'Not' Sung artillery

The idea was to see how the Garrison Sung would fit into the Boxer force, both in terms of historical look and size.

Not having any Boxer or Imperial artillery, thought I'd see what I could put together. Sung artillery crew, 7YW artillery gun and carriage, ACW cannon wheels. Overall look is actually quite convincing!

 

The Sung figures are 25mm... Rose 20mm, Boxers 28mm... so Sung in the middle as far as size goes. Looking at them, Think the Sung could be used at a push with both... Plus, even being several hundred years too early, I don't think the Sung look too much out of place.

Rose ACW Confederate artillery

This gives me the figures needed to do the 3rd battle in Battles with Model Soldiers (plus a spare gun).

 

Two guns with crews in an assortment of uniforms.

Again, wargames standard with little detail but fit for it's purpose.

Although I have masters for the limbers I didn't have a mould made. As a wargaming expedient/experiment I've put 4 horses on DBX cavalry bases to see if it works - should do. A couple of the horses have needed a couple of places touched up since this photo - hadn't noticed that some paint had rubbed off.

That gives me enough troops to complete my current 'requirement' though will do more later.

Roman artillery

Firstly, let me say straight off that I don't like the Garrison ballista... which is why my Greek artillery all use RAFM. Likewise, I've also got some RAFM ballistae for the Romans, now I just need to cast some crew for them.

Completed as 2 stone throwers and 1 bolt thrower

I think it's fair to describe the Ballistae as 'crude'

To add a bit of variety I've included one crewman from the Greek range.

The far one includes the commander of the unit.

I've painted the two crew on the bolt thrower with empty hands a bit differently, again to add a bit of variety.

Back to converting - 20mm Napoleonic artillery

 I seem to have come to a slight stop with painting so switched to another aspect - converting. I had never intended to do a Napoleonic artillery mould but... why not.

Current state of affairs.

Austrians - still work to do on all of these with green stuff. Some may yet need to be completely redone!

Russians - making a multiple pose figure that can be cut as ramrod, portfire or standing around doing nothing saves a lot on mould space!

Bavarian - I'll probably include officers on all of these. Probably.

Wurtenburg. Not yet sure how many others still to do - Prussian, possibly Royal Horse Artillery?

Some sad 20mm Lamming Napoleonic French Artillery

This for Mathew... RHA I'd already posted but the French foot artillery got neglected a bit - never finished and looked a bit battered. Saw them a while back, forgot where, found them again. In the 42mm artillery box when I was putting the British army troops away!

Certainly haven't shown these figures at their best!

Quite slimline with largish looking heads. On the other hand, they are more or less compatible with these 20mm Garrison Prussians.

A (very) basic 20mm Japanese artillery park

Many years ago I had loads of Airfix and Matchbox WW2 Japanese infantry. By many years, this little collection started in the mid 60s. Anyway, at some point I started producing artillery on a semi-mass production scale (I think originally based on an Airfix Magazine article). Wheels could be an issue, but ones like the 70mm battalion gun Type 92 simply used spare Tiger/Panther road wheels drilled out - and I simply expanded this to other guns...

Some of these guns 'survived' and I've finally got round to doing something with them. To be fair, I haven't done much with them!

I've assumed they won't all be used at once so only did three crews.

37mm infantry gun and 70mm battalion gun using Tiger wheels - didn't bother drilling out holes on the wheels, just painted them on.

Two 75mm infantry guns, one with Tiger wheels the other with the more normal spoked wheels. These days, of course, I would cast spoked wheels myself - the Rose Napoleonic limber wheels would probably do.

Crew are very crudely done - one isn't even Japanese, he's a British colonial figure. I painted them with Vallejo Japanese Unif. WWII - don't think this is really right, seems too light and too yellow.

At some stage I fully intend getting metal figures and guns for the Japanese. Meanwhile, I'll probably continue going through my old figures as well.

Prussian artillery

I know I said I was painting up another Line Infantry unit but I was also doing a couple of guns in tandem. As the infantry have various rucksacks and stuff on them, the artillery were simply finished first!

Guns backed by the first regiment I painted. I painted the guns Vallejo flat blue.

As you may have noticed, I tend to experiment. Uniform dyes would be very variable even within a unit so seemed reasonable to do uniforms using slightly different blues.

So the artillery crew are dark Prussian blue, the infantry dark sea blue. On balance, I think the Prussian blue looks'prettier' but the sea blue perhaps has a more 'authentic' look.

Austrian artillery

Another batch of head-swapped  crew and 'Standard' French officer in bicorne....

The grass green of the base looks a lot more washed out than real life.

The area where the glue has leached under the figure bases look a lot greener!

I just used flat brown for the uniform jackets - looks good, don't know how close it is to the 'right' shade. Officer looks OK for just being a paint conversion.

Overall, looks quite effective for a basic paint scheme.

Actually painted up two guns but still only have one crew!

Neuchatel Battalion - artillery

Taken from the Uniforms of the Napoleonic Wars, Jack Cassin-Scott.

Should only be one battery, did two anyway.

I thought the plumes were a bit more impressive than standard French artllery without plumes. In the book the uniform is a lighter blue than this but I've gone for a more French darker blue.

But then, to clinch the deal, the infantry battalion has yellow uniforms with red facings...

Napoleonic Bavarians - some test conversions.

Sorting out a few conversions some of which may (may) finish up on a mould.

I've started with Bavarians. There was one Bavarian figure I found - BA4 - but not on anything that could be considered a production mould. One main weakness of the current range is a lack of artillery figures, so again artillery crew seemed to be a good option.

Simply used the standard French 12 pounder as the artillery piece.

The crew are simply the British artillery crew with a head swap. No officer because I haven't made any yet!

The portfire figure doesn't have his portfire because it broke - which is pretty normal.

Sadly blurred picture showing the original unpainted BA4 next to a marching conversion - this time I put the head on a French infantry figure.

It is unlikely that the artillery crews will ever appear on a mould - I'll probably only need 4 of each if I do Bavarian and Wurtenburg crews, nowhere near enough to justify mould space, easier just to convert them. However, both infantry will probably be made - say 150 or so figures (?) would justify their place.

Rose artillery masters.

Somewhere someone mentioned that they thought they'd seen the masters for the Rose French Napoleonic gun (probably on one of the Old Metal Detector Rose blogs). That made me think people might be interested in them.

Most of my Rose masters are in tobacco tins or cigar cases, the 20mm (or, as described on the box, 25mm) artillery are in a 'normal' box. The 25 on the box definitely looks as if it originally said 20.

The masters are very neatly packed in polystyrene. The guns include limbers though I have not made moulds for these.

The French gun. The carriage is so similar in design to other nations I think I'll use it as a universal carriage.

British gun.

The American Civil War Parrot gun.

Garrison British artillery painted

That's the good thing about painting four figures to a wargaming standard - you can do it quickly. They haven't been glued to the base or varnished yet - not sure whether to just give them a coat of matt rather than gloss.

There are actually 3 figures - the fourth crew member is simply a miscast of the figure holding the portfire.

However he fits in well and any future guns will probably include him anyway! The portfire is pretty delicate - the one here snapped off during painting and had to be reattached.

1897 Artillery Grand Battery

Saturday was quite a productive day. Apart from the 6mm SciFi figures I also managed to complete the British artillery battery. Having said that, the gloss finish hasn't worked properly so I'll have a bit of retouching and respraying to do.

All the kneeling figures and standing officer with sword  are Spencer Smith.

The other standing figures are Schildkrot/Berliner Zinnfiguren figures.

Certainly, 'full size' crews make the guns look better!

1897 French artillery and army update

Very much toy soldier rather than true historical... not certain certain about either the uniform or gun colours! Finally went for wood and black for the gun (I liked it) and plain blue with lots of red piping for the gunners (same reason).

Starting to get there in terms of size. Starting to look quite good.

Two other units getting close to being ready.

 And finally, got a couple more guns and 2 extra infantry units on order (including a Guards Regiment) together with a load of Zouaves and cavalry from Irregular that I'm buying ready painted.

That's really about the army finished... after which the Russian invaders need to be started...