Campaign Game Miniatures Austrian Artillery Crew Out-the-bag Review

One of the things on my other blog that seemed very popular, was my comparison shots of various manufacturers figures. Collectors and gamers always appreciated seeing how different miniatures looked beside other ranges, so after my last post I decided to start doing Out-the-bag reviews of the various figures as I receive them. I'll try and do further reviews after painting as sometimes a figure will look amazing or terrible before painting and then its the other way about when they're painted.

So, today I received two packs of Campaign Game Miniatures (CGM) Austrian Artillery Crew.

The packs consist of 8 figures each, with two each of four different poses. They also come as two different packs; AUSA001 Austrian Artillerymen Firing and AUSA002 Austrian Artillerymen Loading. These retail at £3.60 a pack, so 0.45p per figure.

I'd ordered these just before Christmas from the Quick Reaction Force (QRF) website, but due to the holiday break they took a while to arrive - which isn't a problem as I had a pile of other miniatures to work through anyway.

First Impressions: These are nice. They are clean, flash free, with no bending or damage. The faces and hands look good and should paint up fine. Three poses out of each set have plumes on their bicorne, with the fourth in each set having an unadorned hat. The uniform looks as correct as it need to be for this scale, but the bicorne is missing the small pompoms that should appear at each peak, a minor issue as I forgot to paint these on my completed artillery. The figures also do not have the rope hanging at their belts that you see on the figures from Blue Moon, a nice detail that makes the BM miniatures my favourite so far out of those I have.

Here are the CGM figures straight out the pack showing the figures with cleaning or flash removal. Top set of eight is AUSA001, and the bottom set AUSA002...

And here is a comparison of the CGM with other ranges. From left to right these are: Blue Moon x2, CGM x2, Warmodelling x2, Blue Moon x2, and CGM x2.

To sum up, I would recommend these if you want to add a bit of variety to your artillery teams, but for quality Blue Moon is still the best. I'll get some AB next time I'm buying artillery and will review those here, but I think we all know that AB set the standard for Napoleonics.

These figures are available from Quick Reaction Force here, or direct from Campaign Games Miniatures here.