Speed Painting Napoleonic Austrian Infantry

The final result, less basing and soon to be delivered flags

After several requests I have decided to put together a step by step towards painting 1809 pattern Austrian Infantry. This comes during my own experiments with mass casting, so it affords a good chance to show off the features this line was designed for : fast to paint, non-heroic proportions, and overemphasized or at least easily distinguished unit features like facings; with the hope of producing models that look good as a mass.

I think Austrian infantry are a great target for this sort of sculpt design because hobbyists often shy away from them as an option simply because of the intimidating prospect of painting such an army. Let's look at the  2 major challenges:

1. Painting white: White is a scary main color to be working in, especially for novice painters. First, you have to get a consistent, strong coat and avoid chalkiness, something that is going to be hard without either spraying or many coats. But once you get past that you have a second problem - contrast. The Austrian Uniform in particular has several layers of white and this all makes it quite difficult to maintain strong "black-lining" or any other kind of shading that prevents the model from looking like a white blob especially from tabletop distance. I will discuss both how I painted it and how I kept contrast.

My initial experiment with different shading/wash options: Left to right we have Vallejo Black,  Vallejo Grey, GW Sepia, and GW Earthshade

2. Size of the Project: Austrians are often portrayed in oversized units withing several game systems to represent their huge battalions relative to their peers, and this means that there are more to paint. Painting 4-500 of the line alone at 15mm scale is quite the task. The solution to this is to be strategic about the project and avoid getting into lots of detail work - but this is complicated by the army being white.

The bare metal blob

Now let me get to how I approached things...


STEP 1 : White Spray

I start all my austrian models with 1 airbrush coat of vallejo white primer followed by vallejo air aged white. You could use any white or off white spray can for this, though ideally the main color you want to paint white in should be similar to the spray color.


STEP 2: Brown Layer

I usually paint my models from the innermost layer to the outermost, and I think that's particularly important for Napoleonics where there are so many straps on top of everything else.  So I start here with a brown (reaper muddy brown but this could really be anything) that covers all flesh, hair, and the musket. You don't have to do the flesh with a brown layer, but I find it helps especially with busier models. In retrospect for this new line I could probably get away with just doing flesh without a brown undercoat because the hands and head are not as enlarged as in other lines.




 

Step 1 and 2 Completed - Front

Step 1 and 2 Completed - Back

STEP 3:Block paint all other objects+flesh

This step just covers my 1 or 2 layers of paint for all the other soldierly accessories on the model as well as the flesh ( reaper fair skin shadow). I usually do the backpack,water bottle ( both vallejo flat earth) and the roll (reaper cloudy grey) first, then I do the hat, cartridge box, and gaiters black mixed with grey for some contrast ( in my case pure reaper black with mixed in reaper stormy grey). I then do other little bits like the yellow hat decoration, the green leaves and the metal bits. Hair and mustaches will go in too, though if you are in a hurry then you could just leave all the hair dark brown.


STEP 4: Wash the model

This is key because you really are counting on getting contrast here, I don't think directly shading in lines for large amounts of 15mm models is at all reasonable, but for this white uniform a strong contrast is still needed. You saw already I experimented with different washes, and ultimately I decided to go with GW Agrax earthshade. I feel that the brown goes well with the off white I am working with. You could use black if you wanted but I personally reserve that for models with "colder" colors like my french, or very strong colors like the British. I found that the vallejo washes gave a very grainy looking finish, so I didn't go for them at all.

Step 3 and 4 completed - Front

Step 3 and 4 completed -Back

STEP 5: Add Facings

After the wash, I add the facings, and this is the first time we need to be careful to preserve as much shading as possible. Try to get the facings colored in one clean stroke, and prevent it from coloring the recesses. I used reaper violet red for this particular unit, but you can of course do whatever color you want. The name of the game from now on is to preserve contrast, not fill it in.

Step 5 finished - Front

 

Step 5 finished - Back

 STEP 6: Paint white for the first time


So despite the fact this is an army of white, you should only be brushing on white as the final layer. For me, this is really broken down into to steps - first, layer on the uniform white, which in this case is the off-white vallejo air aged white. Here it is particularly important to not lose shading -- remember that it will be very hard to get back, so don't paint to "complete" the white, just paint as if to highlight it, avoiding recesses entirely.

I then take pure white and do all the straps on the model. This could be done in the same white as the uniform, but I like doing this extra step to gain contrast and make the model a little bit more interesting.

To summarize, you could highlight all the white as one color, or you could do two colors, one for the uniform and one for the straps. You could even skip this step entirely, if you are comfortable with the "tint" look that I know many army painter "dippers" are. Just keep in mind the straps should be a lighter white than the uniform. I also painted the rifle strap white - I realize they were not always white but I find it goes well with the model.

Below you have the finished product:

Step 6 (painting completed) - Front

Step 6 (painting completed) - Back

I actually completed  48 of these in two 4 hour sessions less the spraying and inking - something I'm quite certain could be done faster since these models were completely new to me and I was still figuring out their angles and how to best shade them. I'm getting ready to do another 48, so if you have questions let me know and maybe I can snap another shot.

Regarding the models, I'm quite happy with how they turned out considering we designed and cast these all in house as amateurs. The goal was to get something that was easy to paint because my primary use for these is to make Napoleonics more accessible to the students we run campus events for (see https://taskchairgeneral.blogspot.com/2018/02/battle-of-leipzig-after-action-report.html).
In that regard I think even this first most rudimentary attempt will serve well, as I was not getting slowed down in detail painting, and was very easily able to access facings and other key unit distinctions. Being that there are 70+ sculpts ready for our first run of 5000, I'm excited to see the rest of these.

Tunisia Campaign, Apologies and Wrap up.

So what happened to that firestorm Tunisia series we were doing? I can only apologize because what happened was avoidable. I had overestimated the records we had kept and when it came time to write round 2; I realized I would not be able to cover round 2 in the same level of detail. This led to much humming and hawing over how to proceed, other projects started to pick up and the write ups of the Tunisia campaign fell off the priorities list. So my apologies, here I will summarize the rest of the campaign and provide some thoughts on it.

Round 2 February

The Axis capitalized on their victories in the first round, striking at the Allied buildup in Algeria. In particular the Axis attacked the southern Kasserine sector and ejected the American defenders while also carrying their attack forward to Tebessa through the north. However, the allies held and prevented the troops in the southern Kasserine sector from being cut off and destroyed.

The Italians and their German allies crash through the American lines in the Kasserine Sector

Meanwhile to the north the Axis executed a daring raid deep into allied lines, capturing the westernmost coast of Tunisia. Despite the victory, the move was ultimately indecisive. No firestorm units were destroyed and the position was not valuable in and of itself until the final turn.

Round 3 March

The main centers of battle became Tunis and Tebessa. The allies tried to strike out, stop the flow of axis firestorm units, and claim the Tunis victory point. In a brutal pair of 8-1’s (one for the allies, one for the axis) a unit of Afrika rifles was destroyed but it was essentially a draw. Meanwhile battles continued to rage in the Algeria area. The axis lost a tiger firestorm to some brave tommies but the axis again took the position and this time did destroy some american rifles.

Round 4 April

The British 8th army has arrived and immediately assaults Gabes in force across the mareth line. Despite another pair of 8-1’s, the axis destroyed a platoon of M4 shermans, a battery of M7 priests for no loses and held the line. The allies scored a minor victory in the Algeria sector, keeping the Axis out of Tebessa for the time being. The struggle for Tunis continued with the Axis rebuffing the allied attack once again. Not only did they hold their ground, the Axis destroyed a battery of American 105mm field guns and a platoon of M10 tank destroyers.

A bloody month for the allies with two major attacks being beaten back with heavy casualties.

Round 5 May

In the final turn, the axis successfully held both Gabes and Tunis despite determined attacks from the Allies. The Axis were also the victors in the Algeria sector, threatening the allied line of retreat by seizing Tebessa.

So the campaign ended in a minor Axis victory. The British 8th army was held back at the mareth line and the Americans failed to take the all important port of Tunis. Worse yet, the axis nearly encircled the entire American force, forcing them to withdraw from Tunisia all together.

Final Scores

Note that some players did not play all 5 games and other players were subbed in.

Conclusions

First and foremost, next time I need to keep better records. You'll notice that a lot of the time I was forced to say "Algeria area" and such because I simply do not know what the exact provinces were contested.

If we end up doing a custom map based event again, we'll need real markers.

If we were to run this campaign again we would need to take another look at balancing the firestorms. The Axis started strong and with the dice on their side, they took almost no casualties while the Allies bled considerably. This meant that it was uphill the entire way for the Allies. Of course we've only run the scenario once so it's not like we're working with a big sample size. Regardless I think the more linear method we used for Leipzig is the way we'll be conducting events going forward. There are simply too many variables in a firestorm.