Austro Hungarian pike grey?

[dualer]

Having just invested in lots of lovely Scarab Miniatures, I've been looking at the Osprey books on the Austro Hungarian forces and was wondering how others paint up their figures. Anybody have a reccomended paint producer that comes close to pike grey?

[FiatRevelli]

I don't claim any degree of expertness on colors or painting, but I settled on Vallejo 70.905 (156) Blue Grey Pale, after reading through posts on various message boards.

There are plenty of examples on my blog, but here's one (my experiment with a Shambattle style table won't be for everyone): https://54mmorfight.blogspot.com/2023/09/contemptible-little-armies-and-late.html

The color in-person depends on the lighting, sometimes appearing more grey or blue. It isn't a far off match though for illustrations in the Osprey book on Austria-Hungary WWI infantry.

[Freddy]

I sometimes paint mine a little bright, I mix it from artist oil, Payne grey, Prussian blue and white.
https://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=139011.0

I think GW Fenrisian Grey might be a good base colour, with some dark grey ink and a little white drybrush. (Pike grey being the most popular, but Austro-Hungarian army had 3 main uniform colours, the pre-1908 every-late19th-century-army-blue appered in the early war times, and in the late war a darker, greener ,,field grey" was adopted, similar to the German uniform.)

[monk2002uk]

From the Citadel stable, Contrast Space Wolves Grey or Russ Grey serve as good base coats. Fenrisian Grey is good for highlighting.

Robert

[waterproof]

I think you should be right with blue-gray-pale from vallejo. You can use it as a base shade and lighten it mixed with dark-sea-gray. I'm not an expert on field uniform colors either and like to try things out. With the Scarab miniatures you are actually given what uniform color it should be, the much darker field gray that was issued to the troops during the war. It is similar with the steel helmet, this was rather of a somewhat brownish color. Unlike the copy on the German side. The pike gray stood for the early variant of the uniform in the Habsburg monarchy. Was then replaced by the darker field gray.

[SJWi]

Dualer, if you pm me your e-mail address I will send you some photos I took last year of WW1 Austrian and Hungarian uniforms in the Budapest and Vienna Military Museums.

[dualer]

Thanks for your responses. I'm guessing that there was a changeover period where troops were supplied with new feldgrau kit replace the pike grey uniform, so a mixture of the two?

[armchairgeneral]

I use Foundry British Blue Grey for the early Pike grey and Foundry Slate Grey for the later grey colour. It is possible the later uniform would have been supplied as the earlier uniform wore out so mixtures of both. That said the Scarab figures are quite late war, being in helmets, so I would have thought they would all be in the later grey.

[Freddy]

Thanks for your responses. I'm guessing that there was a changeover period where troops were supplied with new feldgrau kit replace the pike grey uniform, so a mixture of the two?

Yes, there was, and as new recruits got the feldgrau uniform, veterans were identifiable by the pike grey uniforms. In a famous Hungarian book the officer calls the stormroopers "my grey ones" ast they are chosen from among the veteran soldiers.

After capturing a huge Italian storage facility, some uniforms were made from the captured Italian green uniform material too.

[Metternich]

As noted, the stahlhelms and Berndorfer helmets worn by Scarab troops indicate that they depict Austro-Hungarians from 1916 on.  New uniforms issued in 1916 would be feldgrau (and as noted, some uniforms were made from stores of captured Italian cloth which would be a bit greener than feldgrau, though still a green grey); and some troops would retain the old Pike Grey uniforms (although as these wore out they also would be replaced with feldgrau).  I have heard that some gamers use WW2 Luftwaffe Field Blue (the shade worn by troops raised from grounded Luftwaffe troops) to paint Pike Grey - this paint is readily available from many makers.
  Below is a link to a youtube video discussing painting Bolt Action Luftwaffe troops.  As you can see, the shade is very much like Pike Grey.