Wurtz-Pées - Bavarian Infantry

 Hello,

Today, I’m sharing another magazine insert from "Soldats Napoléoniens" featuring hand-painted figures from the Wurtz-Pées collection. This time, the six pages cover Bavarian infantry. As beautiful as these figures are to look at—and as impressive as this family collection of paper figures is—these Bavarian examples clearly demonstrate that they are unsuitable for drawing historical conclusions about Napoleonic-era uniforms. I consider myself a hobbyist uniform researcher, and Bavarian uniforms are a particular passion of mine (being Bavarian myself). Unfortunately, a glance at these figures reveals many painted details that bear little resemblance to the reality of the period depicted. For instance, Bavarian non-commissioned officers did not wear French-style sleeve rank insignia; regimental musicians wore long coats and hats; and officers never wore gorgets and sashes simultaneously... Some of the reverse sides are interesting, too. The cardboard backing used here sometimes bears the date 1856! This suggests that these figures originated in the final phase of the collection's creation, whereas the production period is usually cited as 1825 to 1850.

Best regards,

Andreas

German Army - Marcel Vagné No.528

Hello,

today I'm showing you another sheet from Vagné. 

This one is number 528 and depicts an overview of troops from the German Army. Besides a few Bavarian and Saxon figures, it's naturally the Prussians who dominate. The figures are meant to represent the uniforms of 1889 (only the Bavarians are shown with references to earlier years). The whole thing is drawn in the typical comic style of this Vagné series.

The figures are about 7.5 cm tall.

Best regards,

Andreas

Peter Dennis - Bavarian 3rd Infantry Regiment 1870/71

Hello,

Today I'm showing you some more figures from the digital world.

I made a battalion of the Royal Bavarian 3rd Infantry Regiment "Prince Carl of Bavaria." 

1.Bataillon, Königlich Bayerisches 3.Infanterie Regiment "Prinz Carl von Bayern"

I used Peter Dennis's new figures for the 1870/71 War. The figures come as a PDF file and are available as wargaming figures in 28mm, 18mm, and 10mm. I used the 28mm files and played around with them a bit. By that, I tried different paper thicknesses and magnifications. I decided to print the figures at 150% size on the thickest paper my printer can handle (350g/m²). The figures are therefore about 45mm high and about 1mm thick. I used 3D-printed plastic bases for the bases. These don't warp and can be embellished with sand and flock later, if I ever get the time.

28mm, enlarged to 150% and enlarged to 200% of basic size

When I saw on Facebook that Peter Dennis was working on figures for the Franco-Prussian War, I was very pleased and put my project with the French Army for 1854, which I had already presented (figures from Wargame Print), on hold for the time being. I simply like hand-drawn figures like these much better than computer-generated ones.

The Peter Dennis figures are a great base. And there's nothing wrong with the simple infantry soldiers. The only thing that could be criticized is the mix of poses. Actually, all soldiers in a section should always have the same rifle stance – that is, rifle shouldered, advancing, or rifle at long arm. Here, the poses were mixed. Even if it's not historically accurate, it still looks quite good in the mix.

Look good from behind too!

Otherwise, I digitally edited the regimental colors and many of the piping. The officers needed a bit more attention. They were drawn with epaulettes – which company officers didn't wear in 1870/71. Furthermore, the officers were supposed to wear helmets like the enlisted men. The gorgets (hausse col) in the blue cloth sheath were completely forgotten. The coats were supposed to have blue collars – and all Bavarian infantry coats had pewter buttons, not gold ones like in the drawings. There were also many little details that I tried to depict correctly. The biggest mistake concerns the flag bearers. They were drawn with silver tips. The Bavarian infantry flag tips, however, showed a lion figure, and the Landwehr flag tips were gold. Finally, I changed the emblems in the corners of the flags. Although there were "L"s for one of the kings, Ludwig I or II, these Ls were completely wrong in shape.

I think these small errors are irrelevant for the vast majority of wargamers who use these figures. And for me, as a Bavaria nerd, the changes weren't too difficult to implement.

I highly recommend the figures.

You can buy and download them here: https://peterspaperboys.com/collections/franco-prussian-war

Have fun crafting and best regards,

Andreas