Itzenplitz - Back to the Big Battalions

IR13 Itzenplitz regiment, work in progress, of Potsdam Miniatures 30mm figures. Click pix to enlarge.

We are staging a large BAR (Batailles dans l"Ancien Regime) game on Saturday May 14, 2016 in Woodstock, IL at a friend's house - he who has three 6ft by 28ft long tables (lucky guy) and quite frankly, we could use a few more players in the game. So if you care to spend a full day of gaming with big 60-figure battalions of infantry and similar sized cavalry regiments, and further, if you are the sociable gentleman gamer type of person, then drop me an e-mail and I can give you more of the details.

So a week or two ago, I was taking an inventory of my Big Battalion Austrian and Prussian armies and discovered to my horror that my Prussian army had dwindled down to a mere 12 battalions, of which one was a fairly useless battalion of jagers. A few years ago, I had as many as 20 60-figure big battalions in my Prussian army. I had sold off eight battalions to raise funds for Fife & Drum Miniatures, but also to cull down the herd to a manageable size of battalions that I could actually store in the trunk (boot) of my car. If I could only travel with 12 battalions, what was the point of owning 20 battalions?

Side view showing the three ranks of the firing line.

The upshot of all of this is that I decided that I needed to rebuild some of the Prussian BAR battalions that I had previously sold. My first choice was to add IR13 von Itzenplitz, which was considered one of the best regiments in the Prussian army. I had a few of my own Potsdam Miniatures - 30mm tall and Stadden compatible - so I started the painting of 60 musketeers last week. As of today, I have 30 figures painted and plan on having the second batch of 30 figures completed by this time next Sunday. I think that I have enough figures left to also paint IR1 von Winterfeld regiment.

As long as I'm adding more big battalions to the herd, why not order some Staddens as well and plan on rebuilding the Prussian forces up to 16 battalions. That works out to four brigades of four battalions. I like the symmetry of FOUR, there is something so very Eighteenth Century about even numbers and four of anything. So with two more Potsdamers and two more Stadden units, I will eventually get my BAR Prussian army back to 16 battalions.

I have enough cavalry.

Sort of.

I have 120 Prussian dragoons from Elite Miniatures. At a figure to man (horse) ratio of 1:10, would anyone care to guess which Prussian dragoon regiment I have in mind? You only get one guess, and if you guess wrong, then you are simply not an aficionado of anything Prussian. The rest of you will know exactly what I mean.

And no, I am not going to have 4 x 60 = 240 foot and 120 dragoons painted by May 14th. Probably just Itzenplitz before the game, with the remaining figures to be painted in the future.

Fritz likes big big war-game tables. It is a sickness that I caught many years ago during my first visit to the original War-game Holiday Centre in Scarboro, UK when it was owned by the late Mike Ingham. So my friend has three 6x28ft tables which would be like one table that was 18 feet deep by 28 feet long. Imagine having all of that room to maneuver your forces.

For the scenario for the May 14th game, I have selected an historical battle from another era of history and have adapted it to the Seven Years War. Back in about 2010, we staged a similar game at the same house and I used the battle of Austerlitz for the SYW scenario. It was quite a cracker of a game. I have added a label to this article at the bottom of the page "Big Battalion Game". If you click on that label, Blogger will take you back into my archives for the previous Big Battalion Games and there you can see the pictures and read the tales of the Austerlitz SYW game.

More later about the game and the Itzenplitz regiment to follow.