WSS Danish - Regiment Prince Carl

There have been quite a few distractions of late, what with some new projects and a recent wargame AAR that I may post about (but without pics, as I managed to lose the camera).  However, I have finally finished the third of my Danish War of the Spanish Succession (WSS) regiments, thus completing Bielke's Brigade as part of my planned reproduction of Scholten's Danish command at Blenheim.  The previously completed regiments are the Livgarde til Fods and Prince George's Regiment.

As before these are Blue Moon (15mm/18mm) figures and my painting guide was a combination of CS Grant's books (The Armies and Uniforms of Marlborough's Wars Vols I & II) and the booklet by CA Sapherson (the Danish Army 1699-1715), both from Caliver.

Learning as I go, I made the contrast between the shade coat and the top coat as great as possible this time: the coats are a dark grey base overpainted with light grey and the facings and breeches are ochre overpainted with yellow.

I generally prefer Revell Acrylics, typically because the Tamiya paints I sometimes use can leave a slight sheen and I like my figures to be matt.  Also, if the Revell paints start to dry out a bit you can just add cold boiled water to them to thin them up again.

Anyway, a slight pause now for the WSS whilst I get on with a few other projects.  I have another three Danish regiments to paint, representing Rebdorff's Brigade, and then it's a toss up between choosing more Allies or painting up a few regiments of French to balance up the available forces.

WSS Danish - Regiment Livgarde til Fods

I've caught the painting bug again and managed to finish the second of my War of the Spanish Succession (WSS) Danish regiments this week.  This is the Livgarde til Fods regiment with their distinctive straw-yellow coats and carmine facings and breeches.

Figures are from Blue Moon (15mm/18mm) and my painting guide was a combination of CS Grant's books (The Armies and Uniforms of Marlborough's Wars Vols I & II) and the booklet by CA Sapherson (the Danish Army 1699-1715), both from Caliver.  I like these figures in the march attack pose, particularly as there are about three variants of each type.

My plan is to paint the six Danish infantry regiments present at Blenheim, comprising Scholten's command and I have started with Bielke's Brigade, completing the Regiment Prince George previously (which now has flags, incidentally).

For the guard regiment I tried to make the shading a bit more pronounced than my first effort with Prince George and, after undercoating in black, I used ochre as the coat shade colour and brick red for the facings and breeches.  These were then completed in yellow (Revell acrylic 15) and Carmine (Revell acrylic 36) leaving plenty of the shade layer showing through.  I think that the coats are meant to have red lace up the front but I tried that and it didn't look right so I just stuck with the simple yellow coats and red cuffs.  I'm quite pleased with the results overall.

Flags came from this site which I just printed out and glued on.  The Blue Moon standard bearers have cast flag poles and I did consider drilling them out and replacing with brass rod, but with the flags glued on they seem a bit more robust so we shall see how that goes.  Anyway, next up is Prince Carl's regiment which is back to the basic Danish light grey coat with yellow facings, which I hope to finish in the next few weeks.  We shall see...

WSS Danish - Regiment Prince George

I'm not the fastest (or most accurate) painter in the world but here is my first War of the Spanish Succession period Danish regiment, Prince George, which took me about two weeks to do.  These 15mm fgures are from Blue Moon (click to enlarge the pictures) and my aim is initially to recreate the two Danish brigades that were at Blenheim under Scholten.

WSS Danish - Prince George

I've put them on 30x30mm bases (from Warbases) and each regiment comprises a combination of the following packs:15 MBN 101 - Infantry Command;15 MBN 102 - Infantry Tricorn; 15 MBN 104 - Grenadiers Mitre. I liked the idea of having a couple of grenadiers on the right flank for each regiment.

WSS Danish - Prince George

Authorities differ on the shade of light grey the Danish coats should be but I thought that darker rather than lighter would be more appropriate, particularly as I wanted to make sure that they could be clearly differentiated from any French that happened to be on the table.  Purists will note that they are not wearing double breasted coats as they should be, but that option wasn't available from Blue Moon.

The Prince Geroge regiment has rather striking orange facings which colour I arrived at by mixing some artist's acrylic Cadmium Red and Cadmium Yellow in equal amounts (painted over a red 'shade' layer).  Uniform details came initially from Charles S Grant's books (in this case Vol 1) as well as the recently received booklet The Danish Army 1699-1715 by CA Sapherson (from Caliver books), as well as some other on-line sources.

Orange is not the only fruit (nor, for that matter, the only facing colour used by the Danes)

As you can possibly see I tried, for the first time in 15mm, to achieve some sort of shading techniques, which can be a bit tricky on these small figures.  Basing was a variation on my usual method which involved using rough shelly East Lothian sand, painted earth brown this time and dry brushed, followed by adding some static grass.  Note that I've also not got around to putting the flags on yet.  Ray Rousell from the famous Don't Throw a One blog very kindly sent me some flags, and once I get around to printing these out and fitting them I will have finally finshed my first Danish regiment (though the next one is already started!).

WSS Blue Moon 15mm Grenadiers

Albeit slowly, my War of the Spanish Succession project is progressing, with the first infantry regiment in the process of being painted (the Danish regiment Prince George) and the next one waiting in the wings (painting table) with a nice overing of black undercoat.  However, as with any project there is immediately the issue of basing, rules and basically how many figures one needs to buy in order to get a presentable army on the move.

Blue Moon WSS 15mm Grenadier

Clearly there are various rule sets to be considered and basing needs to be flexible to accommodate any changes.  I have a soft spot for the classic WRG 1685-1845 rules and Black Powder is also a popular contender; however, after visiting Claymore in Edinburgh last month we decided that Piquet Field of Battle (2nd edition) would be worth a try for this period.  These rules suggest four bases per unit and after a bit of thought it was decided that 16 infantry figures (or 8 cavalry) on a 12cm frontage (on four 30x30mm bases) was what we'd aim for.

Being interested in the Danish troops in the WSS, the Battle of Ramillies blog has turned out to be a very useful place, particularly in terms of how the regiments could be represented.  What I liked is that the regiments include a couple of grenadiers and I thought I could do that as well.  So, based on the figures I have (or will have), what I'm planning is shown below:

Obviously Blue Moon do grenadiers and so some arrived in the post this week.  There will be two of these for each regiment and like the line infantry they are very nice sculpts.

Blue Moon WSS 15mm Grenadier - Reverse

There seem to be two pose variants for the grenadiers and I think that once I get some troops finished these guys are going to look quite fine in the place of honour on the right of the regiment.

WSS Blue Moon 15mm Infantry

There are various options for War of the Spanish Succession (WSS) period figures in 15mm (or Marlburian period, if you want to be all anglocentric) including Essex, Dixons, Minifigs, Irregular, Roundway, Lancashire Games, Black Hat and Freikorps to name but a few.  Actually that's quite a lot of choice if you think about it!

Infantry Officer

However, for my WSS project I decided to go for the Blue Moon (Old Glory) figures which are 15mm from the sole of the foot to the eye so, are actually probably more like 18mm figures.

Infantry Officer - Reverse

These troops don't have that stocky look that some figures have (so are similar to Minifigs in that regard) and are very nicely detailed I think, with only slighty visible mould lines and with flash usually only in the awkward gap between the sword scabbard and the leg.

Infantry NCO

Infantry command packs contain 10 figures and comprise two different officer poses, two different NCOs (when I compared two separate command packs there are at least three NCO variants), two drummers, and four ensigns.

Tricorn Infantry

Standard infantry packs contain 30 figures and there are slight pose and head variations in each pack.  I favour the march attack stance over the Minifig style of lunging forward precariously, or other odd postions that some manufacturers come up with, so the marching pose plus the variations available made these the obvious choice for me. 

Tricorn Infantry - Reverse

These are the basic Tricorn Infantry Marching (15MBN102) but there other types of infantry available including French with fuller coats and front-mounted cartridge box (could be used as Spanish), various types of grenadiers and "Infantry with Tricorn in Open Coats" (for summer campaigns presumably, or possibly for use as Prussians).

Nice figures I think and certainly more detailed than some of the competition.  If only my painting skills were up to it....

The WSS Project

Remarkably there has actually been activity on the War of the Spanish Succession front this summer.  The main achievements have been that a) some "15mm figures" from Blue Moon arrived (actually Old Glory Minatures UK Ltd) and b) I've decided what I am going to paint them as (well, the infantry at least).

Blue Moon 15mm Marlburians

When considering the WSS project my first thoughts turned to British and Dutch forces but Geoff has already got some Dutch regiments up and running (in addition to his French and Bavarian) so my attention turned to the Allies.  Although Marlborough led the Allies' campaigns there were troops from quite a number of other nations, which in fact often outnumbered the British contingent.

Looking through the OOB for the Battle of Blenheim, for example, it occured to me that the Danish brigades might be an interesting force to start with.  So my plan initially is to recreate Bielke's Brigade and Rebsdorff's Brigade under Lieutenant General Scholten, that formed part of the Allies' Austian right wing commanded by Eugène himself.  Note that I'm not aiming to copy the OOB for a particular battle, it's just that I like a bit of structure to what I'm planning.

Bielke's Regiments were:

• Regiment of Foot Prince George (light grey coats, orange breeches, facings, etc.) (there were two battalions at the battle, but I'll just have one)
• Regiment Dansk Den Kongelige Livgarde til fods (straw yellow coats, carmine red breeches, facings, etc.)
• Regiment of Foot Prince Carl (light grey coats, grey breeches, yellow facings, etc.)

Rebsdorff's Regiments were:

• Fynske Regiment of Foot (dark grey coats, green breeches, facings, etc.)
• Sjaellandske Regiment of Foot (light grey coats, dark blue breeches, facings, etc.)
• Regiment of Foot Christian Ulrich (light grey coats, grey breeches, crimson facings, etc.)

Uniform details are from CS Grant's excellent  The Armies and Uniforms of Marlborough's Wars Vol 1 (Partizan Press).  I also have ideas for some additonal regiments - probably British, as well as what Danish cavalry regiments to do.  I want to prepare a few Bourbon regiments as well, to supplement Geoff's French and Bavarians.  More of that, as well as the proposed rule set and basing, later.