increasing regiments (I): Prussian 1st Regiment

Alraedy a while I am sitting on raising our regiments from 24 figures by regiment to 36. This number is much more useful in wargames and looks also more realistic. As I saw, most of the bloggers playing in 30mm do the same: almost there are regiments with at least 36 figures to see.

This shown Prussian regiment is an old one, done with moulds from Nürnberger Meterzinn. Some of the figures seem to be 40 years old... In the meantime I found a very talented seller of NMZ figures, who is also selling in Ebay, Hans. I asked him to cast me 20 pieces of the advancing musketeer and he did them for a very good price in excellent quality.
If you are also interested, just send him a mail: H.-J.Richter (at) T-Online.de

Honestly, this are the last figures I painted Meisterzinn; the semi-flat figures don´t really match with high-quality figures of Matthias-Manske or Sash&Saber.
But for completing an old regiment, it was a nice intermezzo.

oops, there is a Prince August grenadeer among them..

the flag is done in photoshop and printed on paper

staff officers Saxony and Russia

Today I present my staff officers of the infantery. It is shown a saxon officer in red dress and a russian one in his typical green. Both figures are from the Matthias-Manske-Colllection aand exquisitely fine to paint. They are part of our modificated wargame rules and will be used as messengers of the "ordres de bataille" by the general.

Saint-Petersburg: The Tsar salutes smartly

Dear readers, I beg your pardon for the long absence of posting. As you can notice, the announced study trip to Saint-Petersburg took a lot of time for last-minute preparations, changes and logistic capacities.... I travelled with 62 architecture students one week to Russia.
See our group here:

Shortly said, it was a marvellous time with all of them, they were funny and adventurous - the motto was the baroque foundation of the city of Saint-Petersburg and its transformation during the last 300 years into two other cities - Petrograd - Leningrad - and today just spelled "Piter" by the citizens.

Grace to the winning championship soccer club "Zenith Piterburg" the russians were already very sunshiny at our arrival. The hostel was as cheap as dirty, but we loved it: Cuba Hostel, 1 minute away from the famous Nevskii Prospekt. Well, shortly, we were walking 8 hours every day and slept 3-4 hours, because Petersburg by night is a special recommendation..

We travelled to Pushkin and visited the famous Catherine´s Palace with the Amber room, a gift of the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm I. to the Tsar in 1745.

Enjoy some pictures of this:

The greater palace is placed at Pitergof (german: Peterhof) the summer palace of Tsar Peter I. It is an incredible building dimension and the parc is in fact a rivalry to Versailles. But the most stunning was the direct access to the sea: imagine a baroque palace and parc situated directly at the beach of the Baltic Sea. Great!

Petergof, the palace

view from the Tsar´s terrace - in the background already the Baltic Sea.

We had a full program during this week and came home with a lot of good and also some heavy memories. Honestly, I recommend you a trip to this city!

I will let follow some pictures from the Russian Artillery Museum with its splendid SYW department soon!

All picture are taken by my student Severin. Thanks to him.

French regiment Comissaire Général

OMG, so long no new post from my side - it´s dued to the daily work at University, projects and preparations for a study trip to Saint-Petersburg, Russia, with 60 students of mine, what will take part on may.
Of course, I will also go to the Russian Artillery Museum in Saint-Petersburg - it seems they have there some really nice equipment from the SYW as the Shuvalow gun, some flags and original parts.
I am not interested in arms from the WW2 and will pass off this department - in respect of the horrible memory my parents have.
I will post some news from there after may, 6!

I finished now this nice Sash&Saber French regiment, called Commissaire Général. It tooks a long time to paint them all and I wonder all the time how other bloggers succeed to be so fast!
I wish you a good week hoping to be able to post some news soon!

source: Vinkhuizen

Prussian grenade wagon refurbished

This grenade wagon was for a length of time waiting in the dark box to be redecovered a day. It´s a splendid model of Matthias-Manske, which I completed now with 3 new figures of the Prussian artillery corps. The typical grenade wagon was labeled with the letters "Grenaden Wagen" for to avoid mistakes in the heat of a bataille. Nowadays nobody would use this antiquated german lettering composed by 2 words; we just title it "Granatenwagen" - finish.

But I would not only present you this new composition, but also a quite interesting new delicacy from the japanese "Tamiya": it´s a weathering set in different colours of semi-humid pigments. It  looks like a make-up-casket with 3 tones, but the handling is easy and the effect great.
Just take a two-sided brush and grind colors, then apply it softly on the surface of the object.
Here is an image of the weathering set:

source: Tamiya

I worked on the waggon´s wheels and the edges of the wooden parts using the sand color similar to the summer ground on the platforms we use. The metallic parts like fittings got a darker cool shading.

Sondermarke 300th Birthday of Frederick the Great

The Deutsche Post released a new stamp for 2012, a "Sondermarke" on the occasion of Frederick´s 300th birthday - it´s a very beautiful format and the colours are, as usual, very intensive.
I bought 20 pieces, and, for all our readers who are living outside Germany: I send you one of this stamps, if you like - in original, not stamped - ready to lick..
Quelle occasion exceptionnelle, messieurs!

terrain experiments

Since a fairly long time I think about a new wargaming field for our battles. I think about a size of 1,50-2m x 3m for 40mm soldiers to have enough space for strategical manoeuvres. At the moment, we have coloured slabs of kapamount, a sandwich-construction of foamed polystyrene between cardboards.The cardborads are painted and sprinkled with grass and sand - both of them don´t adhere very well and the slabs are always bended lightly.
So we plan to build a complete new terrain. Our first experiments are done with a grass-mat from the modeller´s shop (see above on the right side) which we drybrushed in different brown tones. This construction requires also a stable under-construction of slabs and the surface does not allow to glide the soldiers´ platforms easily.

grass mat experiment with a vignette

The second try is a carpet , found in a do-it-yourself store and with its  predicate cheap-cheap-cheap. This carpet we coloured in different tones with drybrushed layers, the pathway is with sand and glued. The carpet has a incredible horrible colour in original and is used by the Germans for their terraces as a grass-imitation.

It takes a lot of time and colours to drybrush it to get an sufficient effect. This material also requires a under-construction of slabs, but could be also used in one big part and rolled for transport.

The third experiment is inspired by the site of a very talented young german guy who proposed a splendid idea to build a battlefield: he took an artificial fur-mat, what you can buy in specific women-stores of  cloths, e.g. for carnival dresses and so on. We did some tries with a  black fur:

This material is very tricky, because all you hav to do is to shave the shags in different lenghts. Short is very practical for pathways, streets and grass. The long shags could signify borders or cornfields. 

Result: The black fur is not convenient and I have to look for a lighter colour.

But the big advantage of this fur-mat is the size: you can buy the whole battlefield in one piece and you have only to invest a lot of hours to cut and shave and then to paint it. Our tries with brushes failed - the fur will be hard and rigid.

I will quote some pictures from this splendid site of elladan, who did it in a really fantastic way:

elladan paintbrushed its fur-mat in different tones to get this stunning result:

elladans fur mat; see here: www.elladan.de

Salve d' honneur pour 2012 - french gun salute

A french gun salute for a happy new year to all of you and a big thank you for following our blog!
This is the new 3pdr-bataillon gun dedicated to the royal French army. It´s a piece of Matthias Manske´s manufacture which I bought already in august at the tin figures fair at Kulmbach.
The french army is now also getting an update for our summer wargames, see the following pictures.
They will also get a new ammunition waggon with staff.

as you can see, here again a mix of figures: NMZ, Prince August and Manske...