Austrian Dragoons and Chevaulegers - Perry 28mm

First units painted after the house shift. More Austrian cavalry - Dragoons and Chevaulegers. The Dragoons were battle cavalry often concentrated with the Cuirassiers (who look very similar but they also have breast plates). The Chevaulegers tended to be used as light cavalry like the Hussars, so took a greater role in scouting and reconnaissance, in addition to battlefield use.

Which are which you might well be wondering? This is what I wondered too when I got the packs from Perry Miniatures, as they are very similar. In fact the riders are identical other than the command figures! The major difference is the horses, the Chevaulegers have smaller horses than the Dragoons, though this is not really noticeable from a distance. Also the Dragoons come with a standard bearer, and the Chevaulegers do not.

Why do the Dragoons and Chevaulegers both look so similar if they have different roles? There is a vastly confusing history of uniform changes and reorgnisation for Austrian Dragoons and Chevaulegers, see Peter's excellent Blunders on the Danube blog for more detail of this! It also seems to be common practice for wargamers to paint their Dragoons in white, and Chevaulegers in green so as to be able to tell the difference more easily.  I was going to do this too, but then decided to paint both regiments in white. Why? Well I liked the light blue facings of the Klenau Chevaulegers for one thing. And the other reason was so that it is less of a stretch to use BOTH regiments as either Dragoons or Chevaulegers if required if they are all in white!


So after that overly long explanation, here are some pics, first up Regiment #5 Ferdinand Dragoons with dark green facings.

And here is Regiment #5 Klenau Chevaulegers with light blue facings.

Lastly, here's a picture showing the difference in horse sizes with the two horses in similar poses closest to the camera making this obvious. Smaller Chevauleger horses to the left, larger Dragoon horses to the right.

Bandua Paint Rack and Paint Table review

Feeling all fired up from shifting house, I decided to improve my painting space, adding a paint rack and painting tray. Here's the new set up.

This was my old way of storing paints, and heaps of other stuff. Not very tidy and hard to find things!!

Having seen a few paint racks on other people's blogs, like this one on Kerry's blog (another New Zealand Napoleonic gamer), I decided to look around for something suitable. Given I have a variety of paints, in different shaped bottles, pots etc, I needed something flexible in what it could hold. I eventually settled on this Artai paint rack from Bandua, who make a range of pieces.

I also got this painting tray/table, as it's nice to be able to lift everything out of the way easily.

These pieces come in wooden parts which you clip together. All went together easily enough.

Here's the paint rack, which also comes with a neat brush holder. I didn't bother using any glue on this and it seems ok.

The paint brush holder hooks into the back of the paint rack, but can also detach and stand separately if you want (see packaging photo above).

And here's the paint tray. I needed to glue the side pieces of this with wood glue, and held the corners with a couple of pieces of tape while it dried.

I'm very happy with these items and should have got them years ago! Good price and it will save a lot of wasted time by having the most frequently used paints and brushes close at hand and easily accessible. The paint table will also be convenient if I'm taking my painting tasks to someone's house for painting sessions.

New house and new cavalry

I'm back again at last! The house shift is finally complete, and we are gradually getting things in order again. Here's the new refreshments area where strategy can be plotted.

And what do you see in the below picture? It's very strange but most people see a double garage.

However what I see is a L-shaped wargaming table measuring 14 feet by 12 feet :)  So that this...

...becomes something like this. Each square is a square foot, or 30cm. It's good to have some long term plans! Somewhat smaller tables fit in another room for more regular gaming of course! I've also found some excellent folding trestle tables, 60cm by 180cm. The setup below will take 10 of them...

New figures on the workbench too. More Austrian cavalry from Perry in the back, and in front are Polish cavalry from Murawski enterprises. Murawaski Poles have an amazingly small amount of flash compared to Perry, very nice indeed. Looking forward to getting these into action, but likely I'll finish off the Austrians first.