Ligny - The gathering storm

 

Following on for the very successful Waterloo Battle we  fought in June 2025, plans are now underway to refight the Battle of Ligny.

The redoubtable Sparker RN sorted out the order of battle and 'bathtubed' this down  to what units/miniatures we would need to paint  and prepare. Bathtub, to explain, is scaling down the number of units, distances, whatever to make a wargame achievable. In our case, a single battalion would represent generally represent an entire regiment comprising three or so battalions. For example, a typical Prussian brigade may have nine or so battalions. This now would be 'bathtubed' to three or four battalions on the tabletop. This all is to enable us to run large battles with a reasonable amount of miniatures and table size, albeit still a LOT of units to field...

As we had a lot of French and Prussian forces already, we  would not have the total madness of the Waterloo adventure. Anyway - I was down for  adding  two brigades of infantry (total of eight units (battalions) and several regiments of cavalry and some more guns.

For these units wanted to do some of the more interesting unforms of the Prussian Army.

So the first cab off the rank was the 1st Brigade of the 1st Corps.

12th Infantry Regiment (2nd. Brandenburgishes). I went with the 1st Battalion as they had grey jackets.

24. (4th Brandenburgisches) Infanterie Regiment. These chaps had a light grey jacket.

So this is to be the 1st Westfalen Landwehr Infantry Regiment. I was just checking my references and noticed that this unit was issued with black cross belts. F*&K! I was contemplating going back and redoing all the cross belts, but then decided that I would probably make a big mess of this and decided to leave the white as is. 

And to round out 1st Brigade I did a battalion of Schutzen (light infantry/jagers). These are in a much brighter green than the original uniforms, but I was playing about with brightening up the colours as this seams to look a bit better at this scale and on the table top. 

So that was 1st Brigade done!

Now onto 2nd Brigade. 

Here we have the the white jackets and blue facings of the 28th Infantry Regiment.

Now with the basing done. Here also are some skirmish bases and ADCs. More about them soon.

1st Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment. These are 3D prints from MC Miniatures. They paint up well, but not sure about the underpants' effect going on...

More 3D prints from MC Miniatures. The 2nd Battalion of the 6th in greatcoats.

I am about to start on a Landwehr unit. These will have shakos instead of the more common caps that most manufacturers. I'll add photos to this page when I get them done.

And now some cavalry.

As I was aiming at doing some of the more interesting uniforms, I very much needed to do the 7th Uhlans. These guys still retained the rather distinctive Polish style uhlan uniforms and helmets.

Here I sued the figures from the French Guard Lancers and just painted them in the appropriate  Prussian colours.

8th Hussars. By 1815 the Prussians were receiving a lot of uniforms and equipment from the British, hence the rather Albion look to this unit.

I still have more cavalry to do. Some hussars and dragoons. I am planning on doing a unit of cuirassiers in place of one of the dragoons. Yes, the Prussians did not have any of their cuirassier regiments for the 100 days, but they will be fielded as dragoons and I just want to have a cuirassier unit for other games in future.

 Now added to all of this I have added some skirmishers to the mix. This is mostly for games under the generald'Armee2 (GDA2) rules, where skirmishers are an important part of a brigade deployment. I will need to do more...

Also for GDA2 I have done some Aid-de-Camps (ADCs). These act as makers as part of the order system in the GDA2 rules. 

  

The white jacket (coatee) was typical of officers from the heavy cavalry, who often served as ADCs and was differentiated these from other figures on the table.

Another addition for GDA2  was a pair of artillery caissons. Again these are used as makers in the rules. 

I am am  also  working on horse teams, limbers and guns. While  not  necessary for most games, I think they add to the look of a game. My aim is to have a limbered and unlimbered team per battery. 

So there is the update. Still more on the workbench to do. Onward!