Work in Progress ... or Projected

Just to keep this blog spot ticking over for the time being. I'm hoping to gat at least one battle in over the long weekend. It has been a long while. Meanwhile, I have been catching up upon some backlog of long standing - particularly in the 'War of the Imperial Succession' project. 

Cavalry. Last century I bought several packs of Revell 7YW horse. Some have been painted up - Khevenhuller Dragoons and Nadasti Hussars in the service of the Empire, and I began the White (Puttkamer) Hussars in the service of Altmark-Uberheim. The Imperial Kalnoky Hussars were begun, but never quite finished.

On the tray pictured Are two further Imperial Dragoon units (one understrength with just 15 figures), an Uberheim Dragoon unit, and, in the middle of them all, two stands of 15mm 'barbarian' spearmen for the Byzantiad project (mainly to use up surplus paint...).

Then there is this box of oddments, mostly horse. I have wondered what to do with those Hussar drummers. They'll probably fetch up attached to Altmark-Uberheim Army HQ.

A fair amount of flocking (or othe rkind of base decoration) required here. Right to left: Khevenhuller Dragoons, Nadasti Hussars, a squadron of chevau-leger/ light dragoons, and, half obscured, the 'new' Batthyany Dragoons. 

A word on the light dragoons. They are assembled from Airfix Napoleonic artillery battery commanders, and some surplus Revell hussar mounts. The surplus was actually due to deficiency of troopers, mangled for reasons best known to their previous owner. I found I couldn't resurrect them so into the bin they went. 

But those battery commanders I long had it in mind to form them into some sort of unit. So they have become a 9-figure squadron of light horse. Probably in Imperial service.

On a whole different topic: I still have churning away on the back burner, my Napoleonic 'War of the Nations' project. Recently I picked up in the local 2-Dollar shop a bunch of coloured pin-markers. I figured on making a campaign map mounted on some pin-permeable surface.  Most of the pins had cubic heads, the rest some sort of 14-faced polyhedron.  The former became Army Corps or large garrisons; the latter cavalry formations or small garrisons.

Napoleon's Army (above pic) comprises nine Army Corps, the Imperial Guard and two Cavalry Corps; and has provision for two large and four small garrisons. The Army Corps VII - IX are Allies. As I have almost no Allied figures, these will actually be formed from a French-looking army. At that, they are all three of them quite small formations - the three together about the equivalent of one and a half Austrian army corps. 


Above are the other armies:
Blue = Prussian: 3 Army and one cavalry corps, with a provision for 4 garrisons;
Orange = Austrian: 5 Army Corps, one Reserve Corps Infantry and one Reserve Corps Cavalry formations, plus provision for 5 garrisons,
Green = Russian (these ones I had to paint): Left, Centre and Right, plus detached cavalry Division;
and four garrisons.

I have yet to settle upon a map - or at least, how the map is to be represented. I have several A4 pages of Central Europe mapped out, from memory stretching east-west from Posen to Erfurt, and north-south from somewhere above Berlin to Bohemia south of Prague. That seems to me a pretty reasonably sized theatre of war for the forces involved. 

The premise is that, having wintered about Smolensk, Napoleon abandoned his Russian campaign early in 1813 still with a good half of his army. Actually, the narrative won't present it in quite that light. It was a disaster - well, he lost half his army - and had to struggle to rebuild it against the rising tide of Germanic nationalism. The Austrians begin the campaign, as historically, sitting on the fence but the Russians and a corps of Prussians drive out of Poland the Corps of Marshal Davout (III) and Prince Poniatowski (V). This will probably form a 'First Chapter' of the whole War of the Nations - whenever I get around to it!