Prussian SYW Cavalry

DR5 - the Bayreuth Dragoons (click to enlarge and behold their awesomeness)

I am making a conscious effort to get back to my touchstone of the Seven Years War after spending the past year mostly focused on the American Revolution. Understandably, the launch of the new Fife & Drum Miniatures range made it necessary to paint up samples of each figure for the blog-catologue as well as the need to build two armies (Continentals and British) so that I could promote the range via colorful wargames.

So after painting a brigade of Continentals (4 regiments with 110 figures in total) starting New Years Day and on through St. Valentines Day, I find that I need a little bit of break from AWI painting. This seems like the perfect time to shift over to the SYW, so you will probably see more Prussians and Austrians on my blog over the next month. The annual SYW Association convention isn't until April 5th and 6th this year, so that gives me a little extra time to paint some last minute things for the show. I hope to use that extra time to paint some more SYW figures - Mindens of course.

So for a little bit of inspiration, I cleared off my wargame table (the remnants of the Lobositz game) and pulled out my Minden collection of 20:1 ratio armies. Each casting represents 20 real soldiers. Thus battalions of infantry average around 30 figues (600 men) and squadrons of cavalry are at 6 figures (120 troopers). Laying them all out on the table also enables me to see what is missing. One obvious thing is the need to add more cavalry!

Pictured above are 32 of the DR5 regiment in Prussin service, the famed Bayreuth Dragoons. They were a 10 squadron regiment of heavy cavalry (dragoons) as opposed to the normal 5 squadron establishment of most of the other Prussian cavalry regiments. Ten squadrons would work out to about 1,200 troopers and officers, or 60 figures at 20:1. Hmm, they could also do double duty as a BAR regiment at 10:1 - honestly, that idea just hit me as I am typing this.

Leading the regiment is a dragoon officer that Ioannis painted for me along with the Minden Seydlitz personality figure that I painted. I think that I might ask Ioannis to paint some of my army command stands for me, as I want them to look extra special and he does such a good job. His horses and shabraques are second to none.

I have a regiment of 32 unpainted Minden Prussian cuirassiers sitting in my Closet O' Lead and I have been itching to get these into the painting queue and start to work on them. I think that I've had the figures for a couple of years now. Perhaps it is well that I have waited, for Frank Hammond recently announced that he would be adding a Prussian cuirassier kettle drummer to the range. Wow, wow, just wow freakin' wow. I am happy.

Prussian kettle drummer from Dorn & Engleman

Yessiree, I'm gonna have a heap o' these in my Prussian cuirassier establishment.