WSS Danish - Regiment Prince George

I'm not the fastest (or most accurate) painter in the world but here is my first War of the Spanish Succession period Danish regiment, Prince George, which took me about two weeks to do.  These 15mm fgures are from Blue Moon (click to enlarge the pictures) and my aim is initially to recreate the two Danish brigades that were at Blenheim under Scholten.

WSS Danish - Prince George

I've put them on 30x30mm bases (from Warbases) and each regiment comprises a combination of the following packs:15 MBN 101 - Infantry Command;15 MBN 102 - Infantry Tricorn; 15 MBN 104 - Grenadiers Mitre. I liked the idea of having a couple of grenadiers on the right flank for each regiment.

WSS Danish - Prince George

Authorities differ on the shade of light grey the Danish coats should be but I thought that darker rather than lighter would be more appropriate, particularly as I wanted to make sure that they could be clearly differentiated from any French that happened to be on the table.  Purists will note that they are not wearing double breasted coats as they should be, but that option wasn't available from Blue Moon.

The Prince Geroge regiment has rather striking orange facings which colour I arrived at by mixing some artist's acrylic Cadmium Red and Cadmium Yellow in equal amounts (painted over a red 'shade' layer).  Uniform details came initially from Charles S Grant's books (in this case Vol 1) as well as the recently received booklet The Danish Army 1699-1715 by CA Sapherson (from Caliver books), as well as some other on-line sources.

Orange is not the only fruit (nor, for that matter, the only facing colour used by the Danes)

As you can possibly see I tried, for the first time in 15mm, to achieve some sort of shading techniques, which can be a bit tricky on these small figures.  Basing was a variation on my usual method which involved using rough shelly East Lothian sand, painted earth brown this time and dry brushed, followed by adding some static grass.  Note that I've also not got around to putting the flags on yet.  Ray Rousell from the famous Don't Throw a One blog very kindly sent me some flags, and once I get around to printing these out and fitting them I will have finally finshed my first Danish regiment (though the next one is already started!).

WSS Blue Moon 15mm Grenadiers

Albeit slowly, my War of the Spanish Succession project is progressing, with the first infantry regiment in the process of being painted (the Danish regiment Prince George) and the next one waiting in the wings (painting table) with a nice overing of black undercoat.  However, as with any project there is immediately the issue of basing, rules and basically how many figures one needs to buy in order to get a presentable army on the move.

Blue Moon WSS 15mm Grenadier

Clearly there are various rule sets to be considered and basing needs to be flexible to accommodate any changes.  I have a soft spot for the classic WRG 1685-1845 rules and Black Powder is also a popular contender; however, after visiting Claymore in Edinburgh last month we decided that Piquet Field of Battle (2nd edition) would be worth a try for this period.  These rules suggest four bases per unit and after a bit of thought it was decided that 16 infantry figures (or 8 cavalry) on a 12cm frontage (on four 30x30mm bases) was what we'd aim for.

Being interested in the Danish troops in the WSS, the Battle of Ramillies blog has turned out to be a very useful place, particularly in terms of how the regiments could be represented.  What I liked is that the regiments include a couple of grenadiers and I thought I could do that as well.  So, based on the figures I have (or will have), what I'm planning is shown below:

Obviously Blue Moon do grenadiers and so some arrived in the post this week.  There will be two of these for each regiment and like the line infantry they are very nice sculpts.

Blue Moon WSS 15mm Grenadier - Reverse

There seem to be two pose variants for the grenadiers and I think that once I get some troops finished these guys are going to look quite fine in the place of honour on the right of the regiment.