Borders Away!

No, I haven’t misspelled “Boarders”! This post features my latest 19th Century Austrian 20mm wargames figures to be finished, a Grenzer (Border) unit, also referred to as Frontier troops. It’s a bit of a run-of-the-mill post I’m afraid, but important for me because I’ve now finished my Austrian infantry for my 1859/1866 army.

These are Waterloo 1815 (that’s the manufacturer) plastic figures of 1859 Austrian line infantry, but I’ve chosen to paint them as Grenzer to give me some variation from the more usual white-coated Austrian infantry. The most usual dress for Austrian infantry in the Second War of Italian Independence was the white kittel (a loose white jacket) but I chose to paint these figures in brown tunics with red facing colours to represent a Grenzer battalion. I finished the rest of my Austrian infantry for this army back in 2016, but I’ve recently added an extra artillery unit and thought some more infantry and cavalry wouldn’t go amiss.

Back in 2016 I’d painted 60 regular Austrian and 12 Grenzer infantry. This allowed me to represent either seven 10-man units or six 12-man units, since the Austrian battalion strengths were different for units fighting the French in 1859 and those fighting the Prussians in 1866. Since I now just represent all these units with 10 figures it meant I had two Grenzer infantry spare, so I decided that if the extra infantry unit I painted was a Grenzer unit I’d only need to paint eight extra figures (hence only eight men in the pictures above). The hardest bit was remembering the colours I’d used for the jackets and trousers back in 2016 (Vallejo Model Color Leather Brown and Grey Blue), otherwise painting was pretty straightforward!

Surprisingly enough, this now leaves me only a six-man hussar unit to paint and, despite the fact that I dislike painting cavalry, I’m quite motivated to get on with them, since completing them will mean the army will be finished! All over by Christmas? Maybe!