The Hesse Seewald Army Adds a New Regiment

IR5 Prinz Heinrich Fusilier Regiment

Since I could not make it to the Seven Years War Association Convention in South Bend, Indiana this weekend, I compensated myself by spending a fair amount of time at the painting table, working on a new fusilier regiment for the Hesse Seewald Arm.

The new Prinz Heinrich Fusiliers are the first fusilier regiment in the army and I am very happy with the way that they are turning out. I chose the traditional green Hesse Seewald uniform coat with red facings. Since IR1 von Glasenap has the same colors, I changed the color of the small clothes (breeches and waistcoat) to a light straw.

Of course, the fusilier mitre also distinguishes the regiment from IR1. The mitre has a silver front plate, red mitre bag piped in white, and a green base at the back of the mitre. The base band is decorated with silver grenades. All buttons are silver colored, except for the gaitor buttons, which are brass.

I have decided to add a fifth company of musketeers to each regiment. Thus when the grenadier company is hived off and converged with other grenadier companies, then the line regiment will still be able to field 30 figures in 5 stands, each stand representing a company. This will be the normal wartime footing of the regiment.

The full Hesse Seewald Army of 6 batalions, excluding the Garde Regiment.

I Have To Miss the SYWA Convention this Year

It is with much regret that I have to announce that I will have to cancel my attendance at this year's Seven Years War Association Convention in South Bend, Indiana on Friday and Saturday of this week.

There has been an incredible increase in projects at work over the past month, and as a result, I am totally worn out and I am ill prepared to take on the task of loading my car with all of the Minden inventory and all of the figures and terrain that I would need to bring to host two war-games from two different eras (AWI and SYW) and thus two different sets of terrain.

In a word, I've been burning the candle at both ends and adding all of the convention work would be the final straw that breaks me. I really hate to miss the convention, but Life and my health have to come first.

I might try to attend on Saturday, just as a visitor and not a vendor or game judge, but even that is about 50-50 of even happening.

Several Minden customers were going to pick up some orders at the convention. I will ship your orders to you this week.

GNW Swedes

Warfare Miniatures GNW Swedes

A couple of days ago I received a package in the mail that was moderately heavy and it rattled. Hmm, thinks I, what could this be?

I was not expecting the arrival of anything germane to wargaming, so when I opened up the packet, out tumbled several blister packs full of Great Northern War  ("GNW") Swedes, from the Warfare Miniatures range of figures. Go to the League of Augsburg web site by clicking on the link below:

Warfare Miniatures

Click on the "Shop" tab at the top of the page, then click on GNW Swedish Infantry to see more pictures of this new figure range.

Let me start by saying that the Warfare Miniatures figures are an absolute joy to paint and I was able to whip out a couple of samples in about an hour's time. The grenadier and musketeer represent the Uplands regiment, one of the Indelta regiments that served in the King's Army at Poltava (rather an unfortunate turn of events for them).

Doing a little bit of research, I discovered that about 50% of the GNW Swedish army of Charles XII was comprised of cavalry and the rest were infantry. This is a bit different from SYW armies where the cavalry comprise about 25-30% of the total forces.

I like to target an initial army of 12 units, excluding artillery, so I am looking at 6 units of cavalry and 6 units of infantry. Of the infantry, I will have 3 of them wearing a tricorn hat and 3 wearing the karpus hat.

More later, I have to go to sleep now.

Austrian Staff Vignette

Hungarian Grenadiers march past General von Loudon and Prince Charles of Lorraine (click picture to enlarge the view)

I thought that I would post one of my favorite pictures of my Austrian army. It is a vignette in which a converged battalion of Hungarian grenadiers are marching past generals von Loudon and Charles of Lorraine. A few Croats roam about the woods on piquet duty.

The senior Austrian generals and vignettes were painted for me by Leuthen Studios, AKA Ioannis M. and the grenadies and Croats were painted by me. Herb Gundt made the house and the stands of trees. The terrain mat comes from The Terrain Guy (who sadly, is no longer in business).

I finally have gotten back to painting figures at a liesurely pace. My current project is to add more Hesse Seewald infantry to my Imaginations army. You can check out the progress of the IR4 Birkebeil Regiment over on my "Kingom of Hesse Seewald" blog.

The Kingdom of Hesse Seewald Blog

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The Birkebeil regiment has three of the five companies painted so far. I hope to get the remaining 12 figures completed over the current weekend. In case you were wondering, Birkebeil is an old family name of my ancestors, who immigrated from southern Germany in the mid 1700s and settled in Lancaster and York counties in Pennsylvania. They would have been called "Pennsylvania Dutch". The term "Dutchman" was used to denote German immigrants for some reason, even though there was nothing Dutch about them.

I am getting ready for the upcoming Seven Years War Association convention in South Bend, Indiana March 26 to 29th. Most of my inventory has been bagged and I have my game scenarios pretty well practiced and defined. So I think that I'm ready to go. I hope to see a few of my readers at the convention.

vv

New Minden Zieten Personality Figure Green

Von Zieten personality figure sculpted by Richard Ansell

Here is the latest little masterpiece off the work bench of Richard Ansell, the designer of the Minden Miniatures range of SYW figures.

You know, you want him, so here he is!!!!!!!!

One of our Minden Kickstarter backers pledged at a level that allowed him to have ANY FIGURE OF HIS CHOICE made for him. The gentlemen sent us the following picture of von Zieten and asked if Richard could replicate it as a wargame figure in 1/56 scale. I think that you will agree with me that Richard really nailed the likeness.

The picture of von Zieten that inspired the new figure.

The figure, and some of his friends, were sent off to Griffin Moulds this week, so it is now in the production queue, which seems to running about 8 weeks for now.

Russian Artillery Crew Are Coming!

Russian General Fermor

Richard has finished the greens for the first of the SYW Russians that we plan on adding to the Minden Miniatures range of figures. I wanted to have distinct loading and firing sets of four figures rather than just four poses that sort of go together in a particular action.

We also have a personality figure of the Russian army commander, General Fermor, that we will be giving away to some of our Kickstarter backers of the Austrian and Russian artillery campaign. After the Kickstarter obligations are taken care of, the Fermor figure will be available to the general public.

Don't forget that we are now stocking the following Russian cannon:

  6-pound cannon

12-pound cannon

12-pound Unicorn

12-pound Shuvalov ("Secret Howitzer") Howitzer

2 - wheel Russian ammunition wagon

(there is also a 4-wheel wagon that is at the caster's awaiting its wheels)

The Prussian 12-pound Brummer and two Austrian ammo wagons and the Conestoga Wagon are all now at Griffin Moulds waiting to have master and production moulds made. They will then cast the figures for inventory and sales.

Russian Artillery Crew - Firing Poses

Russian Artillery Crew - Loading Poses

The AWI Maryland Brigade

Maryland Brigade 1777 (R-L) 1st Maryland, 2nd Maryland, 6th Maryland, and the Delaware Regiment.

Here is a picture of my Maryland Brigade  in my Continental Army for the Philadelphia Campaign of 1777. The two striped flags are from GMB Designs and the Maryland and Delaware flags were created by Clarence Harrison.

1st Maryland    - 25 figures

2nd Maryland   - 30 figures

6th Maryland    - 30 figures

Delaware Regt. - 24 figures

Total:                 109 figures or 1,090 men at a 1:10 ratio