From GregB - 6mm Austrian Grenadiers (40 Points)

Challenge participants and observers will surely have noticed that Curt took a little break this past weekend (the nerve of the man!).  Well he made a quick visit out to Winnipeg, which of course is always awesome because we get a chance to catch up, drink tons of booze sip a few civil drinks, and play some games.

It is always great to see Curt, but our get-togethers take on an added level of excitement whenever they coincide with the release of a new set of rules for Napoleonics.  As Sam Mustafa has just released a new set of rules - "Blucher" - we of course were very keen to try them out.  This prompted a discussion along the lines of what figures might be available, "do you have Austrians?", "6mm etc. etc.", "I have some, what would work?" "I could really use some Grenadiers..."

I mentioned at the tail end of my last Challenge submission that I had to switch gears to a completely different scale and period.  Well, this is it.  Some back story - many years ago Curt sold me a pile of 15mm French, and I agreed to paint up some stuff as part of the compensation for the acquisition.  Well my progress on that has been desultory at best, but every so often I still crank out a unit here and there. With his impending visit, and all of the discussion around "Blucher", I thought it would be fun. 

The sum of all this blather is this submission - a base of 6mm sized Austrian Grenadiers.  They are based on a 3" square, suitable for Sam Mustafa's Grande Armee rules (for which Curt has a sizeable collection of 6mm figures), but would also work perfect well for "Blucher".  I managed to get this done in a week, from digging them out of my unpainted lead horde, to priming them, to getting them painted and based, just in time for transfer-of-command to Curt this past Sunday.

The figures are from Adler, easily the finest 6mm sculpts out there.  They are piled into two units of roughly thirty figures each, with some mounted officers spread around, to give the overall impression of an Austrian reserve brigade.  They are wearing blue pants, signifying they are Hungarian converged grenadier units.

While the Adler figures are truly amazing sculpts, fixing them to the base is a mind-bending chore.  I much prefer the strips of infantry from Baccus, although in the time it takes to receive the order from Baccus, I could probably finish and base four more of these units...but I digress. 

As for "Blucher", I won't get into that here other than to say "shut up, go buy the rules and play them because they are a lot of fun".  We tried out the game a couple of times, and once again Sam Mustafa has developed a fun and innovative set of rules for a wonderful period.  You will see more about "Blucher" on this blog and over at the Fawcett Avenue Conscripts as things progress there...

Unfortunately I did not leave a clear area on the back of the base for Curt to affix a unit tag, but the Liquitex should scrape off easily enough for that to be done later.  In the interim I hope these fine, garlic sausage warriors take their proud place in the 6mm ranks of the loyal armies of Curt's Hapsburgs, the "real" Emperors, ready to stand firm in the face of Bonaparte's lackeys :)  There are about 65 individual infantry 6mm castings and 3 mounted 6mm castings, giving a total of...I'm not sure, let's say 1000 points (Millsy would have painted the same amount, but in 28mm, so that's my way of trying to keep up). 


From Curt:

Thanks so much Greg, these guys are brilliant (I particularly like the eggplant purple bearskin tops on the rear unit). They will provide some nice shock ability to my Austrian force.  Now, if they could only march as well as they look!