The Great War: Prussian Guards Army 1914

Here is my first unit for my army for the new Warhammer Historical The Great War rules. I painted these some years ago and recently upgraded the bases and touched them up a bit.

I have decided to start with a 1914 German Guards battalion, partly as the high cost of the figures means a few less to paint.

The organisation charts reflect the historical arrangements pretty well but that is easier with a larger scale for the units than, say, 12 men representing a regiment. A regiment in TGW would be 432 figures! Phew!

The German army in WW1 was organised into regiments. Each regiment had 3 battalions and each battalion consisted of four companies. The company was split into three platoons which was then further divided into four sections. You don't need to get down to this level of detail in TGW rules as the smallest unit is the platoon consisting of 11 figures, representing about 85 men in real life. You can buy up to two extra figures and I have decided to go for 12 man units so that is roughly a 1:7 ratio. So I will need 144 figures for my 4 core Companies. I now have 12 painted, 12 under way and 12 more based. All the figures are Renegade but I will be investigating the Great War Miniatures ones in the next few weeks.

My initial army will be a Prussian Guards Battalion and will look like this:

1 HQ Battalion Command Group

This consists of 1 Officer and two soldiers.

I have already painted these and here they are.


I think I would prefer an officer with a peaked cap and will work on that shortly. My officer with the pickelhaube will become a company officer.

4 Core Guards Companies

Each company will be 36 men and a three man company command unit.

Divisional Support

You can have 1 per 2 core company choices so I can have two choices. I think I will choose some cavalry. Initially just 1 troop of 12 figures (9 is the standard but you can buy up to 5 more)

Regimental Support

You are allowed 1 per core company choices so that gives me 4. I am going to have two machine gun sections (2 maxim guns), one Jager unit (maybe a small company of two platoons rather than the normal 3) and a 77mm gun just because I like the look of the Great War miniatures artillery models.

That is a lot of figures but I have quite a number already as I picked up one of Renegade's army boxes at a discount. We shall see how many years it takes but at least you can start a battle with far less than this.