As seen above, the County of Santa Sofia of the Soweiter League is in the process of selecting new uniforms from the fine emporium of Messrs. Tipplebruder. These will be for the Fuselli Fusiliers (I know the minis are supposed to be musketeers, but Fuselli Musketeers doesn't have quite the same ring!). The Fuselli Fusiliers are led by Colonel Giuseppe "Big Joe" Fuselli.
Here are a couple of prospects. The Conte Luigi Funiculi-Funicula of Santa Sofia favors the red/green/yellow combination (the Contessa Rafaella Funiculi-Funicula thinks the Conte is a bit color-blind - ha ha - but she's content to let him have his pretty uniforms). "La uniforme e bella!"
Comments and opinions are welcome.
(still stumbling around not having much luck with the pixellated bitmap versions of the templates I brought a couple into Adobe Illustrator, used live trace and live paint to convert and color them)
8 comments:
They look pretty good to me . . . of course they also are fairly similar to two Saxe-Bearstein units (von Grolsch and von Coors), so of course they look good.
Well, there are slight differences such as smallclothes and button colors . . . but coats and facings are very close.
You might not be happy with these, but I think that they look fine.
-- Jeff of Saxe-Bearstein
I hope and expect we'll never meet as enemies on the field of battle so there shouldn't be any problems of mistaken identity. :-)
With all of my member states I'm not even going to try not to duplicate the uniform colors of other nations.
I like the colorful red/green/yellow version best myself.
They do look fone, but there are already so many (quasi-historical or totally mythical) infantrymen in red coat in this campaign... The green coat of the Ballyfoole Grenadiers was more original, without looking too'quasi-russian'. So what about green coat and respectively red & yellow facings -i.e. merely reversing the colors for the1st example).
Wargamer syndrome: if 2 different uniforms equally please your eye; you'll end paintaing a whole regiment of each...
Obviously, by its very nature, the Soweiter League can field locally-recruited regiments with totally different uniforms.
But the main color of the infantry coat may also display the allegiance of the state? The main conflict is between Gallia and Hesse-Seewald, and Britannia/ Hungland and its ally Hungover had *always* been against anything french-like. In a SYW-like situation, the conflict is thus basically 'WHITE coated infantry' vs 'DARK BLUE-coated + RED coated infantry' (roughly roman catholics vs protestants of various obedience).
OSW Peter Cole's Duchy of Argoz-Bern (still not a member of the campaign?) fields a quasi-hanovrian army, including loaned highlanders: certainly on Britannia /Saxe Seewald side;
Saxe-Bearstein infantry is in red, and the (vile) Stagonians in white, Austro-french like: allegiance rather obvious;
Stollen grenadiers wear typical 'protestant' mitres, while their Zichenau counterparts are in white & wear an 'austrian' bearskin.
So there's clearly an underlying tendency: to the Soweiter League, the color of the coats of the major part of its infantry can be a very significant choice fraught with serious consequences (& possibly risk of friendly fire?). Keeping for the time being to green (as the Grand Duchy of Davidsberg seems to do) can be a cautious way to postpone any formal alignment & keep an appearance of neutrality (and later avoid friendly fire, wharever the side eventually chosen!). Now, the Soweiter League is already at odds with the Batrachian 'froggies', so perhaps the choice is compelling? No problem with foot in red coats, then...
(Gallian troops having to cross the Rhine while Batrachia "has some Belgian roots", I suppose Batrachia to correspond to the most north-eastern part of France, where the Rhine is no longer the 'natural border' -roughly where the Maginot Line ended- perhaps already with part of the wallonian ex-austrian possessions?)
BTW, among the other ImagiNations of the campaign:
-Hesse-Engelburg fields infantry of very distinctive & original colors patterns: can some indication be drawn from the prussian-type of the coat & the grenadiers and fusiliers mitres?
- Tragarland foot currently favors red, but of a too peculiar hue to reflect unambiguously any alignment,
-Alzheim seems to follow mainly 'gallian' military fashion,
-Vugarian infantry looks quite 'prissian', (even if of Slav orthodox culture?),
-Lagerburg-Slobbovia is rather ambiguous, protestant mitres but foot mainly in white,
-Monrovia seems to field more blue-claded infantry than Wittenberg? On the other hand Wittenberg is cleraly anti-french...
-Mieczyslaw foot in blue coat, but the country is nevertheless probably catholic? Bearskins for the grenadiers? (while the Nordheim is probably lutherian?).
-Ober-Bindlestiff regiments wear rather gallian-sounding names, their foes of Saxe-Sweinrot field mainly 'Briton' mercenaries,
-Scandalusia is probably catholic,
-Noverre... if they fear the french so much, perhaps an independant Huguenot Grand Duchy?
And as for the SO mysterious Byzantium... nothing (so sadly, so regrettably) is curently known of its uniforms (BobXII PLEASE NOTE!)...
Among some noteworthy mythical Lace Wars countries not (as yet?) part of the diplomatic campaign,
-Pils-Holstein is opposed to 'frenchies',
-Rujitania (http://www.miniaturewars.com/) is 'iberian' & thus on the catholic side,
-Saint-Maurice sounds french (for several subjective reasons I'd see it situated near Noverre, and having to cross or bypass Piedmont-Savoy to attack eastward), its opponent Ardoberg-Holstein looks rather Prusso-Hanovrian (with Carpathian Pandours for want of good native light foot, so adequately located rather south of main Germania).
Thanks for the well-reasoned comments on uniforms, Jean-Louis!
I'll try out a green coat with red facings and yellow breeches on the template when I get a chance.
Making green coats a unifying element sounds like a good idea. I might have a few shades of green depending on the nation-state (hopefully avoiding the issue Jeff raised a while back about the units blending into the background).
I do plan to paint up some units with blue coats at some point. The main colors of the Soweiter flag are blue and white after all, and that will probably be the dominant color of the "Germanic" nation-states of the League. (besides I like blues and greens for uniforms, they are colors I used quite a bit in my fantasy armies).
I haven't realy gotten into Batrachian units yet. I'm considering using Napoleonic era minis (or something fairly different from the SYW and AWI minis I have lined up for the League armies) for those (some day...) and possibly mostly white and/or lighter gray coats. They would still operate under the same rules as the League, though.
I'm thinking it's okay for the cavalry, especially (odd? flashy?) types like hussars to have totally different colors from the infantry (like the HH Hussars)?
The *medium* blue of the League's national flag is quite different from the dark blue of Hesse-Seewald & other Prussia-like countries. You can ever use a slightly lighter blue for the uniforms - dye of inferior quality/ the expensive one used on the silk flag, hence prone to fading? Thus, little or none risk of misidentication on the battlefield.
Green-coated infantry will not blend in the background (adequate for 21°C special forces, ignominous for glamorous Lace Wars infantry) if with white gaiters and lightly colored breeches; additionally, as Jeff pointed out, there's a lot of different greens to chose from for your uniform coats AND the painting/flocking of the bases, but white gaiters & pale breeches will always clearly separate /isolate coats from grass.
Cavalru was far more multicolored than infantry, and white, blue, red, yellow (& later green) of all hues were present in each & every alliance, rather independantly from
the 'national' coat color of the infantry (except in British service where the'Blue' & artillery apart, everybody & his brother was in red!) (re. post 18041 on the Old School wargaming Yahoo group). As for hussars, let yourself loose & run free wheeling! Many were more multicolored than parrots/peacocks, and an unit of converged hussars from several regiments or mixed Frei Korps/ Legions would look like rainbow warriors!
Looking forward for more profected designs- cheers!
The Soweiter League being some kind of (con)federation, the various components can field contingents differing not only by the main color of the infantry, but also by the very cut of the coat -again, differences being visible mainly on the foot troops.This, specially if the members of the League differ by their (main) religious alignment. The mitre worn by the Ballyfoole Grenadiers is suggestive of a (mainly) protestant recruitment -of course the rule was not absolute. For infantry contingents from (mainly) catholic areas, coats of austrian &/or french cut (read: templates) [& bearskins for grenadiers?] would perhaps be more appropriate?
Jean-Louis makes some good points, but please note . . . you don't HAVE to use green as a base color.
If you are going to have lots of green uniforms, you might want to consider options such as . . . brown dirt . . . yellow-white dry grass . . . gray rocks . . . and so forth.
I most heartily DO SUGGEST that you use the same basing colors for the entire army since that becomes a good unifying element (particularly important when you have a multi-sourced force such as you have.
Remember though, the only person you really should be concerned about pleasing is . . . yourself. Paint them as you want to.
Have a fairly "uniform" army or one with widely different uniforms (both have historical precedent). And, think about it . . . we are IMAGINARY countries. Do what YOU want.
-- Jeff
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