge was kind enough to research the name of the Lieutenant Colonel von Munchow, as the likely commander of the regiment during the battles and campaigns in which IR1 fought.

Here are a couple more pictures of the regiment:






As you can see, the first battalion of the regiment will carry both the white colonel's color and the orange regimental color. The second battalion will carry two of the orange regimental colors. All of the flags are from GMB Designs and I think that they look very nifty.

Each battalion has 30 figures based six per stand in two ranks. Thus at a 1:20 ratio, the battalion has 600 men. With this organization, I can use either my own "Der Alte Fritz" rules, or Rusty's Rules for Horse & Musket Warfare" or maybe I will even give the new "Black Powder" rules a tryout. The latter set of rules sounds like it might be a lot of fun. The bases measure 60mm wide by 40mm deep and are made from MDF board that I purchase pre-cut from an outfit called Georgo Bases.

I have also completed 12 artillerists and 3 Berlin Zinnfiguren 12 pounders, but I have not based them yet. I have decided to glue the crew figures to the base, but keep the gun models loose so that I can remove them and attach them to the limber teams. I will use the RSM limber teams for my gun sets.

Next on my list will be IR5 Jung Braunschweig, who had Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick as their inhaber. Obviously he was rather busy commanding the allied army in western Germany, so Ferdinand would not have been commanding the regiment in the field. If anyone can dig up the name of the Lt. Colonel of IR5, circa 1757, then please drop me a line or a comment in the comments section of this page.

c

21 comments:

  1. Very striking unit . . . and the orange flags are very distinctive (it wasn't a very commonly used color). Your Minden's look wonderful, sir.


    -- Jeff

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  2. A marvelous paint job and a tremendously good-looking unit -well, as usual here!
    Then, if I may hitchhike this thread, how is your War Balloon project going?

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  3. vastly better job than my own batch of Minden figures!

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  4. Morning Jim,

    Agreed! Easily one of the best looking units you have painted and displayed here.

    Best Regards,

    Stokes

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  5. Very nice looking. They almost tempt me into going into another era, I shall have to resist.

    John

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  6. These look great - THIS is what 7YW wargames should look like!
    I do like these figures....when I get round to 7YW......one day, one day....

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  7. Hi Jim,

    Splendid painting work as ever.

    Can I ask a dumb question?

    Why are you going to the lengths you are to basically create a whole new army, when you could take your existing Minden 60-man units and breakthem into two halves (perhaps with the addition of a second colour party? If I recall correctly your units are induvidually-based and magnetically stuck to movement trays.

    Why not just create a new set of movement trays and paint hordes of Austrians instead?

    Best wishes in all you do,

    Greg

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  8. Excellent stuff.

    Jim, you are right the colours look mighty fine. Will you tell us how you get so much movement into the paper flags?

    Duke of Baylen

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  9. Lovely work Jim, as usual.
    I too have 30 man battalions and have just rebased 9 Prussian and 3 Austrian battalions for Black powder. I have glued my artillery guns to the bases with the gunners and as there won't be too many guns around, I might indulge in a seperate second gun to represent the limbered version of each one, but we'll see, as there are lots more Austrians to paint yet, to get the sides evened up a bit. So much to do, so little time . . . sigh.

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  10. Greg: I thought about ways to use my existing 60 figure Minden btns of Prussians and Austrians, but the problem is that they are superglued onto metal 1" bases and are more or less permanently fixed to those bases. The frontage on these new battalions is much tighter. I suppose that I could have "froze" the figures in my freezer and try to pop them off and rebase them, but I didn't want to go that route. Besides, this new project gives me an excuse to paint MORE PRUSSIANS (yea!!!!!!)

    Duke of Baylen: I use white pva or Elmer's glue for the flags. While the glue is still wet, I take paint brush and curl the paper around the brush handle to get the furls and curls in the flag. I noticed that the GMB flags have natural darker shades in them, which gives you a clue as to which way the flag should be furled. Another idea, push the end of the flag towards the staff, sort of like an accordian and finish off the corners with the rolling around the brush handle method.

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  11. thanks Jim, good flag tip, I shall try it

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  12. That's exactly what i do with my flags too :-)

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  13. Excellent work and a superb result.

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  14. Dera Fritz,

    Lovely work.

    Do you know if French infantry 2nd, 3rd and 4th battalions were distinguished in any way by the colours they carried?

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  15. PS Sorry! I forgot to sing the last comment! Theo

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  16. Theo,
    What tune would you sing your post to?

    }:->

    Sorry, couldn't resist ...

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  17. Fritz,

    How would you break down your Prussian army troop manufacturer proportions?
    What percentage are now Minden?
    How much Foundry or Front Rank or Crusader, Old Glory, Elite etc?
    I know that you are moving to Minden, I prefer more heft and so use the Front Rank and some Crusader figures. Would very much like to know.
    Also is there a goal in your painting? How many Battalions do you have or do you plan to have before you are painting other protagonists or worse eras?

    Thanks,
    Chris

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  18. Dear Frankfurter,
    Are you acqainted with Spike Milligna, the well-known typing error?
    Love
    Theo

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  19. I'm reliably informed that the above comment reads "very good indeed", by one Yuàn Wàng.

    Re. the Kommandeur of IR5, dunno if you saw my post on TMP regarding Col. Johann Christoph von Prignitz, who fell commanding the regiment at Rossbach. Haven't found his succesor yet.

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