Monday 20 April 2015

The Piedmontese: Austria's Allies - Part 2 Infantry: Regt Piedmont, 1st Battalion

Yet again, its taken a while from starting these figures to getting them finished. I started them away back in September 2014, so not quite a year in the painting. Quite a success for some of my figures.

As I said in Part 1, I am using Old Glory Saxons as Piedmontese as there are not are no appropriate figures available; these were purchased from Timecast UK. Old Glory are either loved or hated. My OG Austrians were great to start with but I soon discovered there are other better sculpts. These are obviously from a different sculptor from the Austrians and the details, faces, weapons etc are much better, but some of the walking poses are a little bit strange.

The main issues with the figures are the collars and the packs. Piedmontese had flat collars rather than raised, and I could find little evidence of blanket rolls.

Nonetheless, these painted up really nicely. I still have to add the flags, and although they are designed, I haven't been able to get to the printers. First my boy had chickenpox and now its my wee girl, meaning I won't get to the printers until next week. Rather than wait I wanted to post what I had done so far.

So here they are. They look a little bright, especially the blue, but that must be from the flash of the camera as they look fine in the flesh...


Here's a preview of the flags. They were created in Adobe Illustrator with a bit of shading in Photoshop.



I also found some reference pictures while searching the internet that I wanted to share. These are various Italian re-enactment groups. The one with the flag with the pale blue border is the La Marina Regiment.



According to James R Arnold's Marengo book, the Piedmontese had "Four National and ten Provincial infantry battalions".  I will probably do the other four national battalions, and should probably add grenadier companied to these, but the "provincial" battalions are a little bit of a mystery, so any information would be appreciated.

3 comments:

Vive l'Empereur said...

Old Glory is good overall, but there are specific ranges I avoid. They seem incapable of maintaining the same consistent quality across the board. Some of the ranges are due for make overs to fix unrealistic poses.

As far as blankets, these are more personal items and not part of the uniform itself. With that being said, seeing that in an image doesn't indicate they were that color or they had them - they all had blankets whether issued or not (they would privately purchase them). You might look toward the AB line, as you're likely going to find better accuracy and you're not stuck with extra lead you don't need.

Jonathan Freitag said...

I like how your Old Glory Piedmontese turned out. Nice flags and the reenactor photos are a great help.

When I get around to fielding Piedmontese, I plan to use Euraka's 18mm 1806 Saxons. To me, they look close enough.

Colin Baillie said...

Jonathan, I've ordered some chasseurs and grenadiers from the Eureka range. They are proportionally similar to the Old Glory so hopefully will mix well.