Prussian Plans

Now that the French army is more or less complete I thought it would be good to turn my attention to the Prussians. It was the Hinton Hunt Prussian army that I painstakingly collected and painted in my youth that was the original inspiration for this blog so it seems fitting to push them to the front of the painting queue now I’m at the seven year milestone.

 A simple paint scheme at last - blue and grey, what can possibly go wrong?

Another reason for elevating the Prussians to this position is ease of painting – blue and grey are very forgiving colours to paint especially when combined with the black straps of fusiliers. In fact I would say that Prussians are the easiest Napoleonic uniforms to paint followed in order by Russians, French, Austrians and British (am I the only one who puts off painting British infantry?).

This is yet another reason to go with Prussians and a warning to us all about keeping substantial reserves in the lead pile.

The only problem with going Prussian is that I have found it very hard over the years to accumulate enough Hinton Hunt figures to make up full units. I do have one or two units now but vintage figures are very thin on the ground so I will be using Clayton and reproduction figures where necessary to fill the holes in the ranks.

 As I remember the Hinton Hunt painting instruction sheet gave details for a Silesian regiment with yellow collar and cuffs but I've gone with red for West Prussia on this one emulating the unit I painted back in 1972.

So to get things rolling I’ve started work on a unit of West Prussian Fusiliers using PN.4 Private (firing). This unit is the exception to the rule as it will be made up entirely of vintage figures, some lovely old castings I acquired a few years back in a virgin unpainted and fully flashed up state. I’ve been looking forward to doing these as I painted a battalion of them for my original army back in the 70s.