Wednesday, May 14, 2025

Latest Hat Restocks

 So I noticed that with no announcement from Hat several retailers recently started showing restocks of the Hat French light infantry command, Voltigeur and Chasseur.  These follow their earlier recent restocks of the Carabiniers & Longcoat infantry sets, which had been announced beforehand.

Interesting not only because these restocks were not announced, but also the colors the various sets were produced in (at least interesting for me given I don’t paint them).

Chasseur restock; light blue (consistent with original production color & previous command restock but inconsistent with previous Chasseur restock) 

Light infantry Command restock; dark blue (consistent with recent Carabinier & previous Voltigeur restocks as well as previous Chasseur restock, but inconsistent with most recent Chasseur restock)

Longcoat infantry; dark blue (inconsistent with light blue longcoat command set)

The good news is that by redoing many of my units I can mix and match them to have consistent color between their command and troop figures (all except the dark blue Longcoat units).

The command figures look great in the dark blue!



Wednesday, February 26, 2025

My Marshfeld from another vantage point

 Here is the view looking north from just north of Aspern

1st;  toward the western part of Wagram escarpment (location of Deutsch-Wagram village).  With Raasdorf about halfway between and to the right of direct line of sight.



2nd; looks to the left of above pic, west of Wagram, with the Bisamberg in distance at far left of pic


Cheers

Friday, February 21, 2025

My Marshfeld

While the first inspiration for this project was my love of 1/32 soldiers, and the 2nd my love of Napoleonic history, the 3rd clinching inspiration was finding a site to actually stage the battle.



Here is my marshfeld, with the step up elevations representing; 

1. The Russbach escarpment in the top center

2. Bisamberg heights at  the far end.


Cheers

Friday, January 3, 2025

Happy New Year everyone!

Hope y’all had a great holiday season and look forward to a great year ahead.

I will be posting more now as we’ve entered the depressing darkness of post-holiday winter. Lots of Austrian units to assemble and some French ones to reorganize.

Cheers all 


Thursday, December 5, 2024

So I did order additional Hat Carabiniers in the new true French blue! Lol

 Decided to buy another 5 sets of the Hat Carabiniers in the latest dark blue of the recent restock to (re)make my 2 guard Chasseur bats.  

Will use the turquoise Hat Carabinier figures formerly used for these Bats somewhere in the similarly colored Army of Italy. And to spur further improvements to my Army of Italy, which includes 2 bats made from Hat Elites in greatcoats, I also bought 3 boxes of the recent restock of this set (which I hope is in the same turquoise as my existing Longcoat figures, or I have a new problem).  Perhaps I will use these as part of a build out of Broussier’s Div (which until now I have not done because I reassigned it to the French right as emergency reserves to counter Johann’s army approaching from Unter Siebenbrunn).  We shall see what opertunities this creates.

As for the Austrians; after assembling all the I Korps Fusilier Bats/Regiments I kinda lost some steam (as I Korps alone has about 1,800 figures).  Still need to assemble all the German Fusilier units in III, V & VI Korps.  I have purchased them, just not put together the figures or units yet; Although I have assembled & organized all the command figures for each of these battalions.

Cheers!

Friday, November 22, 2024

Latest haul and the issue of inconsistent figure production color

 Latest haul


So I’ve been looking to change up the figure composition of some of my units that use Hat foot Chasseur so was very happy Hat did a restock of this set because it’s been out of stock everywhere for a few years.

Only needed 6 of a few of the poses so only bought 2 sets (each set = 3 of each firing, reloading, high Porte & advance poses + 6 marching figures).  They arrived today (which is great because I leave for 10 days thanksgiving tomorrow).

But now I have a problem; Hat decided to manufacture this restock in the darker true French blue, instead of the turquoise blue of the previous restock (which all my other figures of this type are molded in). The Chasseurs were in the same color as the Hat French command set below (that set being torquise also cusses me trouble… but I digress).


Now don’t get me wrong; I much prefer the darker blue as it is much more historically accurate and looks much better when set up (especially with a bunch of similar colored units).

BUT… to best adapt to the variation in the color of available figures, I long ago decided that I would use light blue armies in plastic & turquise colored Hat Chasseurs and Longcoat infantry figures for the French army of Italy, while the Grande Armee French would all be in the darker blue.  There is of course no historical precedent for this; the French units in the army of Italy wore the same (though often more worn out) uniform as the rest of the French troops; but it allowed me to build each of these forces at the same time and each in a uniform color.  

As of now my Hat French Chasseur populate 4 battalions: 2 battalions of 112th French infantry regiment in the army of italy, and the 2 old guard Chasseur battalions. 

Solution?  

Buy 5 more sets of the new dark blue Chasseurs and use the dark blue figures to do the Guard Chasseurs, while the turquoise figures (with a lot of unused extra figures now) stay just in the 112th regiment. I hate having so many unused figures (while having to buy new ones as well).

Cheers

Latest Hat Restocks

 So I noticed that with no announcement from Hat several retailers recently started showing restocks of the Hat French light infantry comman...

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