According to Blogger over the last 6 months the country with the largest number of views of this blog has been Singapore. Very flattered that people from across the world would be interested in what I’ve posted, hope you have enjoyed it.
Thank you to my readers from Singapore and everywhere around the world.
I recently noticed some limited restocks of some Hat sets so took the opportunity to try to add some figures to reorganize my Bavarian units (and why not pick up another Austrian command unit if Hat is making noises about producing their Austrians troop sets).
While I ordered 10 Bavarian action sets, they only had 5 (sad face). But that’s better than the nothing available for the last couple of years.
Cheers
It fits!
It is a challenge to find a 1/32 horse for the Hat Austrian mounted officer because the tails of his coat make him a difficult fit for many other manufacturer’s 1/32 horses; doesn’t fit well on Call to Arms, Italeri, or Armies in Plastic horses.
However he sits quite nicely on Hat’s own 1/32 French dragoon horses.
After just noticing an anonymous reply to my second to last blog post I checked out Hat’s website and it appears they have resumed work on these figures!
They are at the stage of designing the spru, meaning deciding what combination of figures, backpacks and hats can fit, and therefore how many of everything that will be in each set (and if it requires 3 or 2 sets) to get it all done.
Very happy to see this, but trying also to temper my enthusiasm because there have been many false hopes on these in the 14 years since Hat first showed the master figures for these; https://www.hat.com/Prev/Austrian/Austrian.html
Cheers!
It’s just that there has been so little to talk about given Hat Industrie’s failure to produce their Austrian sets, and the scarcity of many other critical figure types.
Yes I have bought the odd set, typically either a find on EBay or one of the online shops I regularly check, and very occasionally regular sets where I find a need.
Not going to lie; it’s more than a little depressing to get so far as to have a largely compete French & allied army, and an Austrian army really only missing fusiliers & grenadiers, but with no near-term prospects for those troops to be produced.
If anyone has any contacts with producers they are able to share I would be very grateful. I will reach out to them to discuss producing Austrian sets and how much in sales $ they can count on from me alone. Costing out my needs (Based on Hat’s typical # of figures per set and recent pricing) I estimate my needs to cost somewhere north of $3,500. A not insubstantial amount of sales to be able to count on upfront.
One Napoleonic thing that has been occupying my brain is study of the 1806 campaign against Prussia. Not so much to play it out in 1/54, but to better understand it. In particular what stands out to me is that even with their less flexible army I believe the Prussians, with just a little bit more focus & leadership could have not only done better that historically (It would be very hard to do worse) but could have concentrated their army to beat Napoleon at Jena. More on this later. Cheers
I recently came across this video on YouTube from Stan of “Stan’s Armee” (some one I “know” from interacting on the Hat forums that shares a passion for the 1809 campaign). He had not posted on his blog in a while, but his recent YouTube video made me very happy; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Wg3CYkf7p8&t=27s
To explain; as so many others have experienced, it is easy to get swept up in a project at the beginning, much harder to maintain the effort to complete it I n the face of adversity (in this case lack of figure availability). Stan’s recent video encouraged me to not lose hope; and I want to thank him for that!
Cheers
Hi everyone;
I have continued to adjust some of my units when I can find useful figures, but it’s slow going with little progress as long as the Hat Austrian action & marching sets remain unproduced. Sad that a company that has produced so many great sets can’t seem to get these done, and much of its 1/32 line of sets is now out of stock everywhere. Anyway…
Armies in plastic is running one of there periodic sales; all infantry sets $9.95 and all cav sets $8.95 (vs $12.95 each regularly). As mentioned before, they have a bunch of French sets in new colors, check it out; https://www.armiesinplastic.com/
Cheers!
