"Prussian Order of Battle for my army" Topic

I have been collecting seven years wars figures for quite a while now. I have a sizable 15 mm collection of Prussian Austrian French and British but my armies don't really conform to any particular order of battle. I simply change the unit designations as needed within the required troop type – musketeer, grenadier, fusilier, cuirassier, dragoon, hussar, etc… During the course of my gaming I have use different rules different, different size regiment and different game scales.

Lately though, as I expand my armies I have had a desire to organize them according to a particular battle's OB. I obviously would need one for a large battle as I have lots of figures but I can't quite find the right OB.

So, I am curious for those of you with large Prussian armies how have you model your order of battle. Do you use the same battle for both the Austrians and Prussians or mix and match?

Both but most often mix and match

My Prussians started with Rossbach but quickly diverged as I picked up eBay lots of this and that. The Austrians have never been anything more than a hodge-podge. It's funny because with my Napoleonics and ACW it is critical to me to model specific campaigns or battles. Go figure.

I'm in the same boat. It's funny isn't it. Seems like ACW and Napoleonic are very OB driven yet my AWI and SYW units seem to be whomever I got my hands on. It works for me generally as I use my imagination. I figure if I can imagine this little MDF house as a farm, I can probably overlook a wrong flag or two.

Mine started with Prussians and Russians for Gross-Jagersdorf and morphed as I added particularly colourful Hussar units and those with nice flags.

I don't have any 18th Century Prussians, but like my units to be OOB based. My British and Jacobite Armies started with the Prestonpans Orbat, then I added all those at Fakirk, Culloden and various minor actions.

I will be adding some Hessians soon. They only took part in one skirmish around Dunkeld (which I visited recently), but I quite like the "what if" scenario of them advancing up through the pass at Killiekrankie to relieve the siege of Blair Castle (visited both those recently as well). I do have figures (as yet unpainted) for the British Army defence of England, most of which can be used in the War of Austrian Succession.

I have plans to expand into the War of Austrian Succession and have figures (as yet unpainted) for French, Austrians and Dutch, using Orbats for Dettingen and Fontenoy. I have thought about further expansion to Laufeld and Roccoux, but have not planned that yet.

Rod

For my 7YW armies I started out modeling the complete army of one of the minor German states (Brunswick). For the opposition forces and supporting allied troops I then went to the OoB of a couple of battles and picked units that were present at those battles. Of course I'm so nuts that for the French regiments I only picked ones whose button and pocket patterns matched those on the figures I used.

By using an OoB you can avoid one of the common wargamerisms, an army of all elite units. Or what I did with one of by Nap. units. I painted a unit because I liked the color combination of its uniform, only to find out it spent its whole service guarding a harbor well behind the lines.

Hope this has helped

When I built my 25-28mm French 7YW army, I went through Pengel & Hurt, and found the units that were in the most battles. I was saddened to find that the units with red cuffs, blue vests, or reverse, were in few to no battles! So it was usually blue vest, blue cuffs, brass, sometimes pewter buttons, and the same in red.

I then realized that the regiments with the most unusual flags were little used (Penthievre, which guarded the coast for the whole war. had a brown and green mixed flag with anchors in the white cross arms), or badly abused (as the one with the crazy-quilt pattern in each corner, destroyed early!).

The same prevails for my Prussian Old Glory 18mm, as the Fusiliers were usually not used frequently in battle, except the 35th; 39th; 40th (Kreytzen) because of the rose "everythings" and the most-destroyed regiment in Frederick's service; and 41st. The coolest color combinations were seldom used.

In this sense, the Austrians are a dream come true! Hard to identify as specific uniform, except perhaps the Hungarians. And the Colours are no help. Watch the buttons, use them any way you want!

GdeP

Like many others I started out painting those units that looked interesting i.e. cool uniforms or flags. Now I do the old "mix n' match" some formations are per OOB and some are merely cool looking units. When I discovered kronoskaf.com or sometimes simply referred to as Project Seven Years War online I have found a really good resource for accurate OOBs and some really great uniform color plates and descriptions. If you delve more deeply into the site you can find some info regarding tactics and drill. Highly recommended for busy wargamers like myself who like a nice "one stop" site. Unfortunately, they only do the Seven Years Wars at present, but there are rumors that they may be branching out.