Reichsarmee Update

Whew,..well the past two weeks have been pretty busy. I wish I could say I got a great deal acomplished with this project,...but thats not the case. I got alot of things done (starting a D&D campaign for my buddies..thats a huge time drain there), but not alot thats blog related. I did manage to find the time to finish painting the Reichsarmee troops for Rossbach.

Here we see, Charles de Rohan, Duc de Rohan, Marechal of France, the Prince of Soubise confering with the Prince of Hessen-Darmstadt. Holding a grand review of the Reichsarmee troops in his army.


A close up of the Prince de Soubise, the flag is his personal crest (or family not sure which), I thought it would add some additional color to the Army Commander Stand.

The "Blau" Wurzburg Regiment.

The Varel Brigade, consisting of the Kurtier Regiment (used this one for the command stand) and Varel Regiment.

The Hohenzollern Cavalry Brigade, coming from closest to farest, is the Wurttemburg Dragoons, the Hohenzollern Cuirassier, and Kurplafz Carabiniers.

The 2nd Hohenzollern Cavalry Brigade (same guy commanded both brigade, rather confusing chain of command). Closest is the Brandenburg-Ansbach Dragoons (blue facings) and then the Brandenburg-Bayreuth Cuirassier (red facings)

For those wondering here is the Age of Honor, stats/OoB for the Reichsarmee at Rossbach

--Hessen-Darmstadt (xx)
--Holstein: C 3/-2 (Blau Wurzberg Regt.)
--Rosenfeld: C 3/-/2 (Kreis Regt)
--Varel: C 6/5/4 (Varel & KurTrier Regts.)
--Ferentheil: C 6/5/4 (Ferentheil & Kronegk Regts.)
-- 2 Foot Batteries (Regulars)

Hohenzollern: R 7/5/4 AT (Hohenzollern & Kurpfalz Cuir., Wurttemburg Dragoons)

Hohenzollern-B: C 8/7/5 HT (Bayreuth Cuir., Ansbach Dragoons)

Hope to do some French and finish the Prussian Cavalry this next week...fingers crossed.

Would love to say more but have to get going else I'll be late for work.

S.

First units

So the first part of my Age of Honor project will be doing the Battle of Rossbach. (I'm guess the AoH scenario book most likely won't be out this year, I could be wrong ..if so..YAY..christmas comes early) An extremely lopsided victory in Frederick's favor, I think it's hard to reproduce in a wargame, lets face it..all the breaks pretty much went towards the Prussians. A few bad rolls for the Prussians a few good ones for the French right at the start of the game, and the wargame might be have a different ending. Also the French army at Rossbach is just a wonderfully colorful army to paint, French units, Swiss & German regiments in the French army, Austrian cavalry, the Reichsarmee units (crappy troops true, but well dressed). It certainly won't be dull painting ahead.

My mounting for the AoH is slightly different than I'm sure the rules say or AoE basing. I decided to go with a more wider frontage and lesser depth. First because that works better for mounting the 5 man strips for H&R figures. Also I think it looks better in terms for the more linear armies of this time period. Either way like the rules state the basing isn't that important as long as it's uniform for all troops.

Pictures of the first couple units are at the bottom of the page. My PC/blog creating skills are pretty minimal so getting them as part of this post or between post baffles me...I'm sure I'll figure out eventually. Anyway...painted two Reichsarmee brigades and brigade of Prussian cavalry. Hope to finish the remaining Reichsarmme units over the weekend.

Change in profile picture..

...Well apparently the family dog is quite particular of the use of her image. So to avoid any legal issues (who wants to get sued by their dog)..I changed the profile picture. Now I only have to worry if the descendants of Seydlitz wanting to threaten me.

6mm Figures

So...who to use for the project. Baccus, H&R, Adler, Irregular so manychoices...well not really but you get the idea.

In the end I decided to stick with the Classic H&R (Navwar) line. Now I know Baccus is taking the 6mm world by storm in popularity. And while yes they do have alot going for them, several factors kept me in the old school H&R family.

First off...I still have ALOT of old unpainted H&R 7YW figures...so..some what of an incentive to keeping cost down.

Next, while I think that Baccus does AWESOME infantry I do..calm down now..think their cavalry suck. To create better detail on the rider they really screwed up the horse. Their cavalry IMO look like an army of lumberjacks, NBA & NFL players riding on ponies from some kids zoo. Seriously many of their cavalry...the rider and his head & gear/helment etc is bigger than horse's head. I've only been on or near horses so many times but you notice these are BIG animals. You see a guy on the horse you notice the size of the horse not the guy riding it. Baccus' efforts to bring greater detail to 6mm I think distorted their cavalry lines.

H&R despite their age...are really good 6mm figures. (Not to slight Baccus again..but for their size...and Baccus are like 2-3mm bigger and wider than H&R). Anyone who can't produce really good paint jobs with H&R should stick to 15mm+.

Flag Stands...yes again the Baccus method of using super cool PC printed Flags are great. But again...still have some problems. AGAIN I think their flags are TOO BIG, second it seems that only the English armies in both their 7YW range and Napoleonic ranges, come with TWO Flag bearers.....whats up with that? Almost every nation had a colonel and regimental colour. So whats with stiffing all the other nations of Europe...only England gets the cool two flag look.
Plus...where is the 6mm challenge in printing flags from the internet or off pre-made sheets. Any 6mm painter who loves 6mm...REALLY enjoys trying to paint flags to get as much realistic detail on them as possible, its a fun challenge.

(To all the Baccus fanatics out there...please no hate mails...these are just my opinions..we are talking about 6mm figures for heavens sake)

So with those reasons I go with the oldies but goodies. And once you see my 1st photos, you'll see how good those H&R can look...at least imo anyway.

Steve

Day One

Hello,

Welcome to my newly created Blog. This site will be an account of my Seven Years War (also WSS and WAS) 6mm wargaming project. I did do the 7YW in the past with Warfare in the Age of Reason. A fine rule set, but didn't give me the satisfaction of BIG battles. But since I painted that collection over the course of many year, and often with little direction I decided to sell off the figures on Ebay (quite successfully too). Figuring that some day I would go back to the 7YW, that day came sooner than expected. I've been a huge fan of Fire&Fury since day one of its release. Age of Eagles is an excellent adaptation of those rules. And the soon to be released Age of Honor rules has rekindled my love of 18th century warfare. So starting totally from scratch I decided to record my progress with this project. Show pictures of my works, create and post scenarios which AoH may not cover, and hopefully hear from people who like me think 6mm is the only way to wargame.

Steve