For the first time since May I had a chance to do some painting. Sam Fuson has made sheets of labels for Fate of Battle that reflect real orders of battle. For my Russian force, I am building out Bagration’s VII and VIII corps. My current Russian force was an ad hoc mixture of things I was able to find on ebay. That was enough to get me started and do all the needed play testing for the rules. Now I am building out the missing bits to create those two corps.
At Historicon, I had pre-ordered several bags of Russians. Two bags of infantry and a command bag make eight battalions with two color parties extra. I’ll eventually mount the color parties on the bases for the corps commanders and Bagration. I couldn’t sleep this morning, so I wrapped up these eight battalions of Russian jaegers. The uniforms are just about the same as Russian infantry, except they have white plumes and green pants.
I also knocked out several batteries of artillery. Of course the Russians in the Napoleonic Wars are known for their masses of guns. Looking at the order of battle for these two corps, I’m not sure I want to face them on the table. This picture just shows the light artillery in the VII and VIII corps as well as some attached directly to Bagration.
This is the heavy artillery. As a comparison, the two French corps that I have painted have a total of 8 artillery batteries, mostly 8-lb ones. Later in the wars, the French began to compensate for lack of well-trained infantry by adding artillery batteries to their corps — in many cases supplied by the enemy.