IR Van Birkenfeld (I-59)

 

This is my second 1670's/80's era unit - Dutch IR Van Birkenfeld (I-59). The musketeers were painted by chum Shaun McTague, but I painted (!) the pike and command and highlighted everything. The bases are my FK&P06's, with integral magnets for storage and transit. I'll take a proper photo later- I'm going to have to make a flag up for them, unless anyone has any ideas what it looked like?

Postscript- I've found a partial flag in Hall from Triomphe 1693, against NLI38- I'll need to get chum Ian onto that!

I'm developing the impression that the majority of Dutch units started the 1670's in really bold colours (typically blues, but also reds), but by the late 1670's most had changed to shades of grey with coloured facings, possibly based on their original uniform colour or facing colours. This unit is in light grey as we know they were wearing by 1678- the socks should really be red, but I won't tell if you won't. ;-) I chose to put the officers in reversed colours. 

I'm going to concentrate on collecting units that were present at the battle of Seneffe in 1674, because it was the main field battle of the war and because we have images of some of the standards that the French captured. For this reason most of my units will be in the early, bold colours. I'd like to think I'll eventually end up with perhaps 16 battalions of Dutch foot, and nearly as many units of horse, and as many French, which would be enough for a 12-15' wide table at a show.

In other news, I'm doing The Plastic Crack Podcast from 8pm tonight. I'll be wittering on about writing rules and what I'm up to, in general, ie Renaissance, why it's been so slow coming and why its going to be so good.

Finally I've received the PDF version of The Siege of Norchester scenario book for For King and Parlaiment from Robert Avery (who also wrote the popular Marlowe to Maidenhythe scenario book). It represents a series of small battles fought around the fictional city of Norchester. It looks very entertaining and I intend to publish it on Friday.