Prussian casualty markers, count the tufts...

One of the things that annoys me most when playing a game is the amount of gaming material that progressively enters the carefully laid out battlefield. Dices, casualty rings, rulebooks, cans of beer, you name it. Mostly in a horrendous colour to make sure it will get notified and providing a perfect view of the losses of a unit.

In order to prevent this our houserules state that you are not allowed to place any rulebook, glass of wine or other objects that not belong there on the table. This works pretty well and provides an excellent starting point for the next step to clean up the table from unnecessary clutter: painted casualty markers.

Luckily I had already painted two for my Prussians who are giving battle next Saturday, but they were unbased as I could not decide on how to do this. I did not want to paint numbers on it and thought of painting small stripes on the sides of the bases. But in a recent discussion with one of the group we realized the solution did not have to be complicated at all. Why not use tufts? we do it anyway.


All the Prussians are four on a base so I put one, two and three tufts at the different sides. The side pointing at the unit tells us how many casualties the unit has. Easy but effective I guess. Another advantage is that you can even create some generic markers without a casualty figure that you can use for any period. Just paint a base and put some tufts on. Good as starting point if you don't want to paint a marker for every unit and it will always beat a pink die or yellow casualty cap.

So, more things on the to-do list and in the meantime  it still will be dice. Any koopclub volunteer to make 20 or so generic ones ;-) ?

Minis from Calpe Miniatures

Guest post: Rob's Landwehr battalions

Once in a while you will see a guest post here from one of our club members. This time Rob who just finished three of his 3rd Silesian Landwehr battalions and a Jaeger company. Together with my Musketeers they represent the 15th Infantry brigade.

1st Battalion 3rd Silesian Landwehr

OK, over to Rob:

2nd Battalion 3rd Silesian Landwehr

In addition to the regular Prussian infantry units who can do without Landwehr??
This all started over a year ago when I was looking for some opponents for napoleonic French but I didn't want to paint up British... We had been looking at Calpe some time but never saw them in real.. I decided to have a go at them and made a list of things I wanted to order.. At that point Mike was in Madrid for business and could see the minis in the flesh and this confirmed us they were absolutely great and i made my purchase of Landwehr and some additional Jaegers..
After the figs arrived it took almost a year before I started painting on them and together we decided on the Corps/Regiments we would paint up for our games. For me this
became Major Von Thile's 3rd Silesian Landwehr with the attached Jaeger company.. Suitable to make a surprise appearance at our planned Waterloo game in the future.


Painting up three large battallions and also the additional Jaegers and staff officers was a large pile of minis to go through.. With the selection of the figures I have tried to keep
the variety in poses as diverse as possible in order to get a disorganised, un-military look in the units as Landwehr would be more loose and irregular than the Musketeers/Fusiliers.
After having done the build-up of the units last summer the painting started and, with some distractions on some WW-I and AWI paintjobs, I managed to stay focussed and have the
units painted and based (only some tufts needed) by early february.. Only a unit of Uhlans to go.. I must confess that i am a bit tired now of painting dark blue coats so will now make a start
with our next club project: ACW.. And you probably guessed it already.. Union in dark blue coats..

3rd Battalion 3rd Silesian Landwehr

1st Silesian Jaegers

Full gallery

Now get yourself an account Rob so you can comment on your own post :-)

First Prussian battalion finished

Yes, done! This week I finished basing this battalion ans I can deduct one of my long Prussian to do list.
We have a long term Waterloo project and everybody in our group is painting different battalions. In 2015 this should result in a massive game after visiting the anniversary.
One of my contributions are some Prussian battalions. So please welcome the I Musketier Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment ´6th Reserve´. Part of the 15th Infantry Brigade under General Major von Losthin in Bulow´s IV Corps. Next up will be the II Musketier Battalion but it won´t start them until I finished my ACW over the next two months or so. I also want to do a step by step for the Prussians to remind myself what colors I used and in what order.

The miniatures are from Calpe and are a painters dream. Easy to paint, endless poses, no flash, no mouldlines. Just perfect IMO. I know Warlord has plastic Landwehr now and the Perries are about to release Prussians but these will be very, very difficult to beat in quality. I already decided I won´t switch.