The Men That Will Undo Us

'As for those fellowes (meaning the Crabats) I care not for them', saies the King: 'but charge me those blacke fellowes soundly: for they are the men that will undoe us.'  

William Watts, The Swedish Intelligencer, London 1633

The "black fellowes"

According to this quote by Watts, of all of the enemy troops, Gustav Adolf was most concerned about the Imperial Cuirassiers at Lutzen.  In their three-quarter armour, blackened to protect the metal, on large, dark coloured horses, they must have been an imposing sight.  The Imperial Cuirassiers were Wallenstein's heavy strike force.  Very expensive to raise and maintain, but also very hard hitting on the battlefield.

I need more of these armoured cavalry for my own Thirty Years War (TYW) collection, so the first thing on the painting table post Salute has been a unit of Imperial Cuirassiers.  I like a variety of figures in my units; if I can get every figure to be different, then so much the better.  I like this more 'hotch-potch' look because TYW troops were supplied from different sources at different times and would seldom have a very uniform look.  Add on to this that men, and certainly horses, will rarely have been all doing exactly the same thing, and I think some variety looks good.   One of the ways I achieve this variety is by making up my units with figures from different manufacturers.   For example, perhaps manufacturer A makes three TYW cuirassier figures and manufacturer B also makes three.  By using both manufacturers I get 6 different figures.   Obviously a bit of care needs to be taken.  Different manufactures can make 28mm figures which do not always look right when standing next to one another.  Fortunately some do.

The 'raw' figures

Here is my selection used for this particular unit, that I think fit nicely together.  The riders are from Warlord Games (link), Perry Miniatures (link) Avanpost Miniatures (link), Foundry (link) and Horcata (link).  The horses are from Perry Miniatures, Foundry and Front Rank (link).  Horcata don't make horses themselves but make their riders to fit on Front Rank horses.  This is interesting as Front Rank do a nice selection of stationary, or near stationary, horses.  I wanted to give this unit the look of cavalry in reserve, waiting for the order to attack, so standing horses are ideal.  Although I like some variety in the figures of a unit, I like them to look as if they are all following the same order.  So all of the rank and file here have one of their two wheel-lock pistols at the ready.

Undercoated and fixed on plastic bottle tops to make handling easier.  

Next came painting.  I am definitely not an expert at this step and so will leave it to the very many gifted painters out there to provide painting tutorials.  There were two things that I did differently for this unit.  First was that I copied some brown triads (sets of three paints that work together as shade, base and highlight) from the Loki's Great Hall Site (link).  (Loki has some great Vallejo triads on his site.)  He also has some handy YouTube videos on horse painting (link).  We are always learning and so I'm always happy to look at new techniques and ideas.

The second new painting technique was trying to get blackened armour to come out as I wanted.  This is a key feature of the Imperial cuirassiers in this period.  I have struggled to get the effect to still look like metal armour, while also not looking too mid grey.  This time I gave the figures a relatively heavy dry brush with Natural Steel from Vallejo.  I then washed this in Nuln Oil from GW.  This gave me a very black finish, with just the hint that the surface was metal.  I like the result, so this will be my new method for this type of armour.

Varnished and based.

Here is the unit varnished and based.  I under Winsor and Newton Gloss varnish (for protection), followed by Daler Rowney Matt varnish to matt things down at the end of the process. Bases from Warbases (link).   The cornet (i.e. flag carried by cavalry units) is from Flags of War (link).  It is based on Ottavio Piccolomini's coat of arms.  Piccolomini is one of the larger than life characters of the TYW who, over the course of the war, rose from the rank of Captain to the the highest rank in the Imperial forces, that of Generalissimo.  At Lutzen he was the Colonel of a regiment of Arquebusiers.  They were supposedly so well equipped that they were better armoured then some of the titled cuirassier regiments.  Due to his stellar performance at the battle he was given many rewards by the Emperor, including his regiment being changed to a cuirassier unit.  I have therefore based my unit on this later full cuirassier version of Piccolomini's regiment.

The final step is basing.  I followed my normal formula of PVA, filler, sharp sand, and Humbrol Matt 29 Dark Earth, with a light dry brush of Cream/Beige.  Tufts and static grass added to taste.

The final 12 figure unit.

Here are some further shots from different angles.

Riding off!

As Piccolomini's Cuirassiers ride off in to the sunset, I am about to start the next unit on the painting table; more cuirassiers, this time with swords rather than pistols.

Until next time!

Andy mk1 @ FOGH.