Austrian infantry

With family  and other priorities, Steve and I have not managed to meet for a game for two weeks and with half term that is likely to extend to three weeks.  However, I have managed to find my paint brush and fight my way to my painting table to finish the first unit of Austrian infantry for my Grand Alliance collection.  The figures are Wargames Factory plastics and work out pretty good value, plus with all the options available in the box all sorts of units/nationalities can be created.

I decided to paint the figures as Regiment Furstenburg, like the majority of Austrian units they had pearl grey coats with red facings. The Pike & Shot Society publication on the Austrian Army by Robert Hall and Giancarlo Boeri provides all the uniform and flag information via its excellent plates. In the introduction, mention is made that the Austrians fought two different types of opponents during this period, the Ottomans and the French and their allies. For the former they discarded their pikes and relied more on firepower, therefore I painted up an extra two figures of musketeers so I could swop out the pikes for the campaigns in the east.

 For the western theatre I can retain the pikes and swop the extra musketeers for the grenadiers and then group the grenadiers from several battalions into a composite battalion