Bavarian Medium Artillery - Wagram 1809

Regiment of the Day

Today we look at the Bavarian artillery, which supported Wrede's 2nd Division at Wagram, 1809.

2 bases of medium artillery (1 medium foot, 1 medium horse) .. 8lb French cannons ?. Figures by warrior miniatures.

All blue unforms here, including blue lapels with red piping. This is very much in the style of French artillery uniforms.

Red plumes as per French artillery as well, only the distinctive Raupenhelm and Bavarian cockade give them away as not French.

Gun carraiges here are painted a medium shade of blue, allowing for some fading in the elements as this unit campaigned across many a mile before reaching the battle of Wagram.

Blue can be a difficult uniform colour to get right - it comes out either way too intense, or too muted and grey. I have used Vallejo 'Medium Blue 70963' on this unit, which is a very intense blue, and shaded the highlights with a mix of this blue + medium grey 987.

Still looks quite a strong blue in the contrast department, but at least my Bavarians dont look the same blue as my Prussians, or my French. Mission successful from that point of view. 

Looking over the gun barrels, as these batteries prepare to blast enfilade fire against any river crossing. Nice !

For my gun barrels, I like the simple action of painting the gun in 70801 Brass - nice and shiny, and then allowing a thick coat of black glaze to settle over the gun once dry.

Simple enough to do, no highlighting requried, and you end up with a sooty matte build up in the creases of the gun ... whilst shiny brass highlights remain on the parts that protrude. Simple and quick does the trick.

Another shot from the back, showing some gun carriage detail. I also like to keep these simple - a quick drybrush with a highlight to bring out the wood grain, and a little black glaze here and there.

The wheel rims I do in matte black, and lightly dry brush the edges in 70865 oily steel.

Bases on these guys get the flag and texta trearment as well. Note that one battery is a foot battery (MdF = Medium Foot)  and the other is a Horse battery (MdH = Medium Horse). Unfortunately, the limbers for these are currently on a boat somewhere between Scotland and Australia .. so I will have to leave it till later to introduce the limber.

Never mind .. when the limber is handed over to the unit, I will put on a little miniature ceremony, and document the handing over of the limber as a special event.

Another unit ready for the tabletop !

This was a quick and dirty build to get the Division finished, actually came up pretty good considering the speed that I got this one out.

If you want to see some really superb Bavarian artillery in this scale (Well actually, 18mm scale - those extra 3mm + per figure on the ABs and the extra sculpting make a huge difference), then please have a look at PaulAlba's excellent work here :

http://napoleonicsinminiature.blogspot.com/2011/02/bavarian-foot-artillery.html 

I used his photos as a painting guide to get my unit on the table. Thanks for posting that excellent article Paul  :)

For a figure comparison, the ABs have it all over these guys. For a price comparison though, you can get 4 guns + crew in this (15mm) scale for around the same price as 1 single AB cannon + crew. Its only a couple of dollars here and there, but that does tend to add up when you are doing a big project.