“Barry Lyndon” Prussian big battalion finally complete!

At last, 60-plus figures all painted and based into one impressive big battalion.  My photo came out nice, too, in my humble opinion!  It is quite a long picture, so click on it to see the full effect of the large battalion in all its glory.  Shame the officer carrying the white flag toppled over without me noticing whilst I was taking the photo.

Anyway, this afternoon I attached the final piece of flock to the last figure in my 28mm Minden Miniatures Prussian battalion. It’s taken me a year to paint just this one unit, but I’ve finally got there!

This battalion of 28mm figures is based on the Prussians in the movie Barry Lyndon. So I’ve copied the inaccuracies in the movie. You’ll see the wrong colour turnbacks, the incorrect colour straps and the mis-matched flags, all faithfully recreated!

The movie doesn’t name the regiment, but in the book it is called the ‘Bulow’ Regiment. The orange, black and white flags carried in the movie are from different real-life regiments, but for my purposes, they will be the flags of the imaginary Kubrick Regiment, which is fighting for my “imagi-nation”, the Barrayat of Lyndonia.  The flags are the usual exquisite GMB Design products, by the way.

My unit organisation and basing are not designed for any particular set of wargames rules, but are purely the way I like them for aesthetic reasons.  Historical accuracy, historical schmaccuracy, for imagi-nation or movie-based armies!!! 

The Kubrik Regiment now joins my other two Barryat of Lyndonia big battalions:

- Gale’s Regiment of Foot:

- Régiment de Royal-Cravates:

- Kubrick Regiment

My Minden British all painted at last

As you do when you’ve just finished painting a new unit, I recently put my newly-completed (but not yet based) Minden Miniatures Seven Years War British troops onto their first parade as soon as the last lick of varnish was dry. 

A slightly overcast day produced perfect lighting conditions, resulting in a portfolio of photos I’m quite proud of.  But a gentle breeze did play havoc with the dressing of the lines, being specially fond of blowing over the standard bearers with a follow-on domino effect through the first company.  So the carefully aligned formations in these photos had to be painstakingly redone between each shot! 

The mounted colonel watches as his battalion marches past, grenadiers at the fore.

As you can see, the basing is not yet done.  And I have not completely firmed up my ideas on how to do it, either.  I’m not going to base for any particular ruleset – at the speed I am painting these large units (three months for this one) I suspect that by the time I have assembled a whole army, the rules that they’ll  be used for are probably not even written yet!

The number of figures and the organisation are loosely based on the old wargames rulebook Charge! Or How to Play Wargames.  But those rules pre-date the concept of basing entirely, using individual figures that must’ve been an absolute pain to move round the battlefield.  

I am inclined towards having eight figure bases made up of  two ranks of four.  This would make two bases per company.  The officers, NCOs, drummers and standard bearers would all be on individual bases so I could position them around the battalion depending on its formation. 

However, to throw the cat into the bag, I’ve now also started thinking about having each company based in single, rather than double lines.   So a company in line would then be 16 figures long, plus supernumeries.  And the whole battalion would be a massive 48 rank-and-file figures long.   These days one is more accustomed to seeing miniatures in double lines, but I think that having two ranks represent three or four real ranks is no more realistic than representing the whole company frontage with a dozen or so figures. 

Anyway, I haven’t come to a decision yet.  So who knows what will happen.

Sergeants on the left keep each of the three company lines aligned.

Overall, I have found the Minden Miniatures figures a very paintable range.  The sculpting is very crisp, and the detail is easy to pick out.  The figures respond particularly well to detailing with GW paint washes.  And of course such fine troops deserve the best of flags, and nothing beats GMB Design for these.

The battalion consists of three companies, one of grenadiers, the other two of fusiliers.