Wednesday, February 26, 2014

SYW Prussian Jaegers

After completing much of my planned SYW project in 18mm (see SYW recap), attention finally turned towards the light infantry components.  While a limited number of light infantry units participated in the large set-piece battles, these light troops should be useful in defending difficult terrain or built up areas of the battlefield.

First off the painting desk are 15 Prussian jaegers.  The figures are from Blue Moon's (BM) 15mm AWI range.  The jaegers are actually Hessian jaegers but uniform differences should be minimal.  BM's AWI range is one of my favorites and these jaegers are excellent sculpts within a very nice range.  Some of the faces are a little odd but, in all, a great batch of figures.  The noses on a few remind me of characters from Cats!



I have another 15 of these BM jagers primered and ready to get a lick of paint but first, I have two battalions of Austrian skirmishing grenzers to field.  

While I worked on these, I was drawn to the similarity between the uniforms of Hessian AWI jaegers, Prussian SYW jaegers, and the Russian jaegers during the 1799 campaign.  Recalling that I have a small 1799 Project in work, my thoughts turned toward fielding these Hessians as Russians.  How handy that one figure could masquerade for three nationalities' jaegers in three different periods!  

Few make figures for the 1799 campaign but Battle Honors (BH) makes Russian jaegers and others in 15mm for this time period.  Reviews are mixed on the BH French Revolution range.  Having only seen the occasional photo of the BH Russians and not knowing the size compatibility between AB and BH, I plan to press additional BM jaegers into service as Russian.  Based on the illustration below, I think it is a good match.
  

14 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Thanks, Christopher! The Blue Moon figures are quite nice and you get a lot of bang for your buck.

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  2. Some sharp looking fellows there. They look rather nice than my Russian lights to be sure.

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  3. Great painting on some really nice sculpts - they are very nicely proportioned.

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    1. Thanks! Blue Moon have been doing a fine job with each of their ranges. The AWI range is particularly nice.

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  4. Great painting and basing! They will serve you very well in any army, and in Maurice too I bet.

    I love everything I've seen by BM but I've been put off by the annual membership required to make them affordable.

    I accidentally bought BH for ACW and they're terrible in every way. If BH Napoleonics are comparable, you've made a good choice to port these fellows over many armies and stay away from BH.

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    1. Thank you, Monty!

      I only have a few BH figures. The Napoleonics and ACW I bought were slender and seemingly brittle. Much care had to be taken with not only the bayonets but muskets as well.

      Scott bought a huge pile of 15mm BH ACW for Regimental Fire & Fury. I think he was quite pleased with them until Blue Moon ACW was released.

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  5. They look good, and should be very useful. Looking forward to seeing the Grenzer, too.

    [ As you might know Grenzer is already the plural form of the word... at least in German! :-) ]

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    1. Well, I didn't know grenzer was plural. Lesson learned! I appreciate the correction.

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  6. Excellent looking unit. I see what you mean about the faces, I think your command group includes Rum Tum Tugger and Mr Mistoffelees, not sure its been awhile...memories fade you know...

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    1. Exactly right! The French infantry in bicorn suffer the same malady. I have put off ordering any of those but I didn't notice it on the jaegers until I began painting them.

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  7. That's a great looking unit, and you did a nice job with it!

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