April 18, 2022John@justneedsvarnish

Yellow For A Change!

I’m persevering with getting bite-sized chunks of various projects done, with the latest being an Austrian field gun and crew from the 1859 – 1866 period.

These are plastic 1:72nd scale figures by Waterloo 1815 and this is the third and final gun I wanted to finish for my Austrian army. The bulk of this army was finished in 2016 in time for the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Koniggratz, just months before I started this blog!

All of my Austrian artillery is shown above, two fields guns, a howitzer and a rocket launcher. The Waterloo Austrian artillery box comes with four guns and 16 crew and I’ve used three of the guns and 11 of the crew (the guns come with a gun and howitzer barrel each to make whichever version you want). The rocket launcher is scratchbuilt (see here for more info) and I converted one of the gunners to hold a rocket, with another crewman converted from an infantry colour bearer. The two limbers are Newline Design ACW limbers, whilst the two-horse team and single-horse cart are by Irregular Miniatures – I’ve filled up my wagon and limber storage box, so the howitzer has to make do with a two-horse team to represent its limber (I normally use these horse-only teams to pull light Balkan Wars or Chinese artillery pieces).

I finished this extra gun and crew after reading about the good performance of Austrian artillery in the Seven Weeks War of 1866. This army is now very close to being finished, with only one infantry battalion and a cavalry regiment left to paint (eight and six figures respectively). The cavalry will no doubt slow me down more, if that’s possible these days!

43 comments

    • Thanks Dave! 🙂 The extended bases do make it easier to move the unit and look not half bad! The downside is that they take up more storage space, but to be fair I have some generic limbers and teams that can be used by more than one army (Austrians and Prussians have dedicated limbers because of their specific colour schemes – because they’re specific those two also get limber riders).

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    • Thanks Nicolas! 🙂 Since the bulk of the army is pre-blog it’s about time I did a post on the whole lot. I tend to be dipping in and out of projects at the moment, but there’s not a lot left to do with the Austrians – the remaining infantry have had their base colours applied and faces painted and the cavalry are in the process of being base coated.

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    • Thanks Dave! 🙂 Austrians uniforms are quite distinctive, but having yellow artillery pieces takes them that bit further in being visually different! As I’ve mentioned in my comment above, this is an army that’s due to be featured in the future!

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    • Thanks Dave! 🙂 You might find that doing another army is something that can be fitted in around other projects and that you can keep coming back to it! I tend to have a blitz on a project/army and get the core units done together and then add extras as I feel like it. It was re-reading accounts of the Seven Weeks War that made me realise that having another artillery unit would be worthwhile for this army.

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        • No harm in planning what you might want to do – I tend to do that and clean/prep/base/undercoat things while finishing other bits off! The good thing about armies, compared to dioramas, is that a half-finished army still looks finished (well, OK, unless it’s something like a Mongol army and you’ve painted the cavalrymen but none of the horses)!

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  8. Hi John , excellent artillery and as it happens I am gaming right now with Austrian artillery by Waterloo 1815. Plastic soldier review slated the figures yet there is a veritable desert when it comes to figures mid century unless you like Prussians or charge of the light brigade. So I am pleased the very effective Austrian artillery are on show. Look forward to the whole army display.

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    • Thanks Lorenzo! 🙂 Fancy you using the same figures in a game – I’ll look forward to a game report if you post one! You’re right about PSR slating the figures (and the Austrian infantry) but they do the job (although Irregular Miniatures do 1859 Austrians, which are on the smaller side – I’ve got six of their Austrian hussars to paint). I was just so pleased Emhar made their FPW French and Prussians and made it easy for me to get both of those armies done!

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          • Well yes and no – napoleon Austrian infantry you can use – the small stovepipe arrived in 1849 at the end of the 1st war……but too late I realised the Austrians do about three wardrobe changes in a decade-eeeek – not much chance of one army to cover all the Italian unification wars 😳 anyway I have posted a stop gap about my latest gaming. Thanks for sharing

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    • Thanks Harry, glad you like them! 🙂 The only other option I thought about was to keep the limber bases short and mount a gun on its own base in the towing position to place behind it – takes up the same room but means I’d need to paint twice as many guns, so I opted for this solution instead. It does mean the guns look quite good on the move, although I could do with painting some extra crewmen to place on the generic limbers when they’re in use. I also opted to just go with two-horse teams as they give the right impression without having to paint loads of horses!

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    • Thanks Dave! 🙂 They were to all intents finished, but re-reading an account of the 1866 war I decided that they should get more artillery. Since I have two cavalry units for both my contemporary French and Prussian armies I’ve also decided to add a second Austrian unit, plus another infantry unit for good measure. Unlikely they’ll be more after that since the Austrian storage box will then be full!

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    • Thanks mate! 🙂 Relatively easy to paint as well! Not quite sure on the exact colour I should have used for the yellow gun carriage, but Vallejo Golden Brown in an obvious yellow without it being too garish!

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  14. Great work on the artillery, John and the picture of your artillery line is particularly inspiring. I agree with Nicolas above that an army picture or two wouldn’t go amiss! 🙂

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    • Thanks Matt! 🙂 The good news is that there are only about 14 figures to go; the bad news is that the last six of them are cavalry and my aversion to painting the latter is well known! But, almost there, so let’s hope I can get this army finished and posted before too long!

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    • Thanks Roger! 🙂 The long bases do make everything easier! I might even have thought of it meself, although I’m not usually one for good ideas so there’s always a chance I maybe saw it somewhere in a wargames mag in the (very) dim and (very, very) distant past!

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