"How to Start Napoleonic Prussians" Topic

Of possible interest?

YouTube link

Amicalement
Armand

Turn switch; pull cord, away you go….

Ok I looked; I left… you really don't want to know…
some of the graphics tho (looking at the Russians link) were frankly pathetic unscaled, low-res ripoffs and worthless.
If he's serious, surely its time to step out of the shadows and use a name for credibility.
OK, I'll now…
d

I was going to say, "go early", but he beat me to it . . .

Cheers,
John

This is just "How to buy etc" and assumes anything other than 28mm, forget it. I flashed through it, purely for content, hoping for painting tips, specialist units or the rarities (eg 3rd Silesian Landwehr Cavalry). I may therefore have missed it, but I saw no mention of Calpe (the ultimate for Prussians in 28mm) or Front Rank (new to this I admit)

Glup!….

Amicalement
Armand

How to Start Napoleonic Prussians? You'll need a spray can of grey paint and a lot of 'rout' markers.

To quote Michael Caine;

"Not many people know this"

But you would need a lot more dark blue than Grey, for Prussians.

and as for Rod Steiger's "Prussian Black", very few and far between.

But I do admit they are not the most colourful army (well for 1815 anyway) and I am lucky. I am only doing cavalry!

The 24th Regiment has to be the most boring uniform evah. Grey jacket faced grey, grey shoulder straps, grey trousers, grey gaiters, grey schirmutze, grey facings, backpack and blanket roll. Grey leatherwork, grey musket, grey metalwork.

These guys clearly didn't get the memo and thought they were in the ACW.

When I saw that it was just an ad for a few manufacturers I gave up. I'd hoped for an interesting discussion of army structure, how to use it, strengths and weaknesses, history, photos of the troops laid out in brigades etc, but no . . .

Cheers,
John

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Those looks good!…

Amicalement
Armand

That's them. That's the 24th. See my description 4 posts up.

Tango, don't try and recover your credibility now___

Coincidentally, I've just finished basing a 6mm representation of this unit which I painted several years ago, using a method not unlike that described above. Lost it until recently. Then I swept underneath an arm-chair. Found it.

Yep, flawlessly camouflaged against household dust.

I had the 24th once made using Prince August 25mm castings. There was a Prussian figure in their range that PA called "Guard" infantry, but there was so little detail on it you could just overpaint the coat tails and you had reserve infantry.

To paint the 24th, I sprayed them in grey primer then went over them with a grey wash followed by grey highlights. I picked out the greatcoat roll in grey with a grey waterproof sleeve. As they were now looking a bit blingy, I toned them down with a splash of black for the fusiliers' crossbelts. The brown muskets and red-brown musket slings needed calming down a bit so I made sure to do the musketeer crossbelts etc in a sort of off-white. I forget how I made this off-white shade but I think it was by adding some black to the white, to make this elusive, nameless, not-black / not-white shade.

Really made them pop on the table.

With a tastefully understated elegance such as that, the red cap-bands must have seemed positively vulgar. I would respectfully urge restraint.

""*[//]) { >::::

getting Prussians started?

I am reminded that it is often said that Karl Marx was a famous philosopher, but no one ever remembers his sister Onya, who invented the starter pistol.

I frequently stream wargame videos while painting, so I have heard a number of his videos. I do not remember the Prussian one.

For the right kind of person I think his videos do have their merits. People who hang out on the Napoleonic board of TMP are not that target audience. His audience is people just starting out with limited funds who want to get the most bang for their buck, and who want to be in 28mm. Given those limitations it is not a surprise that he leans heavily on certain plastic figure makers. I don't believe the Wargames Atlantic figures were available when the video was done. Given his limitations his choices are arguably correct.

I say arguably because first off he even says there are other ways to go. There are decisions he makes that I don't agree with. And yes the correct answer to the question How to start Napoleonic Prussians is "Start early".

This video on building up a Prussian force mix does not cover painting, but does cover what figures you may wish to initiually start out with. Its really only of interest to folks who are thinking of getting into the hobby, if you are a long timer it offers little. This is the Austrian version.

FWIW ->> if you are a long timer it offers little.<<

SOme of us are capable of recognising that, and have enough critical analysis to find the 'holes' in the hypothesis that these vids are going to be 'helpful enough.
The limited range of 'ready made products' used could be advertising bait, or quite innocent, but in any event it hardly covers the basics I'd consider necessary.
not because it doesn't suit me- does it advance the hobby..?
YMMV, as they say… d

Go the the home page of Perrys miniatures and do an 1806 army, plenty of information there already.

Finding the brands you like is something even new players should be able to do, after all that is the fun part of building up your force mix.

The biggest, less exciting, problem is how much of what do I buy and this is really an issue if you have no idea what rules you are using. I remember when I built up my Prussian force mix I ended up buying so much cavalry there is no way I would use 10% of it, max. I enjoyed painted them up, but if I can't use them I would have been better of building up another force mix.

Thus the major gap I saw was an easy guide for new players to build up a minimum force mix which could allow them to play using a wide range of rules, from WRG, DBN, Age of eagles to BBNB. If you know the rules you are using you could just use the army list, but some rules don't do a good job providing that type of info.

I have to admit this is more an issue for WW2 micro-armour, which is where I got the idea from, but its certainly an unnecessary level of confusion for new players even in Napoleonic's. Thus the videos I created. Once you have built up one force mix, the rest are comparatively easy because you know what you need to do. This is why those types of videos are not useful to an experienced gamer – they have already solved that problem at least once – even if they end up with 24 elements of 12-pounders and 64 elements of Prussian Kurassiers which they never use.

Ancients have less of an issue because most use DBMM/DBM army lists to tell them what to buy, even if they don't use DBM/DBMM.

Balance straight away is the key to building a Prussian army. Best to find a OOB and follow it.