On Uniforms and the Military Mind

As followers of the blog will know, I'd settled on uniform coats of purple and grey for the infantry of my two imagi-nations. I was quite pleased with them. Or so I thought.

Lately, however, I've been looking, and re-looking, at those colored paper soldier mockups and the colored templates from Not By Appointment I made up. In particular, I was less happy with the purple uniforms, especially when beside their red-coated Turkish allies, the more I looked at them.

Now I do like the purple because it's regal, and because it's novel. There were no purple-uniformed troops during the real world 18th century that I'm aware of. But therein lies part of the problem. They look a little too fanciful, as I look at them now.

And so I've started tinkering with uniform colors again.

I am happy with the dove grey Formulgalan uniforms. I think they will look smart, and the militia can be painted in a darker (presumably coarser) grey cloth to make them seem cheaply outfitted and still fit the army style well.

As an experiment, I started with the red and blue "Turkish" uniforms I like so much and decided to have a try with red uniforms, along a sort of Hanoverian line, for the Baden-Hundsheim infantry. I darkened the red for the Turkish jackets, but perhaps not enough to be really noticeably different from the new line infantry jackets. I've changed the standards to red as well, for now. I suspect some lighter color (white, yellow, etc.) may look better, or I may keep the purple standards.

I've also been thinking about the size of my miniature units, and more on that later, but I put together a couple of quick mock-ups at twenty-four figures per unit, and another showing a Baden-Hundsheim and Turkish unit on the field together, to see how they struck me.

First, the newly crimson Baden-Hundsheim line infantry.

Next, their "Turkish" provincial troops.

And finally, the two units advancing together.

Your thoughts and opinions are most welcome.