Anglo-Hanoverian Brigade.

 So the first brigade is "done" for my SYW project.
A sort of but not quite correct brigade for Minden.

The brigader Major-General Hon. John Waldgrave lead a brigade of 12th, 23rd and 27th foot, as well as two battalions of the Hanoverian Guard, and 9 6pdr guns. It was a big powerful force, Around 4000 men and 9 guns. 

I have the correct number of battalions, even the correct 3:2 British to Hanoverians. But except for the 6pdr and 12th foot, the units are wrong. My M.J. Hon. John Waldgrave leads the 12th foot, a British grenadier battalion, the 87th foot, and the Hanoverian Oberg and Estorff battalions. And a 6pdr gun.

I do plan on doing the historic brigade, but as I do random regiments, it will take some time. And given brigades and forces changed from battle to battle, this is a perfectly ok, what if brigade for none historic battles. I do plan on doing 3 6pdrs to represent the 9 guns, this battery did a lot of damage to both the French cavalry and infantry. 

From right to left, 6pdr gun, 12th foot, grenadier battalion, 87th foot, 

Second line, right to left, Oberg and Estorff

My next target is finishing my Minden allied cavalry brigade, I got part of the 3rd dragoon guards primed. Like the french cavalry brigade, it will be 36 strong. 

British grenaders.

 So IL2 took up most of my life the last two weeks, first about 12 hours of WW1 flying, and then another 18+ of WW2 flying, Fighting over Holland during Market Garden.

Here I'm taking down a Ju 88, it's like trying to down a Mamukil, I fired all 500 .50cal and 280 20mm. But it did go down at least, I almost got caught napping on the way back.

But the main point of this post is that I'm done with a unit, I did the first 4 months and months ago, And then I started on the remaining 20, but IL2 got in the way, so took a month and a half to finish them. 

The unit consisted of the companies from the 6 regiments at Minden.

12th, 23rd, 37th, 51st, 25th and 20th. 

This brings my Brtish up to 3 battalions and will be brigaded with my two Hanoverian battalions. 
This brings my SYW collection up to 14 battalions. I'm not tantalizingly close to 500, less than 12 away from it. I will probably do the 3rd dragoon guards to complete the 500 goal. 
But it's slow going because of WW2 flight sim and wife will so have 3 weeks of vacation. So I doubt I'll finish the 500th before sometime in late July at the earliest. 

French Cavarly brigade.

 I had planned on expanding my French units to I'd end up with a brigade of 60, which would be nice and impressive. But I'm not very tidy and have misplaced quite a lot of my Crann tara French cavalry. I'm missing 9 in fact to finish the last two regiments. So the brigade became a humble 36 instead.

Regiments, Mestre de camp Général, Cuirassiers du Roy and Talleyrand. 

It's led by Antoine Chrétien de Nicolaï, who really led a division of infantry at Minden, but so far my French army isn't big enough to require a divisional leader. So until a second French infantry brigade is done, he'll lead my cavalry. 

All these are Minden miniatures with Maverick cloth flags. 

Except for the Antoine Chrétien de Nicolaï figure who is really a Montclam figure from Crann Tara.

Mestre de camp on the right as it's the senior regiment

                                                  Followed by Cuirassier du roy

With Tallyrand at the far end.

Tallyrand being a nice typical french gentlemen regiment with a white coat and red facings. 

Still working towards 500

 So I'm back on the SYW waggon, working my way towards 500, I'm now at around 452 if I only include actually finished units. If I add the various half-finished I'm at 480. I had planned on finishing all my French cav, creating a nice big brigade of 60 cav. But I've yet again misplaced stuff. So I can only finish 1 more half-finished regiment. So that will be the next I do. I then have to look for other ways to get to the 500 marks, but I have a feeling I'll do a detour or two before I get to 500. I have a new super-secret project going on(or more like super-secret reactivation of a project. ) As well as getting some more Napoleonic stuff done.

Anyway, the latest unit for my SYW project is the very very stylish and handsome Cuirassier du Roy. 

                                               The only French cavalry regiment with both front and backplate and 

                                                having them above the jacket,

    The similaraties with the Napoleinc cuirassiers is obvius. 

As with most French regiments of the SYW, this one only had two squadrons. So this one is done done. 

Erzherzog Leopold Cuirassiers

 I made my life way to difficult for myself today. Using a white background when photoing Austrians... Two Squadrons of Erzherzog Leopold Cuirassiers, I hope to do all 6 Squadrons, so 36 figure regiment, 

This regiment was highly needed for my Austrians, as they had very little cavalry support. Up next will be Baden-Baden infantry regiment and 4 companies of Horse Grenadiers. Figures are Minden and flag is Maverick Models cloth.

Sers'/Diericke Fusiliers

 So I finally finished this battalion, like most of my units, its been in the making for months. I don't remember when I started on it, it might have been last year...

My Prussian force is now a whopping 3 battalions and a few squadrons of cavalry. 

But overall my SYW project is now 318 infantry and 96 cavalry. This means my SYW is closing in on my GNW project in scale, and might soon become my main project in 28mm, it's only 8 infantry behind my GNW project, but about half of the cavalry, but more than twice the artillery. 

My infantry, Fredrick only has his brother's regiment, a fusilier regiment and a grenadier battalion to beat the Austrians with. 

I'll now try and finish some other half-finished units, like my Austrian cuirassier unit. And two French cavalry units. I have enough unpainted infantry to get up to 408. And enough unpainted cavalry to get up to almost 200. It's all Minden/fife&drum and Crann Tara.

Armand, Vicomte de Belzunce, on a cold foggy morning somewhere in Germany, looking for his regiment/brigade while thinking about how hard he is going to beat his manservant for being late with the hot coffee. 

I finished the 3rd battalion of Belzunce/Rougé. 

I used 3 and a half years doing the second battalion, but it "only" took me 8 months to do the 3rd battalion, I hope to finish the 4th before the year is over.

Not happy with the pictures at all, most turned out very blurry, it was raining and sunny at the same time, "perfect" for taking pictures.

 Naturally, the 1st battalion should be on the right, but since I painted that one now about 4 years ago. It doesn't really match my current style. So I had to hide it. 

I'll try and finish my British grenadiers and some mounted officers.

I have a table! 

It's been over 7 years since the last table shoot. 

Sadly it rained(when it wasn't supposed to) So I had to pack down everything, And so the photos weren't the way I wanted them. I also had to edit out a rather fugly pink tent the wife had put up in the garden to paint some garden furniture. 

 This is put up with one side being Anglo-Hanoverian and Prussian vs French and Austrian.

French behind a stone fence, looking down the Anglo-Allied cavalry.

 The table is sparse with vegetation, I need to get more of my trees up and running. But even so, just having a few hills made it hard to depoly the troops 

 The Austrian defending the top of a hill, with French cavalry in reserve. I found 3 french squadrons didn't have their bases finished. So I had to photoshop the bases.

 Austrian Croats, don't what they do best, holding woods.

 The Prussians

 The Anglo-Hanoverians.

 The camera was not helpful and so several pictures were totally out of focus, so the Austrian cavalry didn't even get one picture. But they are there. 

Random officer

I planed on a big 40mm Sharp Practice project. But I found the Perry 40mm range very limited. And I don't like the Sash and Saber 40mm stuff.
I also found I can't really paint 40mm better than I paint 28mm, so I got a little discouraged. 

Anyway, I felt like painting a guy, a British lieutenant from the Royal Welch Fusiliers. 

 I'm happy with the coat, and facings, less with the face, and not happy with the white trousers at all. 

The blued and gild sword also wasn't fantastic.




Also someone requested bigger versions of the Croats from the last blogpost, so I'm throwing them along here at the bottom.

Croats!

I've done 6 Croats from the Karlstädter-Lykaner Grenzinfanterieregiment. I plan on doing more of these. But I've been in a painting slump, with drills, brushes and figures all conspiring against me. So I needed something so show.  

Reading Horrace St Pauls diary, it's amazing how much these soldiers dominated the early part of the Seven Years' War, The Prussians seemed incapable to counter them. a Few hundred Croats could wreak havoc in the Prussian army. Hundreds of Prussians could be killed, wounded and captured, and in one instance, the Austrians literally didn't lose a man. 

The book also makes it clear the perfect Sharp Practice force. While SP isn't my main thing for SYW, I do plan on doing it on the side, and the diary makes it clear that the standard force the Austrians use when they want to make problems Prussian consists of Croats, Hussars, often Grenadier companies and sometimes regular musketeers. So a SP force would be a couple of skirmishing Croats, and grenadiers for close order infantry, maybe a musketeer unit. And also some hussars. 

 I have enough for 9 more infantry with command and a mounted officer. 

 Formed up, which they did do. 

Die Kleine Boom Boom

Trucking away at my SYW Winter Project.

This time I did an Austrian 6pdr with limber.

 I've never done limbers for my artillery, I've always just wanted to get on with it, I mean a limber doesn't add a unit, the so it's just money and time I could spend on more cannon, infantry or cavalry 

 But it does look good with a limber, I don't think I'll use limbers for my Napoleonic project. Given the batteries are like 3-6 cannon and I'll have like 2 or 3 batteries. But for my SYW project and maybe my GNW project it will be easier given less cannon. I plan on adding an ammo wagon.  Having this equipment not only looks good but adds to the footprint of the artillery, which is realistic. 

The Crew, Gun and equipment are all Minden miniatures.
A big kudos to Minden and Jim, for going above and beyond in customer service.