Silesian Fusiliers – restoration done

The Prussian Fusiliers are complete and battle-ready. They’ve brushed up quite nicely and will be a useful addition to Marshal Vorwarts command and hopefully a thorn in the side of old Boney.

There are 20 x PN.4 Private (firing) 1 x PN.1 Officer (charging) 1 x PN.7 Officer (marching) 1 x PN.6 Drummer (charging) 1 x PN.5 Private (converted to standard bearer.

The figures are all David Clayton castings with the exception of the drummer which is a vintage figure.

I've based half the figures as skirmishers to give me a bit more flexibility in the Prussian OOB.

Note that the marching officer is oriented on the diagonal of his base. This is not uncommon with Clayton castings, vintage figures are square on.

I think this is the last of my Revo Prussian flags so I'll have to find some more if I ever do any further Prussian units.

With this unit just sneaking in to my 2022 output I have brought my Hinton Hunt tally for the year up to 97 figures painted which is much better than I thought it was going to be. The only problem is that I seem to be acquiring figures more quickly than I’m painting them so need to up the ante for 2023.

Dabbling with Medieval’s (off topic #35)

Goya invited me over yesterday to have a stab at playing a scenario from the Command & Colors Medieval game. Although billed as Medieval the scenario was from 528AD involving Sassanids and Byzantines at the battle of Melebasa. My previous experience of playing ancient type games is limited to playing with Airfix Romans and Britons as a kid so I was intrigued to see how C&C tackled this period.

We used the board and terrain supplied with the game but instead of blocks the armies were drawn from Goya’s extensive collection of 15mm figures that he built originally for use with DBA. Using miniatures with C&C transforms it (in my mind) from a boxed game to a proper tabletop wargame - the ultimate example of this being of course Tony’s amazing set-up for C&C Napoleonics!

Initial deployment - I was playing the Byzantines (this side) and Goya played the Sassanids (far side).

Most of these figures are either Essex or Donnington.

I can't remember what make these ones are but they are very pretty!

This is my super-heavy cavalry attacking Goya's flank - these guys are the Tiger Tanks of the early Medieval world.

Some of the heavy Sassanids with a leader.

The high water mark of my attack, it was all down hill from here!

Final positions - the victory banner count tells the story with 7 to the Sassanids and 3 to me.

It turned out to be another gripping game as C&C games always seem to be. The subtleties of the combat mechanism (which at first glance appears quite simple) required the application of some serious generalship which is probably why I lost. This is definitely a game that I would like to play again!

Prussian refurb – update

I’ve been braving the arctic conditions in the Hinton Hut (currently 6°C inside and 1°C outside) to work through the Prussian firing figures and have finally finished them. Now they just need a couple more coats of varnish and then basing.

In the end I did decide to designate these as Fusiliers hence the black straps. The figures in the front row still have wet varnish on them which is why they look a bit misty.

They actually turned out to be quite a lot of work as half of them needed bayonets replacing which I did by splicing in musket ends from some spare poor quality donor castings. The paint touch-up also turned out to be pretty much fully repainting them. I couldn’t salvage Clive’s standard bearer who had been converted from a charging figure, so this has been replaced with a PN5 (the figure without a musket) in keeping with my other Prussian units.

Overall, they are not the best unit in my army, but I think they will pass muster.