Hungarian Infantry?

While looking through my endless boxes of figures recently I came across the Italeri Russian and Austrian Command set. This set is actually quite disappointing as there are only a few actual 'Command' pieces in it and the rest of the box is made up of Russian grenadiers and early Austrian infantry figures.
I painted up the Russian Grenadier figures last year for use as Pavlov Grenadiers.....
(Click images to enlarge)

But this still left quite a few of the early (helmeted) Austrians. Having searched around on the web for a little while I came across some illustrations of Austro-Hungarian Fusiliers wearing much the same uniform...

 so I decided to do a quick paint job on one just to see how it turned out..

A VERY quick paint job just to see how these Italeri figures look.

Though nowhere near 100% historically accurate (The Hungarian troops wore ankle length boots rather than the gaiters on the figures) I'm certainly not going to start converting models in this scale for the sake of one unit but I think they look ok and from 'wargames view' I think they'll pass... Anyway it's my army so they're in!

Apologies for the crap photo's, I'm having a bad camera day.

So, I'll crack on with these and hopefully have them ready soon to join my expanding Snappy Nap forces.

Steve

Snappy Nap: Taking stock

So today I thought I would see just how much of a force I could put together using my newly chosen rule set.  One of the reasons I was drawn to SN was the use of smaller units to represent larger formations and even with my small collection I can still field enough for a decent game ... I think!

The actual number of units can be found by clicking the 'My Snappy Nappy Forces So Far' tab at the top of the page but here's a few snaps ('snaps'....see what I did there?) I took while I was sorting out...

French!

Russian & Austrian

Another view of those Frenchies.

Not a bad start to be going on with but there's still a big pile of plastic to be painted before I'll be satisfied!

Gearing up for V & B

This time of year is always really quiet on the work front for me (people just don't want new flooring fitted this time of year!) so spending money on my hobby is just not the thing to do. However, having this time on my hands is allowing me to get cracking on starting my planned projects and first up is my Volley & Bayonet project. Like most gamers I still have a large pile of unpainted figures to go at so at least I don't need to splash any cash on any figures I may need.... for now anyway.

As my already painted figures are based and owing to the fact that I've not tried V&B yet I decided to cut simple MDF sabot bases for the figures to sit on.

1st Austrian Division

I've obviously yet to paint and label the bases but hey, it's a start. I've actually cut my sabots slightly bigger that the 3" (75mm) recommended in the rules and I settled on my bases being 90mm square. This was simply a matter of taste as it allowed me to fit either 12 x 1/72nd infantry figures or 4 x cavalry figures on each base without it looking too crowded while still leaving enough room for unit labels, disorder, rout markers etc. As far as I'm aware it won't make the slightest difference to the actual game .... Though I'm sure their are seasoned V&B players choking on their pipes as they read this heresy. 

Austrian Light Cavalry Division

2nd Austrian Division 

1st Russian Division (still requiring artillery!) and a Russian Heavy cavalry Division (still requiring a Divisional Commander)

Well that's the sabots cut for my Russian and Austrian forces ... Still have the French to do yet but at least it's a start to the project. It's also shown me what other figures I need to paint up, namely Russian artillery. I plan on expanding the Russian forces by at least one more V&B 'Division' (same for the French though I may paint up a French Allied Division just to break things up a little)

Anyway, onwards and upwards....

Italeri Austrian & Russian Command Figures

After a really lazy (and boring) Easter Bank Holiday I've managed to get a couple of Austrian and one Russian Command figures finished up... Over all I'm quite pleased with them...

In the background you can probably see the Russian Pavlov Grenadiers which are waiting for their scatter to be added to finish them off.

Next up I need to paint a couple of Austrian cannon and some French command figures. Originally I'd planned on making the Austrian army the 'main' force of the combined Austro/Russian force but I'm now leaning toward building up the Russian force in bulk to be supported by a smaller Austrian arm. ... but we'll see.

HaT Austrian Grenadiers

Here's my first 12 Austrian Grenadier figures ready for basing.... (Click on images to enlarge)

Although I wasn't overly impressed with the quality of the figures, especially the faces which are really not well defined, the figures do look pretty good (to me anyway!) painted up.

I did have a problem gathering info on what the top of the bearskins looked like. After several differing opinions  from folk on TMP and looking at painted versions of these figures on the HaT website I eventually settled on this ......

I don't know if this is the correct design but it looks ok to me. 

The French Grenadier figures (again from HaT) which I was also planning on painting up have been put to the bottom of the plastics pile as I really don't like them. HaT obviously employed a different sculptor for the French Grenadiers, they are way taller and 'dumpier' than the usual HaT figures. I'll be replacing these shortly with either Italeri or Zvezda figures.

Anyway, here's the Grenadiers in action...

Up next will be French Hussars.... Stay tuned!