Irregular Wars Wargaming

After a lengthy Hapsburg hiatus ( last mentioned in 2020 ), I have started the year with a few 6mm Napoleonic Austrian reinforcements and a renewed enthusiasm to actually push them about in simulated anger. I've a few new units I wish to add to the army - bringing it up to a 300 point force if we end up playing  Bataille Empire , or a respectable five divisions should we go down the  Black Powder 2  route. First up, serendipitously, are the 1st (Kaiser Franz) Hussars. With their dark blue uniforms and black shakos, they could easily do double duty as the 11th (Szekler) Hussars from Transylvania. The next regiment is the 4th (Vincent) Chevauleger. This unit is actually composed of left-over cuirassiers supplemented by some spare mounted generals with greenstuff helmets to make them blend in. Given the hotchpotch make up of the unit, I think they have come together very cleverly. I went with the 4th regiment to ensure I got the green coats - not all chevauleger wear gr...

What better way to celebrate a hint of spring in the air and humidity dropping to a reasonable level, than to sup deeply on the fumes of matt varnish. I didn't manage to get my hands on any varnish last summer, so today the backlog was effectively a pandemic's worth of painting, or to put it another way, 1,118 figures. Seems somebody had some extra time on his hands... Admittedly many of the Greeks were previously painted, but they were all rebased and touched up, so they still count.  This tranch is all 10mm stuff painted and based for Fantastic Battles : my Ziggurat Dwarves (137), Wyld Elves (93) and a Classical Greco-Macedonian army with mythological elements (245) which is, not co-incidentally, also 200 points of Early Macedonians for l'Art de la Guerre. In this lot, 6mm Napoleonic Austrians (630) for Bataille Empire and 28mm gladiators (6) for Blood Sweat and Cheers , and sci-fi halflings (7).  

It has taken almost a full year (the first unit was completed on the 18th January), but my first 200 point army for Bataille Empire is now finished and awaiting table-top deployment. Of course, given the state of the world, it will probably be quite a few months before they get used in anger. When we decided to venture into 6mm Napleonics, I wanted a fairly generic and middle-of-the-road army. My thoughts first turned to Sweden as something a little left of centre, but having struggled to find suitable proxy figures, I settled on Austria - an army I played more than 20 years ago in 15mm for Napoleon's Battles .  Foolishly, we opted for 'shako' era, rather than 'bicorn' era Napoleonics. I say foolishly because I didn't realise at the time that post-1808, every Austrian infantry line regiment required six bases (or to put it another way, 96 figures!). Astute readers will observes a direct correlation between the minimum number of line infantry required by the arm...

Nominally the 51st Infantry Regiment (drawing recruits from Hungary and Romania), whose colonel-in-chief was Feldmarschalleutnant Gabriel Splenyi von Mihaldy, I am oh-so-delighted to present the last* of the infantry regiments for my Austrian corp for Bataille Empire . This army was my big project for 2020 and, while I have done a raft of other stuff, it has continued to loom ominously in the corner. Delighted that I am on course to finish it up by the end of this most challenging of years.  _____________ * Last is such a definitive term...  

Progress on my 6mm Austrians has been painfully slow, but I am getting there. In the great tradition of 1914, I'm sure I'll be finished by Christmas... Never-the-less, with the completion of my first cuirassier regiment for Bataille Empire , I am just three units away from a 200 point army. Given the blue facings, these gents shall nominally be the 7th (Moravian) Cuirassiers commnaded by Carl Eugen Prinz von Lothringen-Lambesc. Uniform guide lifted from the interweb.  

Continuing to plug away at my 1809ish Austrians, I am please to have finished the last unit of my Advanced Guard Division, the Archduke Charles Legion. The legion (six battalions strong) was raised by Archduke Charles (Erzherzog Karl) in 1808 from Bohemia and Moravia to provide bodies of light infantry for the Austrian army. Unlike the more numerous battalions of the same name raised in 1800, the 1809 legion seems to have been uniformed in brown coats with red facings and pike-grey trousers. The entire first battalion seems to have worn the Corsican hat (like regular jager battalions), but only the light companies in the other battalions wore the same, other companies wore a shako. This unit, with skirmishers wearing the Corsican hat but the rest wearing a shako, will nominally be the 2nd battalion which saw action (and took heavy casualties) at Aspern and Wagram in 1809.

It has been very slow going - I find it psychologically challenging to paint 96 figures, all in the same uniform, at one time but I refuse to break single units up into batches - but I have finally finished another large unit for my nominally 1809 Austrians for  Bataille Empire . I am hoping to be able to field my full 200 point army some time... this year, surely... we shall see. I'm not enjoying the painting journey for this army, but I do love the result.

Continuing (slow and steady!) with my Baccus 6mm Austrians for Bataille Empire , I have finished the first of my white-coated line regiments - I will have four in the main infantry division in my 1809 corp. I have used infantry wearing the 1798 pattern helmet for this regiment for a couple of reasons. Partly as a way of distinguishing the veteran regiment from regular and conscript line, but mostly because I love the look! These are nominally the Deutschmeister Nr 4 regiment which are generally describe as having light blue facings in modern sources, although Knötel seems to show them with a darker blue.  

While I am finding the painting process for these chaps painfully slow (all those cuffs, collars, turnbacks and cross belts!), I am enjoying the results. Here are my two batteries of Austrian cavalry artillery - complete with little benches for the gunners to ride on. Like the rest of the Baccus 6mm Austrian range, these are wonderful sculpts. I can now do a decent sized vanguard division (60 points worth), but I will wait on the flag for the Bohemians before putting them all together. 😏

Painted in such an ambiguous way as to represent the 3rd (Erzherzhog Ferdinand Carl d'Este), 7th (Lichtenstein), or 10th (Stipsicz) Hussars - all wore blue uniforms with green shakos - here are my second unit of Hussars for my Austrian vangaurd division. 

The Imperial and Royal Army of Emperor Francis II continues to gather, albeit slowly. Here is a battalion of elite jäger to lead my vanguard. Admittedly, this photo was taken accidentally while trying to get a good angle to see the detail on the tiny  Baccus 6mm  jägers, but it does rather give a good sense of their size...

I've been much distracted, but have finally managed to get another unit painted for my  Bataille Empire  Austrian corp. Unlike the large lumbering unit of  Bohemian landwehr  I painted last, this time I went with a plucky, punchy little unit of Hungarian hussars to join my vanguard division. I ensured a historically accurate order of battle for my division by asking my family which uniforms they liked best. The result - the 4th hussars, AKA the most colourful unit they could find! The figures are Baccus 6mm, and they are simply splendid! 

Not entirely sure how it happened, but the new big project for some of our group is 6mm Napoleonics for Bataille Empire , the new rules by Hérve Caille of L'Art de la Guerre fame. After some to-ing and fro-ing, I have ended up with Austria - roughly 1809. I once had a 15mm Austrian army but sold it in the great pre-uni sale of stuff some 21 years ago. It feels just a little bit like coming home. I have started with a large unit of Bohemian landwehr (Baccus Spaniards in top hats - still requiring their wee flag) and a battery of brigade guns to provide support.