From BenitoM - Legions of Kaiser Franz (40 points)

Third submission to the Challenge but the first of 28mm scale (THE scale). I started mid-year a new project of Austrian Napoleonics after reading the Thunder in the Danube trilogy in early 2017. These are the latest reinforcements of the Kaiser’s forces: a battalion command base and a line infantry base.

The fusiliers are from Perry and the command from Victrix. How both brands compare, some of you may be wondering? On the negative side they lack the Perry’s super-high level of sculpting; and among other defects, they have very marked mould lines and the heads show an ugly hole on the top of the shakos (probably from the injection point) that needs to be mended with green stuff or a drop of glue. On the positive, the boxes have two command sprues (each with a mounted colonel, an officer a pied, drum and flag bearer) and have a more variety of poses.

Overall I’m happy with the Victrix and I’ll be starting now some Landwehr battalions using the Victrix bodies that provide many different poses and variation combined with spare militia heads from the Perry boxes.


The line fusiliers just painted are the last company of 3^rd Regiment Erzherzog Carl Lower Austrian that I painted the past summer while the command base makes the first company of the 59^th Regiment Jordis Upper Austrian. For game purposes (using General d’Armee) I’m using 4 bases for standard battalions (16 minis) and 6 bases for large battalions (24 minis). Each Austrian Regiment had between 2 and 4 battalions with 1,000 men per battalion… so these means a lot of models to paint; however these numbers are on paper, and the battle order strength to be significantly lower


I’m also quite happy with my colonel paint work. Gold thread embroidment used in the riding saddle and the colonel sash is not easy to paint and many painters uses metal gold colours which is not very realistic.


Discussing the issue with some of the best painters in my club, they gave me solution that I’ve been using extensively: paint as base colour Mahogany Brown (Vallejo 846), apply a first light with Gold Brown (877) and the final third light with Golden Yellow (948). You can highlight the most prominent parts with a few small strokes of white.

An additional 40 points (6 foot x 5 + 1 mounted x 10) for both my overall Challenge and the Black Powder Duel scorings.


As this is likely to be my last post of the year, let me wish you a very happy and prosperous 2018, health and success both on the personal and professional fronts. Personally 2017 has been a very bad year with a serious health scare at home and I don’t see the moment to say farewell to it.

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Lovely work on these, Benito. I always like seeing Napoleonics in this scale as it better showcases their uniforms and equipment detail. After having used both Perry and Victrix plastics I have to say I prefer the Perry stuff better as it's less fiddly to put together and their parts seem to be more robust (I'm already having issues with the Victrix bayonets breaking from being too thin). That being said, you are right, the Victrix models allow one do more customisation and using both kits is a real boon to creativity.

Your officer figure is beautiful and I really like your work on the horse's face - lovely stuff. I'm going to try that gold braid recipe to see how it works out. Thanks for the tip!

Happy New Year, Benito! 2017 was a bit of a bear so let's hope 2018 treats us all better.