28mm Hessians: New IR9 Prinz Karl.

 

I've just finished this regiment with the new flags from Frederic Aubert.

SYW Battle – the Reichsarmee against the Prussians

 

We played a 28mm battle recently that saw a larger Reichsarmee (RA) being well and truly 'duffed' up by a Prussian army. On the RA side there were four brigades of rather indifferent infantry, two batteries of artillery and a brigade of cavalry on either wing. The Prussians had two brigades of infantry (10 battalions in total) advancing quickly in echelon against the enemy centre on the hill. They were served by a lacklustre Prussian battery of 6pdrs as well as some jaegers who pottered around not doing much. On the right wing they had two regiments of dragoons and on the left a single Cuirassier regiment.

We used the rules Honours of War by Keith Flint.

The poor RA diced for generals' capabilities and immediately had a C-in-C classed as 'dithering' and that set the tone for the day. Both RA cavalry wings put up a poor performance and the only highpoints were the performance of the 12pdr battery and Hesse Darmstadt infantry (penultimate picture). These two units actually routed some Prussian battalions but otherwise the day was rather quickly lost with the RA scampering from the field with great alacrity. Sadly the RA C-in-C was captured as he could not chose between his horses to expedite his escape. Dithering to the last minute.

28mm Hessians: Re-flagged IR5 Wutginau and IR8 Graffendorff

 

Just re-flagged these two regiments – Wutginau has the red flags and Graffendorff the blue.

28mm Wars of the Roses: Artillery to end the project

 

28mm Hessians: Re-flagged and re-numbered IR4 Wilke

 

Previously I have been focused on the French and Palatine forces which are now largely finished.

Now it's time to return to the Hessians and I have decided to re-flag the three regiments I have already done. Two of them will just need new flags but one of them (the subject of this post) needs to be a new regiment as well. Previously this regiment was IR7 Leib (see post December 2021) but I have been corresponding with Frederic Aubert (see his FB page SYWBS Seven Years War Battle System)where he has done a massive amount of work/research on many armies of the period).

I have concluded that my current flags are too late and Leib was just a very complicated regiment. It had straw facings in the SYW and the AWI but flirted also with pink facings/flags in the post SYW period.I have decided to change my flags to 1763. See the attached chart from Fredick which shows the bewildering changes to Hessian flags from the early SYW to AWI. I had previously used flags from columns AA and AB and have now changed to columns M and N. So the straw facings of IR7 Leib have now become the straw facings of IR4 Wilke with the new flags of that regiment. This was the easiest option requiring the least amount of re-painting.

The other regiments finished (IR5 and IR8) will just get new flags with no other changes to facings and I will show these soon.

40mm SYW Prussian Cuirassiers

Here is a single squadron for my new Prussian Cuirassiers KR1 Buddenbrock. I will do the other 4 squadrons soon.

These are resin-printed from Chris Parker Games and can be scaled up or down in the 'printing' process. They are not perfect by any means with a few uniform errors (they are closer to Austrians than Prussians) and some weakness in the horses' legs but with careful preparation they do the job. At best you have 2 out of four legs touching the ground so I have had to stacked small plastic cubes  for added strength. But they are very animated and scale well next to my Austrian cuirassiers who themselves are a mix of Irregular and Sash &Saber. I have added paper sabretaches.

 

10mm Old Glory SYW Prussian IR1

These figures are from Old Glory's 10mm SYW range and they are painted as an experiment. I wanted to see what they looked like en masse. So here you can see 75 figures per battalion and in their correct three ranks. Furthermore they have the correct number of flags per battalion – five. The infantry come in strips of five but the command needs to be cut up into smaller chunks to get the 5 standard bearers together.

Painting them is no pleasure at all because there is almost no detailing possible – just facings, turnbacks and other basics. But I am impressed with their look. I have ordered some cavalry from Pendraken just to see whether I can mass the cavalry in very close ranks as well. I doubt that this is a new project but anything is possible.