Review of baccus Prussian Calvary units

Now this review will be slightly different because when I first got the models I really couldnt tell the difference between many of them. So I will start with a qoute from Peter of Baccus.

"Prussian Dragoons and Hussars are VERY similar.   The way to differentiate between them is that the Dragoons have straight swords and square shabraques, the hussars curved sabres and pointed shabraques.  If you sort these out, you should find that the dragoons are complete with commands etc.  This leaves the hussars.  The important thing is that their command strip only contains an officer, trumpeter and trooper, with NO guidon as these were not carried by light cavalry on campaign.  The end result is that the line strip looks very similar to the command.  Can I please ask you to double check to make sure that command strips are there, but 'hiding'.  Similarly with the Uhlans and reserve cavalry.  You may find something similar going on with the Uhlans/Reserve."

So without further ado lets take a look at the cavalry I received in the starter which was quite a lot.
Included were 2 units of Kurassiers, 2 units of dragoons, 4 units of hussars, 2 units of lancers and 2 units of reserve cavalry. Each unit is of 9 men. 

So below are the Kurassiers notice they have a guidon.

Then the Dragoons, guidon and straight swords.

Followed by the 4 units of hussars no guidon and curved swords.

Then the lancers and reserve. Honestly these guys I really cant tell the difference.

Once again it all boils down to the very little differences.  Which wont matter as much once I have them based and labeled. Now much like the infantry it is incredibly hard to tell the difference and I am not sure I am 100% right even with guidance. But once again this is part of the problem when you play such a small scale. Now all of those units I got in my starter. Here is what I need for my planed army.
2 units of heavy cavalry and 1 unit of light cavalry. So what does that mean well that's simple but tricky as well.

Heavy cavalry regiments are dragoons or Kurassiers. With each one being made up of four 9 man units. This needs that if I use both my dragoons and Kurassiers I still need 4 more 9 man units to finish them off. Now a package of 3 more units of either type is 9.32 and I need 2. Or for 21.98 I can get a Booster that has 4 units of each of the following  kurassiers, dragoons and hussars. So a bit of a toss up on what to do their. Were the light cavalry regiment is made up of Hussars. With it being made up of four 9 man units. So for light cavalry I am all set.
This does however leave me with  reserve cavalry and lancers that I have nothing to do with. I may just paint them up and label them as kurassiers and dragoons so I don't need to buy more. Not sure yet.


Anyway that raps up the baccus reviews. I will get into more detail later on how I plan on actually building and painting this army after I figure it out. This is very much a concept in progress. A lot also hinges on the BP supplement I still need to get my hands on.

Aruki 

Baccus 6mm Prussian Infantry review

Today will be the long overdue review of the Prussian Napoleonics infantry by Baccus. Now to start with here is a question for you. Below are a unit of line infantry, grenadiers and fusiliers. Can you tell which is which?

This is a common problem that you run into with the small scales that you don't with 28mm scale. And this problem also extends to calvary as you will see in the next post. This is my main complaint but in order to tell the difference you need to look very close. The first picture is line infantry, notice no real distinctive bayonet. The command strip also has a banner, a normal guy, a drummer and the leader has a sword resting on his shoulder. The hat style is also slightly different but probably hard to see in the pictures. Below is a picture of them painted all nice and pretty.

The second picture is the fusiliers. The main distinction between these guys and the line infantry is that they have obvious bayonets. But once again its mainly the little differences, such as the hats. Also on the command strip you will notice the leaders sword is pointed down and across his legs. The musician is also carrying a horn instead of a drum. However, they also have a banner in the same position on the stand and a normal guy. Once again nice picture below.

Finaly, the last picture of course was the grenadiers. Now here is where it gets tricky. For all intensive purposes (at least with the naked eye) they are the same as the fusiliers. Their is a little bit of different detail on their chests and their hats have a slightly different shape, but not much. The main difference is the command strip. Mainly in the fact that their is no banner. There is also 2 normal guys at either end and the musician is more towards the middle with a drum. The leader however looks the same. Here is the final very pretty picture.

Now it is time to talk turkey. Basicly all the infantry I know of come 4 men to a strip. The line infantry I have were included in the starter army I bought and give enough guys to make 10x 24 man infantry unit (6 strips each). That is enough to do  the men for 1 infantry regiment with a few left over so I will need to buy another pack of  12 units for 21.98.  Or two packs of 5 units for a total of  15.99 to finish off my project.

The grenadiers come in a pack of 4 units for 7.99 which was enough to finish off those parts of my infantry regiments. The fusiliers also come in a pack of 4 units for 7.99. I have 1 and will need 1 more to finish off my infantry regiments. For those that may be confused a Infantry regiment for the period I am aiming for was typically made up of (simplified FYI) 10 units of line, 4 units of fusiliers and 2 units of grenadiers. So I need a total of 20 units of line, 8 of fusiliers and 4 of grenadiers.

Hopefully this gives you an idea of what you will be getting into with infantry at this scale for Napoleonics. Just remember its the little things. This is why I plan on tagging my infantry in a rather specific way once they are all built. Anyway more to see in the future. 

Aruki

Baccus 6mm Prussians 3/??, artillery and officers

Today I have some pictures and such of the Cannons and the Officers that you get. We will start with the cannons.


In the starter army I got their were a total of  4 cannons and crew. Now when all done up they can look like this. You can also get 4 additional cannons and crew for £2.50 but i would suggest getting the artillery booster pack for £11.00 which has 8 cannons/crew and 8 limbers and teams. I know I want some of these to add a bit more detail to my army. Never mind, I think I need more cannons anyway.

Below is what you receive. As you can see the main body of the cannon is one solid piece and the wheels are seperate. The crew all come on 1 strip and can then be taken off for basing. From the dozen or so cannons I have the crew are all 1 pose but at 6mm its not that big of a deal. The bigger thing for me will be how well the models assemble which should be straight forward. The only thing I don't like is there aren't more options for cannons. Mainly model wise, because lets face it their were many different styles/sizes of cannons at the time. But once again this is 6mm so I can understand why.

Next we move on to the officers. In the starter box you get what they call 3 command strips. each strip is of 3 men on horse back. The normal pack comes with 15 models though. I plan on using maybe 1 guy for battalion command, 2 men  for regimental  command and 3 for brigade command. But I am still unsure mainly due to needing to investigate more than just the black powder rule set. Which of course means I will need a lot more depending on the rule set played. But once again since its 6mm its fairly cheap for me £2.50 plus shipping of course. One important side note is that the Prussian command are technically Austrian models. But considering the scale and time period it isn't a big deal since its just really different colors that are the main difference (at this scale I would note).

As you can see from the below picture it is a limited set of poses again but you do get enough command for most games out of 1 pack.The one thing which you will see even more when I do the Calvary

I have is horses do look a wee bit funky but once again part of this is due to the scale. And I am not complaining because hell knows I cant create anything at 6mm on my own. Never mind make them crazy nice looking. This however is one complaint I have seen by other people who then use other companies for horse models instead. But to be honest it doesn't bother me. you will not being seeing them that close except when painting anyway.




That wraps up this part of the review of the cannon and officer models. More to come in the following weeks. I hope to have the overall review done by the end of the month and then of course we will see a lot more of them once I start painting them. First however I want to finish off another 2 or 3 projects. I also once again want to thank Peter from Baccus I have been in communication with him again, for general permissions and such, and he is always quick to answer and great to talk to.

Till then 
Aruki

Baccus Prussian stuff 2/?

Today I want to discuss how I am organizing my brigade. The 1812 Prussian Brigade follows the below chart. A lot of the information for this I was able to attain thanks to the help of some great guys on the Warlord Games forum and a book they recommend along with a few websites. I will talk about the book at another time in its own review.

I know I need to actually do it up on the computer at some point to make it easier to read, I will do that in the near future but for now I will break it down for you below.

The Brigade has 2 Infantry Regiments, 2 Heavy Cavalry Regiments, 1 Light Cavalry Regiment, 1 Foot Battery and 1 Horse Battery.

Each Infantry Regiment is made up of 3 Battalions and 2 companies of Grenadiers.  There are 2 Musketeer Battalions of 4 companies each and 1 Fusilier Battalion of 4 companies. Each Company in game terms is a unit of 24 men including command.

The Heavy Cavalry regiments are both 4 Companies large and can be either Dragoons or Kurassiers  In game terms they are 9 man units including command.

The Light Cavalry regiment is exactly the same as the Heavy Cavalry regiment except for 1 difference, The units were Hussars.

The Foot Battery and Horse Battery were identical in terms of cannons. But obviously the Horse Battery was more mobile. Each Battery consists of 8 cannons in game. In theory they should be 6 6lb cannons and 2 7lbs howitzers.


So in game terms this means I need the following:
16 musketeers Companies
8 Fusilier Companies
4 Grenadier Companies
8 Heavy Calvary Companies
4 Light Calvary Companies
16 cannons with crew and in theory limbers for the Horse battery


Now as you will notice from this list I am short on a few things. First I need a few more cannons (4), then I also need another 4 companies of fusiliers and 6 more companies of musketeers. I will remedy this in the future after I have already got the army going. On the other hand I also have a ton of extra cavalry but at the same time I am missing cavalry I need. I am short on Kurassiers/ Dragoons but have a ton of extra lancers and reserve cavalry.  I will remedy this as well in the future and maybe trade off the extra stuff. I am not sure yet as I have yet to see if they will be of use in Black Powder.

On that note I would like to point out something important. I am not building this purely to game with. I am building this because I have always wanted to build an accurate Napoleonic time period army (actually I want two). The fact that I can play games with them just makes it better.

That all for now. Will start looking at the actual models in the next post.

Aruki

Baccus 6mm Prussian stuff 1/?

I am going to do a series of posts on my stuff from Baccus. Do take a look at the website. Baccus has models that cover everything from ancients all the way to Sci fi.  I am unsure how many posts but I will  be doing a review of all the models I received along with whatever else comes up. To begin with I will lay out the combined models in my two orders and then the next post will be about how they break down into the force I am going to make with them.


First off after a lot of research I decided on doing a Prussian 1812 force. I started off by ordering in the Napoleonic Prussian Army pack 1806-1815. This force is huge. It includes the following.

10 units of foot (24 men each with command)
2 units of Kurassiers (9 men each with command)
2 units of Dragoons (9 men each with command)
4 units of Hussars (9 men each with command)
2 units of Lancers (9 men each with command)
2 units of Reserve Cavalry ( 9men each with command)
4 artillery pieces ( 4 crew each)
3 command strips

I followed this up with an order for 2 more artillery sets, a pack of grenadiers and a pack of fusiliers. 

8 artillery pieces (4 crew each)

4 units of Grenadiers (24 men each with command)

4 units of Fusiliers (24 men each with command)

Between these two purchases it gives me more than I need to field a full 1812 Prussian Brigade. This was all done for around $65 + shipping. Baccus is also very open to adjusting the number of types of strips in their packs. By this I mean if you want more command and less troopers they can do that. I should also note that these do not come with bases. I purchased them separately because of the way I wish to base everything.

Now to be completely honest I did buy a set of banners out of curiosity but can't find them for the life of me. So I have omitted them until I due. I also did have a few problems with my initial order. I was missing some cannon wheels and command strips. But instead had extra trooper strips. Peter from Baccus was excellent (and very very patient) in helping me rectify this problem and was more than willing to send them out no charge. But since I had another order in the works I just had him put them together. And to quote him in an email to me about the help he had given me " As far as I am concerned you should get what you pay for and if you don't it's up to me to sort it out". This is a refreshing change from when I tried to get a failcast piece replaced and the message was fix it yourself.


Anyway more info and such on the models themselves and overall impression of the stuff. 
As a side note images used from the Baccus website with permission.

Aruki