Austrian Grenadiers 28mm Victrix

Next up is some Austrian Grenadiers from Victrix. I decided to give Victrix a try, as Perry didn't make German Grenadiers when I bought these, and in any case Victrix would work out much cheaper! As it turned out I'm quite happy with these figures, and they compare favourably with Perry. 

I originally painted the bags on their bearskins in the facing colours, but disliked the irregular look and ended up repainting them all yellow. Historically I understand that the cloth bags were originally in the facing colours but this was eventually replaced with yellow, though many regiments kept the facing colour versions for some time.

Four regiments completed! I did eight facing colours, as Grenadier units were made up of converged Grenadier companies from separate battalions, with typically three combined in each Grenadier battalion.

With Victrix Austrians you get 56 figures per box (including two mounted figures) for 23 pounds, while Perry are 20 pounds for 48 figures. You get up to 20% on Victrix buying them in bulk (multiple boxes), and up to about 12.5% discount buying Perry in bulk (in their army deals). The Victrix have more options for assembly - Two thirds of the figures come in march attack pose for ease of assembly, but 1/3 of the figures can be assembled in different poses if you like (firing, advancing etc, with lots of options provided). I just made everything in march attack here, excepting that it was nice to have a few more options in poses for the officers than the Perry figures offer. The figures are in the earlier long coats while the Perry's have the later period shorter coats, but I'm prepared to live with that! I still have four mounted figures and 12 spare infantry left over from two boxes of Victrix infantry after assembling these four regiments. 

Austrian Grenz Infantry Perry 28mm

More Austrians enter the fray. Austrian Grenzers from Perry Miniatures. These are metal models, which are ok, though still quite a lot of flash compared to some Murawski Miniatures I picked up recently. Of course they are also cheaper than Murawski so can't complain really!

I'm also not a fan of this Grenz uniform! It has annoying to paint Hungarian trousers with braiding and stripes, and then ugly brown jackets on top of that. Painting and basing is also made awkward because they have their muskets held at all sorts of sloppy angles - which makes sense given they are somewhat irregular troops of course! ;)

Anyway enough ranting, here they are... I've done one unit with yellow facings and the other with green facings.

Austrian Hussars 28mm Perry

Three regiments of Napoleonic Austrian Hussars. Perry Figures once again and all metal this time. Taking the wise advice of blogger Gonsolvo I decided to go with blue, red, and green hatted regiments. See his great blog for details of Hussar and other uniforms. I also climbed into second place in the Analogue Paint Challenge somehow, despite the painfully slow process of painting detailed hussar uniforms!

As if the painting wasn't difficult enough, the metal pelisse's on these figures also have to be glued on which seemed liked something of a nightmare to contemplate. In the end it was easy enough using five minute epoxy glue and judicious use of blu-tack. The contemplation was worse than the actual task as is often the case.

Austrian Composer Franz Von Suppe's Light Cavalry Overture seems appropriate, as I move on to some detail photos!

Regiment 4: Hessen-Homburg (blue hats). Everyone paints Hessen-Homburg, but there is a good reason for that - they have one of the most awesomely colourful uniforms ever! Parrot green dolman and pelisse, poppy red trousers, and blue shako. I've read that the actual Parrot green is the subject of some debate, and was perhaps a more yellowish tone than that depicted here. However I decided to just go with the green I had bought before I read this, and I'm happy with it so that's what counts!

Regiment 5: Baron Ott (red hats). Probably my favourites, which of course means they will lose every combat at the critical moment. Dark green dolman and pelisse, carmine trousers, bright red shako.

Regiment 7: Liechtenstein (green hats). Eye catching light blue uniforms with grass green shako so everyone knows to look at the best regiment!

Right there we then, my Austrians are now becoming quite a force, with 18 regiments of infantry, 5 of cavalry, and 18 guns. Still not enough of course...

Thanks for looking!