Wednesday, June 01, 2011

The Austrians are coming - Big Victrix Update

Big update from Victrix, seems the Austrians really are almost done.
Great news!

We have a bit more of an update and more detail about our upcoming plastic Austrian Napoleonics


Tooling is proceeding well and we are looking at release some time in July. Two of the box designs are finished for the Austrians 1798 –1809 wearing helmets and the Austrian Grenadiers 1798-1815. Currently working on the boxes for the Austrian infantry 1806-1815 and Austrian Landwehr. We have some fantastic cover art on the boxes which reflect poses in the box and are great guides for painting your miniatures. Regimental colour guides are on the back of the boxes.

Each box contains 56 figures. 48 infantry, 2 officers, 2 drummers, 2 standard bearers and 2 lovely mounted colonels. The infantry can all be in marching poses but we do have some arms to enable you to make some figures, firing, loading and advancing with levelled musket or at porte. Most of the figures are easy to assemble so you can get your units built quickly, however we have added a few extras to add some individuality and character to your miniatures so they don’t all look like production line robots!

Austrian infantry 1798-1809

These are the classic looking Austrians that most people think of when envisaging Austrians of the Napoleonic wars. Wearing the helmet with yellow and black crest.

The helmet was officially replaced in 1806 by the shako. However as in most armies of the Napoleonic wars equipment was replaced slowly. Many Austrian infantry, possibly more than half continued to wear the helmet in 1809 and some time after.

Austrian Grenadiers 1798-1815

Grenadiers were part of the Line regiments, however they were mostly brigaded to together in combined Grenadier battalions. These proudly wore their distinctive Fur mitres and moustaches.

Austrian infantry 1806-1815

This set depicts the Austrian infantry from the 1806 reforms wearing shako’s. These can happily fight alongside helmeted Austrians up to 1809 and a bit after.

Austrian Landwehr 1808-1815

The Austrian Landwehr came into being in 1808 and were present in large numbers during the Wagram campaign. They were the distinctive Corsican style hat. Looking a bit like a top hat crossed with an Australian bush hat! The Landwehr wore many varied colour schemes and will add a nice uniform change to your armies if you want to break up the white ranks a bit. The Hat decorations were many and varied from regiment to regiment. We could ot cater for all hat decoration styles. However we will include uniform guides to enable to you alter the hat decorations simply by cutting bits off or cutting off pompoms and gluing elsewhere on the hats.

We have included 2 types of backpack in the sets. The first type has a bayonet attached. The second type has a bayonet and sword. This is due to the fact Grenadiers and some Landwehr carried swords and bayonets, whilst the ordinary infantry simply carried a bayonet. The backpack has the water-bottle, bayonet and cartridge box attached. This enables a greater level of detail on these itmes and prevents undercut issues. They very easy to glue on with no tiny parts.

And finally in each se there will be 2 flags. The regimental flag and colonels flag. There will be the 1792, 1804 and 1806 patterns. The earlier 1792 pattern was used by some units up to 1815. We will also be producing some extra flag sheets sold separately.


We will also be producing a range of metals to support our plastic sets. More on those later
For the Victrix site click here

Well where to start, obviously with a 54 figure set there is more than what we can see here, but these do look great sculpts, poses are very good as well, predominately March Attack which is the favored wargamer pose, and with Grenadiers, Line and Landwehr all ready at the same time there is quite a chunk of your Austrian Army ready to go. As we already knew these will have fewer parts and be quicker to assemble than previous Victrix releases, more in the Perry mold, though hopefully still with enough of a Victrix twist that there will still be plenty of scope for conversion, which has always been a Victrix strong point.

I am sure these are going to prove to be hugely popular.

I have to mention the Perry's, I know the Perry's also have Austrians in the pipeline but they are I feel still a long way off, too long in fact to put off buying these Victrix, especially when these are so good.

I think that when the Perry's figures do come along we will just mix and match, in any case there is still an awful lot to be done to complete the entire range from 1798-1815, Hungarians, Grenzers, Jagers, cavalry and artillery, so that I am sure we will find room for figures from both companys, not sure whether I am being myopic or optimistic lol, though clearly this is an significant issue.

It will be interesting to see what comes in the metal range, command and cavalry for sure but I would love to see artillery done in plastic rather than metal. I wonder though if Victrix still feel plastic is the appropriate medium for artillery sets, it would however be a shame if they do turn there backs on plastic after the British Artillery set, I could understand why but I still think it would be a shame if it does happen.

This is an important release for Victrix, it is also the first from them for a long time that includes anything in the 1813-1815 sweet spot, I do hope they will seize the opportunity and give more emphasis on this later period and that it just isn't simply a byproduct of doing 1809. Clearly they have invested a lot in these sets and it looks at the moment like they will have a winner.

4 comments:

Ray Rousell said...

They do look very nice!

kendo said...

nice indeed..

RazorOne223 said...

These look great, alas I am not going to collect Austrians however. I would be happier if someone would come out with Plastic French Artillery and British Cavalry...for what its worth...

Rob Edgar said...

I hear what you are saying on French Artillery.

I think one set covering Gribeauval and AnXI systems would be truly great. Don't think its going to happen though, I think plastic artillery is dead and buried for the forseeable future.

For Brit Cavalry, Perry are due out with a light cavalry set soonish.