Franco-Prussian Progress - First Foundry Prussian Unit

28mm 1870 Prussians from Wargames Foundry

In December of 2017 I first posted about a new period and project - the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.  I had started down the path of 28mm figures, with an eye on one day staging a battle for the group using formed units and the very-flexible "Black Powder" rules.  I knew this would take a long time, for even a small such game (longer than the actual war, I expect) but I haven't given up on the goal - here is the first unit of Prussians!

As with the French from last December, these are castings from Wargames Foundry.  The overall unit is 24 castings strong - 20 foot models in the formed unit, and four individually-based figures to be used to represent the deployment of skirmishers.  The flag is from GMB, one of the only sources I have found for flags from this period (I think it helps that the Prussian flag bears a very strong resemblance to the colours carried by Prussian units back to the late Napoleonic era in the early 19th century).

For the King!

These Foundry castings were sculpted by the Perry Twins "back in the day", and while sculpting styles have evolved since that time, these are still really beautiful castings and I just love painting them - each time is like catching up with an old friend! The Prussian uniforms lack the true panache of the French uniforms of the Second Empire era, but these figures are still a lot of fun to paint, and I'm pleased with how this first unit has turned out.

Lovely castings, lots of fun to paint, even if the variety is lacking in the posing...

Any headaches? Maybe one - the standard bearer has some lovely ribbons cast on the pole, which would be fine if the ribbons were not set in such as way as to be stuck to the pole, making attaching a flag or banner all but impossible! It takes some delicate snipping, but the ribbons can be removed and bent back without too much damage, making it possible to attach a banner. 

So...one unit down, six more to go...?

So, this is one unit of Prussians, and it joins the two units of French I have already painted.  How many of these will I actually need in order to put on a decent game? I have done some back-of-the-napkin math (i.e. the highest level of math someone with my squirrel brain can manage), and I figured I will need about eight to ten Prussian units of some sort for the game - let's say two of them are cavalry, and one is an artillery piece, so that would leave seven foot units....at 24 castings per unit, that's about 168 castings just to cover the infantry!  In comparison, my 30k Sons of Horus collection, which is also quite (ridiculously) large, includes about 200 foot models, and took a couple of years to amass, so obviously this whole "Let's play Franco-Prussian War with Black Powder" is going to take a while.

But progress is progress! With these fellows out of the way, that leaves another...144 Prussian infantry castings! In the meantime, we can continue to play some skirmish-sized games with the awesome Eagles of Empire figures I have been painting as well over the past few months.  And if you go back to that original post from last December (and I salute your perseverance if you bother), you might have noted that I also ordered some figures in other scales at the outset...well, stay tuned for more on that...