From BurkhardS: 28mm Napoleonic Austrians, Prussians & French (100 points)

From Burkhard:

These minis were painted over the last two weekends. Essentially these are meant to fill some of the gaps I still have for my Völkerschlacht von Leipzig project.

Up first were a couple of Östereichische (Austrian) Jäger. Now while my Allied force for the scenario is Prussian, it also includes four Austrians. These represent a company worth of Jäger that got lost earlier in the day and attached themselves to the Prussians. The minis are Front Rank. They should fit in well with my Calpe Prussians since they are roughly the same size and heft. They are marvelous sculpts to paints. The only slight reservation I had with these was that they were a bit boring in their colour choice with their Hechtgraue uniforms and mainly balck equipment... wish Front Rank had sculpted a few Haversacks on for a little colour!

Up next are a few Prussian officers. In a recent game we played I had to use some British officers as stand-ins which resulted in some jokes that I needed more Prussian officers to prevent the Brits from stealing the glory. One is a pair of artillery officers representing Oberstleutnant Schmidt who commanded von Yorcke´s artillery reserve that day. Both minis and their Horses are from Calpe. I really enjoyed their businesslike simplicity. While it might not show on the photos, I enjoyed painting the reflection of the sky into the telescope lense. I  felt this gave a great counterpoint to that simplicity and serves as a good eyecatcher.

The other one is a Prussian officer (Perry) meant to represent the officer who commanded the second detachment of the avant garde. Unfortunately his name is unknown, but this also gave me the opportunity to choose his facing colours. I went for silesian yellow, since there a lot of units from Silesia in the force and since it gave a nice contrast with the blue of the uniform and the red of the turnbacks. Also on the base are a French artillery casualty and broken gun from Offensive Miniatures. I feel that piece has lots of character and they both serve to distract from one another therefore creating lots of action on the base. The only mood point is that I arranged them in a way that it looks like the Prussian officer is shouting to get that dead Frenchmen moving again.

Up next are the French officers. I also had some gaps there. Not that I do not have enough French command stands, but a lot of those are very high ranked and it looks strange to have Napoleon lead a brigade. ;-)

First is a French colonel from Victrix. And I have to say... for me this is one of the top five Napoleonic minis around if not the best. There is so much character in that minis especially if combined with the prancing horse from the set, you just have to love that mini! It just screams smug aristocratic officer. And I love it. It is meant to represent a French General de Brigade for my Möckern project. Yes, I know this is a colonels uniform, but I simply had to realise I I did not have enough minis with the right uniform around so this will have to do. I also added a Grenadier Porte Fannion (Perry) to the base to make sure he does not look too alone.

The other base is a French General de Division and his aide. His is meant to represent Général de division Count Joseph Lagrange who commanded the French 21st Division at Leipzig. The minis is actually a Marechal painted up to represent a GdD. Both he and his aide are Perry Miniatures.

I really enjoyed painting these Frenchmen. One thing I really love to do is paint NMM gold. Now over the past few months I only painted French Légère and Prussians and while those have a lot of silver in their clothing... no gold. But about no one sports more gold than French officers so this was a great remedy! 

Last up is another French artillery casualty from Offensive Miniatures. I have not really decided ow to use him, But I wanted to paint him in one go while painting his mate so he is here as well!

Up next on the table is a battery of Prussian horse artillery. The four guns are already painted, but I have not started on the crew yet and next weekend is filled with social functions... it will be a a though challenge to get these done before the deadline.

Wow, beautiful work Burkhard! I have to admit have a great soft spot for Napoleonics so I love seeing submissions such as this. I really like your non-metalic metal effect - I've been trying much the same thing lately and am sorely missing the loss of GW's Bubonic Brown as it gave a great base shade. Anyway, again, lovely stuff.

These Austrian, Prussians and French will give Burkhard 100 points (and I see you are just one foot figure short of your target...).