The Batthyanyi Dragoons. . .

The 45-strong regiment arrayed for review, complete with a third rank.  I have never attempted a cavalry regiment this large.  Three, count 'em, three squadrons plus a colonel and trumpeter.

Are finished!  After two days of acrylic glossing as and when time allowed plus a few tiny, tiny touch-ups this morning, my version of Austria's Batthyanyi Dragoons is all done at long last.  Minden figures and horses of course, painted mostly with acrylics, but the horses were done mostly with oils over acrylic undercoats.  Tans and yellows if memory serves.  The various greys were an exception however and were painted entirely with acrylics.  

Everything was finished with two coats of Liquitex high gloss acrylic varnish because just a single coat is never enough of course.  A time consuming final step, but well worth the effort I think.  Voilà. . .  Glossy toy soldiers, baby!

I won't win any awards for speed-painting with these.  Clearly, I was a model ship builder or model railroad enthusiast in another life in that it takes a long while to get new units painted, based, and ready for the table these last few years.  But it's all about the journey rather than the destination, right?  Maybe.

We can probably place the blame for my painting lethargy this last year on the Covid-era languishing that so many of us have endured even if we have been fortunate enough to escape the illness itself thus far.  Somehow, I feel like absinthe and an opium den somewhere in Paris should be part of the equation though.  Um, maybe not.  But you take my point about the ongoing ennui I trust.

Returning to the 45 dragoons above, the wooden bases are, as always, laser cut 3mm ply from Litko.  These are sized according to Peter Gilder's dimensions for heavy cavalry units as outlined in In the Grand Manner rules though a wee bit deeper to accommodate modern figures.  I've always felt his troop densities looked just right for mid-18th century and Napoleonic formations in all of those wonderful cover photographs and within early issues of Miniature Wargames once upon a time and when Wargames Illustrated appeared a few years later. 

But let's return to the present for a moment, K-9.  While I am eager to crack on with a new unit of line infantry, I must admit to having this nagging feeling at the back of my mind that I might as well paint up three additional dragoons and mounts to bring the unit up to a nice, round 48 in all.  You know.  To fill out that third rank a bit more.  I've got enough horse grenadiers left over in the spares box I think.  And three more dragoons with horses wouldn't take that much time, would it?  Yes.  I know, I know.  "Madness!" as The Brigadier once wrote.

Still, onward and upward, eh?

For my next trick, I think the Schaumburg-Lippe-Bückeburg Infantry might be just the ticket since the folks at Kronoskaf have recently created and posted some nifty new standards for the regiment.  And then another squadron or two of cavalry, or perhaps an Austrian or Reichsarmee infantry regiment?  No rest for the wicked.

-- Stokes

And as a reminder, here is how things looked almost exactly one year ago.