Prussian Pioneers, Part II

Same picture as before only this time using my Canon camera rather than the iPad camera. click to enlarge, it should work with this version.

I shot another picture of the Prussian Pioneers marching past  the inn and there is His Royal Nibs Himself, Freddy the Deuce, watching the world go by. The pioneers are from the Minden range and painted with Prussian pioneer orange waistcoats. Some have the tools that come with the set, while others carry poles that are off cuts from some of the North Star spears that I use for flag poles. The pulver wagen is from Berlin Zinnfiguren and the two wagons in the background were scratch built by the talented Mr. Ed Phillips. Frederick is from the Minden range and the two gents standing behind him are nice poses from the Old Glory Prussian artillery range.

The Prussian artillery park - repairs are underway.

In this picture, we see the Prussian artillery park and the crew are making repairs on some of the battle damaged pieces. The blacksmith in the vignette on the left is from the Hovels range and the field forge or "Feldt Schmiede" is from Berlin Zinnfiguren. In the center, we have an artillery gyn that is being used to hoist a cannon barrel from the carriage. I scratch built this model and the figures are all from the Minden range. You can see the Pioneers again, this time painted as artillery crew in waistcoats. The vignette on the right is a crew changing a broken wheel. The cannon is an RSM 12 pounder and the figures are Mindens. Finally, the two howitzers on the far right are from Berlin Zinnfiguren too.

Austrian battery of one six pounder and one twelve pounder. Click to enlarge.

And finally, we have to give a little bit of love to the Austrians, with an artillery battery pictured above. Most of the crew (the ones in brown coats) are the Minden Austrian artillery crew. But once again, we see those ever so useful pioneer figures in waistcoats serving as matrosses for the Austrian battery. The pioneer figures have a lot of different uses, don't you think?

The cannon are from Berlin Zinnfiguren as are the limbers. The limber horses and riders are RSM figures. In the background you can see some of my Minden Austrian infantry. I paint regiments of two 30-figure battalions and include a mounted regimental officer with each pair of battalions.

I set all of these wonderful Minden figures out on my wargame table so that I can look at them every evening and marvel at how wonderful the sculpts of Richard Ansell are. It also enables me to see what I need to paint in order to complete both my Prussian and Austrian armies. They have been neglected over the past year due to the fact that I have had to paint my AWI armies from a dead start and I needed enough British and American forces painted so that I could take them to wargame conventions and display the fine figures in participation games.

The Austrians need one more battalion of Hungarian infantry, 3 or 4 more artillery limbers, about 4 artillery supply wagons, mounted brigade and army generals, lots of cavalry including cuirassiers, hussars and maybe more cuirassiers. There is much work yet to do.