Lol!!
Good to see Strelets getting new sets/stock out despite all the troubles they face.

I will however be holding my money back for those Napoleonic British in square.... have a whole brigade I want to use them for!!!
Looking forward to the Bavarians too!!

i too got notification from Hannants here in UK about the Cuirassiers and have already ordered a few boxes of each. Well Done Strelets in supplying UK with the sets. I wish all Strelets team and families best wishes and safety in the awful times there , Victory to Ukraine
cheers and thanks
Old John

My order has been despatched. I'm so excited.

Got some of these. Nice models.

Sadly (not waited for review in PSR) I didn’t do ‘due diligence’ before parting with my money.

Both Bavarian and Austrian are wearing ‘lobster-pot’ type helmets. Having made researches, I cannot find any reference to either wearing these lobster pot helmets in the Western arena, where they wore tricorne hats so these are useless for the main campaigns of Eugene or Marlborough.

Sad. Wasted nigh on forty quid unless anyone can point me to a source that shows otherwise.

Well...the appearance in lobster pots has long been debated. The Osprey says they were wearing them at least until 1705, so that works for Blenheim. I think they were used in the campaigns against the Ottomans, which is great for me as I'm working on those campaigns as well.

I have a feeling that this was discussed on the forum when they were first mooted. Or we asked for them specifically. There's another box called "Dutch Cuirassiers" with tricorns in the pipeline.

Bearing in mind (a) that uniforms and equipment in armies of the period might take years to replace with new/newer and (b) that the pictures/tapestries of battles of the period were painted/created some years after the events they depict, generally by an artist who was not there in person, then I think it quite possible that cuirassiers in the first years of the War of Spanish Succession might have fought in helmets rather than tricornes (with an iron 'secret' underneath).

It is pretty well impossible to prove categorically, either way.

In which case, a little artistic licence is quite acceptable I would say. If cuirassiers wearing tricornes are required, then it is either a case of waiting for the Dutch cuirassiers set, or head-swapping the lobster-potted Bavarian and Austrian sets. If the latter, then one box of (say) French musketeers on the march will provide (almost) enough heads to swap with 4 boxes of cuirassiers.

Absolute historical accuracy is difficult to achieve, and the look of one's model army is a matter of personal choice of course. If we were being entirely accurate, then for example the British infantry Firing Line and In Attack sets would not have their figures sculpted with marching order packs still on their backs; these would have been taken off and taken to the rear before action.

And so it is, I think, with these cuirassiers.

Thanks for the in depth reply there -much appreciated.

I haven’t seen the Osprey but all the sites I could find (not THAT extensive!) did say the lobster pots were only worn in Eastern campaigns. I am wracking my brains to work out why!

That reply has made me much happier.

Thanks

The Austrian cavalry fought differently in the east. More slow moving, and much more compact, to stop the Ottoman horsemen getting in amongst them. The Ottomans were known to be better fighters and also wore more complete armour, including helmets like lobsters.

It's possible that several units wore them at Blenheim: http://www.thewaroffice.co.uk/Blenheim/Index.htm

For printed sources I have the Marlborough's Army Osprey, Funcken Lace Wars volume 2, and a nifty little book called Uniforms of Marlborough's Wars, illustrated by Lt Col Frank Wilson.

Great link! Many thanks.