What I'll be (mostly) doing this Year

Go here for a sneak peek.

The long and the short of it is that I'll be devoting about 60% of my hobby time this year to a fairly ambitious demonstration game slated for the Australia Day Long Weekend in January 2009.

The year is 1887, Britain and Russia are at War over Afghanistan or Caviar or something or other, and the pesky Russians have decided to empty the bank vaults of her Majesty's loyal, but tiny Colony of Victoria!

To do this they need to storm the forts at the Heads of Port Phillip Bay.

We will be re-enacting this momentus "historical" event by putting on a demo-game of the Russian amphibious assault on Fort Nepean.

Prussias' Hussar Regiment Nr 5

Illustrated is "Altpreussische Uniformen" by Hans Bleckwenn. This book is a nice little snapshot of the Frederician Army. It's not complete, but has a smattering of different regiments of each troop type. Each is illustrated with a colour plate depicting the basics of the Privates, the NCOs, the Officers and the Musicians uniforms as well as numerous small details like their colours and standards.

I had quite forgotten that I had ordered this book via the Internet until it arrived in my letter box. On examining it, I was so taken by the plate for von Reuschs' Hussar Regiment number 5 that I had to try painting some figures up as this regiment.

The figures are RSMs, on one of the galloping horse variants. I used the the Prussian Hussar in Mirliton for the troopers with an Austrian Hussar as the Busby-wearing Officer.

They are quite nice figures, but can be a little tricky to paint on account of the fine-ness of the detail. Try a beer instead of a coffee while you are painting these boys.

Painting was done from a black undercoat with a pretty liberal amount of mid-gray highlighting. It took me the best part of a week to get them done. The "dagging" on the saddle-cloths was done by painting the whole pattern in white and then going over again in red - this let me leave a fine white border while also brightening up the red.