The Hapsburg Army Expands

Here are some photos of my 3mm Austrian Empire forces for Black Powder. All of the figures are by Oddzial Osmy, of course, bought through Pico Armor in the U.S.

New here are three battalions of Hungarian troops, two more batteries of artillery and four squadrons of hussars to go with the five battalions of infantry and one battery that I have previously painted up.

The Austrians will eventually get another three battalions of infantry, six squadrons of chevauxlegers, four squadrons of cuirassiers, and two battalions of grenadiers, as well as a regiment of Grenzers and a jaeger battalion. The light infantry is already on the painting table.

 The entire army, as it is so far.

The Hungarians! Note that the labels aren't correct at this point: they're just added in to give me an idea of what they will look like in terms of color and composition.

Hussars! These guys were actually pretty fun to paint, as I will show below....

Finally, here's how I painted the hussars. Going from right to left, you can see the application of each individual color, in fourteen individual stages.

First Austrian brigade for Black Powder finshed!

Here are some pictures of my first Austrian brigade for Black Powder.

These are 3mm (or 1/600) Napoleonic figures from Oddizial Osmy, via the good folks at Pico Armor. And behind that, there's a great story, which will tell you everything you need to know about Pico Armor's customer service.

Last year, I went up to a conference in Rochester New York. Being that I am normally based out of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, I took the opportunity to place my first Napoleonics order with John and the guys from Pico.

It arrived while I was at the conference but, unfortunately, all the Napoleonic infantry was swapped out for ACW infantry!

Well, needless to say, there was much wailing and nashing of teeth on my part, because at this point, I was a couple of days away from heading back home.

When I informed the folks at Pico Armor, however, they immediately dispatched the correct order via overnight Federal Express to my hotel room in Rochester. They even told me to not sweat the ACW stuff (although I did manage to get it back to them). Now THAT is service!

I have been buying stuff from Pico Armor ever since the O8 3mm figs came out and, for my money, there's not a better mail order company in the market!

The photos...

These really don't need much by way of explanation. This is a two regiment, five battalion Austrian infantry brigade, supported by a 6 lbr artillery battery. Four of the five battalions are over-sized by Black Powder standards. That means that even though this brigade is bog-standard in terms of its morale and general characteristics, it packs quite a punch in the firepower and melee department, as well as gaining extra endurance points.

The slogan of the Austrian Army might as well be "quantity has a quality all its own".

It's probably too difficult to see in these picks, but one regiment has the 1805-style helment while the other has the 1809-style shako. Oh, and the buttons on both regiments are gold, not silver... ;)

The buildings in the background are all from Brigade Models Small Scale Scenery line. Their English Farms and Mediterranean Village sets, to be exact. I have  some Normandy Villages on order and these will be slightly more "historical" for the Central Germany, 1813 scenarios I plan to play, but for now, c'est la guerre.

The scenery is my typical 3mm set up: painted cloth scenery pinned to flocked foam mats. thumbtacks and stick pins have been transformed into bushes and trees and hold everything down.

When finished, the Austrian army will have two infantry brigades, a vanguard brigade (made up of Croats, Jaegers, Chevauxlegers and Hussars) and a small reserve brigade of grenadiers and currassiers.

After that, I will embark on Wave Two, which will include more French Infantry, some German Ally regiments (Nassauers, who'll be able to fight for the French in 1812-13 and the Allies in 1815), French Guard Cavalry and either the Prussians or the Russians. Ultimately, I want to be able to deploy 4 brigades of each of the major allies and some 10-12 brigades of French.