One of my favorite periods for gaming is the lace wars period, specifically, SYW and WAS. We play these reasonably often, now using my home grown rules again. Well, we have run most of the battles of the period, but have not been able to do much in the Low Countries, as by some miracle, none of us actually had a Dutch army! We have duplicates of almost everything else, but this one slipped through the cracks. So, I made the decision last spring to rectify this omission once and for all.
This project has probably been my biggest time sink this year, as I had worked through the units. First it started getting some information on the army (which is very limited) and then getting the figures. I found to sources that gave me what I wanted to get me through the painting (an online uniform guide and a printed black and white one on the Dutch Army in WAS). I ent through those and looked at some of the information in the Wargaming History series of books to choose what units I wanted to do.
The next challenge was what fags to use. There is very little information on these and most revolves around captured French examples. Well, Vaubanner does all these flags, so I ordered a wet of each, doubling up on the Swiss to cover the larger regiments. Cavalry fags was an issue, as I found no information. So, I just decided to order a set of the Vaubanner flags in 10mm, using the similar named infantry regiment standards. Since these get folded anyway, the details are lost, but the look will work for now.
Starting with the troops, I did not want to start from scratch as usual. So, I started with the Gajo catalog. Looking through it. I thought I could go with some of their SYW French for the white uniformed infantry (their French are more white than gray) and the French cavalry for the Dutch heavies and Austrian dragoons for the Dutch dragoons. I found conflicting sources on whether the Dutch had turn backs for their gunners, so I went ahead with the French artillerymen without them.
The bulk of the army would be blue coated infantry and Gajo would not work for that. Luckily for me, I came across a Hoel bunch of semi painted bavarians on eBay. These had dark coats and looked to use a mix of the Old Glory French and Hannovarian models, so they would fit the bill. If was actually finding these figures that got me to commit to the army.
I started with the white infantry, as I figured they would be the fastest and get me going. I had to add color to the turn backs and change the legging color to black (I opted for winter black for the army) and changed to tricorne piping color to match the correct regiments.
I then moved onto cavalry. I started with the white coated cavalry. The Gajo models had French gray coats, so I just highlighted these up to white. I then adjusted the saddle cloths, pants and hat tape.
Moving onto the blue coated cavalry, this just required adjusting the saddle cloths pants and hat tape. Some color changes here, so button trim there…
The grenadiers were an issue, as they seem to have all kinds of different head gear. The most interesting was the Saxon short grenadier helmet. This is very similar to the Prussian fusilier helmet. I remembered I had an extra two battalions of these that I had duplicate painted, so I pulled these out and just adjusted the facing colors to represent two of the standing grenadier battalions. No fags for these guys!
The artillery was quite simple, as it just required hat tape changes. For the guns, I went into my artillery box and puled out a mix of old glory cannons. I sprayed them red brown, hit them with a wash and then drybrushed up the brown and brass. I then finished by painting the black metal finishings and metal on the wheels. Some semi gloss dull coat on the guns and these were ready to go with the crew.
The next part of the project was the hard part. I had to do all the regular battalions, guard and Swiss in blue coats. I took this one brigade at a time. I was happy with most of the coloration on the models that I both, but it was block painting and needed some depth. I started by giving all the blue coats a slight highlight. I then went through and repainted most of the facing colors. A few matched up, so that helped. Next, I applied washes to all the facings to give some depth. Finally, I highlighted each to brighten them back up. Reds, whits, yellows and blues. Brigade by brigade I went through. I finished up by fixing the hat tape of each unit. I finished up with the guard and Swiss.
At this point, I had painted all the troops and it was time to glue them to bases. So, I sprayed a whole bunch of white metal bases green one day and got them read for gluing. Do to the number of models, it took me a few nights of work to get all the units on to their bases. At this point, I left for my road trip, so the glue would be plenty dry once I came back six weeks later!
The next step was adding all the flags. I was having some motivation difficulties, so I did not get back to these right away. However, clearing a few other smaller projects helped me get my mojo back, so operation flag finally began. I cut out all the Vaubanner flags from their sheets and marked each unit with its name on the bottom of their bases. I then dipped each in water, added some white glue to the inside and wrapped them on their poles. I noticed a few poles were attached to the tricorns, so I had to separate them with an Exacto knife. I did this on all the units before going forward. Once the flags had been sitting for about an hour, I went back with tweezers and shaped them to give the some character. It took about three nights to get through the whole army. I basically added the flags to about a third of the army, let them set over dinner and went back and did the shaping after that.
With all the troops finally flagged, it was time for flocking. I did my usual Geohex green (which I used up on this project) paint on each base and dipped them in a tray of woodland scenics flock. This also took a couple nights….
Once everything was dry, I hit all the models (except the guns) with some Tamiya dull coat. This seems to give a proper matt finish, like the “old” Testers dull coat. With that, the Dutch army is ready for the field and I am off to my next painting project (maybe a little smaller…)!
- Manteuffel