A long time ago now, back when I started getting back into Napoleonics, the first unit I built was a Prussian Landwehr Battalion.
Seeing that everybody is going Waterloo crazy right now for some reason, I pulled out the old unit and took some new photos. The figures are a mix of Warmodelling and AB.
Edit: One thing I just noticed is that one of the figures has gone grey! Is he a ghost? What's happened here? Any ideas?
Just finished the Museum miniatures Hay Wagon, with Eureka horses. This was a fun little project and will be suitable for anything from Renaissance up to Napoleonic.
There needed to be a little bit of cheating with the scale of each part of this. The horses looked huge when compared to the figure and the wagon, so to boost the height of the other parts the figure and wagon had card under them to boost them up to so they looked better with the horses. This also helped the miniatures when sitting alongside 18mm figures.
Some of the pics are a bit blurry but you'll get a good idea how the wagon turned out.
I may at some point add a rope or reigns or something so the figure is pulling the horses and not thin air.
My review of some the Les Carabiniers Cassique range was very popular and I was happy how the Revolutionary General painted up, so I ordered a few more packs from this 15mm range.
This time I ordered Camp followers and Priests, Camp Followers and Sutleress, and Republican Artillery, and as before the service was great from Stonewall Figures - the figures only took a few days to arrive after paying securely with paypal through their website. Edit: I just noticed that on the packs it says Les Carabiniers Classique, and not Cassique as it says on Stonewalls website.
The first pack I opened was LCC11 - Republican Artillery. You get one gun and four crew in the bag for £3.50. There is no information to what weight of gun this is, or whether these are foot or horse artillery, but I would guess they're foot.
The figures and gun are well cast, mostly - unfortunately the leg fell off the kneeling figure. It was still there (you can see the leg sitting next to the badly wounded figure) so hopefully it can be reattached.
The gun goes together quite well. I have to assume its a heavy calibre judging by the size of the gun. Feel free to leave comments if you know what this gun is...
The next set opened was LCC 06 Camp Followers and Sutleress, consisting off "Dismounted hussar leading heavily laden horse and three Sutleress".
The three sutleress figures are very similar, and quite small so I couldn't see the differences until I looked at the enlarged photos. These should be reasonably useful, but the real reason for getting this pack is the lovely dismounted who is carrying a bag over his shoulder and has a horse with baggage draped over its saddle. Although the figure is a small 15mm figure, it doesn't look too bad and I'll be using this on a general base. The detail on the braiding on the uniform and pelisse looks good and should paint up very well - especially if your eyes and hands are better than mine are now.
Next we have LCC 07 Camp followers and Priests, which includes "Three Priests and dismounted cavalry officer with mount".
There are three different figures for the priests - but I'm not sure why these are in a Republican set. I would have thought these would have been better along with the Royalist sets. Again these are very small, with quite limited poses, but overall they are interesting figures.
The dismounted cavalry officer is another useful miniature, again wearing a pelisse, but with a bicorne. I'll paint this guy up as an aide or guide.
Of course its always helpful to see these miniatures alongside some other ranges, so here are some pics with AB and Warmodelling for scale...
I'm not 100% sure about this range as the quality seems to vary, and the little information that goes along with them leaves some of the figures a bit of a mystery, but overall I'm finding them useful little additions.
I'll paint some of these up and post pictures when I can.
I know. These aren't Austrian. Or French. And they didn't fight at Marengo. But I've had a pile of Cossacks sitting in the lead pile for a few years and for some reason decided that they needed painting. I could rationalise that they are for a future 1799 Suvarov in Italy project, which I have thought about, but they are really because I wanted to paint some Cossacks.
The figures I had were picked up cheaply from eBay and are from Old Glory. There were enough for two 12 man units, one of Ural Cossacks and the other of Peasant Cossacks.
Here is the Ural Cossack unit so far. I was advised that they had red lances, then told that the may not, but for now, they have red lances. Sorry if that's wrong.
Each set has a good mix of poses, and these are very well detailed figures. The Ural Cossacks have three or four poses, two holding lances poses, another that could be holding a standard (or icon), and figure with a musket or carbine (again, I'm not too sure about Cossack armaments). The officer is possibly from the peasant range. The Peasants have a good mix of poses as well, with swords and lances and various head gear. For both sets there are two poses for the horses, and these are suitably small - which looks correct.
Here's a picture showing the mix of poses.
While I was ordering the draught horses for my wagons (see last post) I had to make up the order to £10 as Fighting 15s have a minimum order, so I ordered a couple of packs of Cossacks to see how they compared.
The first set I opened was from Fighting 15 Miniatures, and are figures previously available from Oddzial Osmy of Poland. These are advertised as 15mm, come in four to a pack with two variant figures, and are for 1812. The horses are all one pose and its not a great pose. There isn't a lot of action on these figures - even though the figures are designed without the saddle they are still a little static. The saddle is cast on the horse and looks fine, but again with the single posed horse, they are all too much te same Plus they don't have lances - you have to supply your own. But they are cleanly cast, cheap, and they seem to mix size-wise with the Old Glory range.
As I said, these do not come with lances, but luckily I had a pack of Xyston pike/spear/lances that had been sitting around. I may even swap the bendy Old Glory lances at some point. Obviously these will need cut down to the right size.
I also ordered a set of Eureka Miniatures 7YW Cossacks. Now these are nice figures. They are also quite big as they are 18mm scale, meaning the horses don't look like steppe ponies. But as I said, these are nice. The riders are "split waist", which means the horses have legs attached and the riders are supplied from the waist up. They fit together extremely well, and with a few poses and horse variants, this should allow a good mixed posed unit.
Sorry if the pictures aren't clear enough.
So here are a few different Cossacks together. The Fighting 15s and Old Glory should mix quite well, possibly even in the same unit, but the Eureka, which are also for an earlier period, are maybe too big - even though they are the of those reviewed. These are (left to right) Old Glory, Eureka, Fighting 15/Oddzial Osmy. Next is the horses by themselves so you can see their relative sizes.
The wagons from Museum Miniatures are coming along fine. The only issue with the models was that the sacks on the grain wagon will be difficult to fit if you glue the wheels to close to the wagon body. I did this and had to trim the grain sacks about 1mm thinner to fit between the wheels.
The other issue, and this isn't a criticism of the miniatures, was that the horse were tiny. These are true 15mm so the small size was to be expected, but compared to my other figures the horses seemed totally wrong. You can see this in this picture, which has the first wagon half painted.
This picture shows the draught horses compared to French heavy cavalry, and even considering that the cavalry are on large horses, I would have though the draught horses to be big animals as well.
The French horses are from Warmodelling, so with that in mind I remembered I had a couple of spare Warmodelling Austrian horses from a limber set. These were closer in size to what I needed.
Unfortunately I only had two of these, while I needed four - and the horses can't be ordered separately from Warmodelling or their sellers.
I was on the Fighting 15s website, looking at Eureka's Seven Years War figures, and noticed their really nice wagons in the Russian range. Not only did they have wagons, but they sold the horses separately at 40p each, so four were ordered. They arrived quickly, three days after ordering I think, and they are big horses! They are 18mm scale, but still BIG!
I really like these, and they do look like work horses. My only grumble is that the from the pictures there look to be 3 variants. These were all the same. Here's one last picture with the heavy draught horses and the hay wagon. I'll post more when this model is finished.
I was browsing through eBay a couple of days ago and was looking at some figure packs from Museum Miniatures on buy-it-now deals and noticed these rather nice carts and wagons. Now I don't know about other wargamers and miniature collectors, but I've always liked a bit of useless eye candy to sit around the game table as nothing but decoration. These pieces of the collection add no combat value to your army, but I have always thought that they can enhance a table.
So two wagons were duly ordered, and only a couple of days later they dropped through the letterbox. I had no idea how these would scale; whether they would be traditional 15mm and tiny compared to newer figures, or whether the quality would be poor - even though judging by the picture on eBay they looked decent.
Having opened these, I saw immediately that these are really nice models. Simple but highly effective.
They came packed in small poly bags, with the traditional folded card with company name.
The first wagon was a simple flat bed carrying sacks, pulled by two small ponies (I assume these are small horses comparing them to the figure that accompanies them) and a figure of a civilian driver on foot. This fellow will be fine for any period from late medieval, through renaissance, to the late 18th century. Now that I see them I will use these alongside my Vendean figures as the broad brimmed hat matches their look.
The flat-bed can be used without the sacks and is just as nice without the load.
Both wagons fit together really easily, and even without any gluing you can see how well the parts go together. I probably won't glue the sacks to this base so that the miniature can be used with or without load.
The hay wagon is a bulky bit of kit. The hay load is massive, so much so that you don't actually see the wagon. The rear wheels fit directly onto the hay load. Overall this is a great looking little set and I'm looking forward to painting it up.
So how do these scale up beside my other figures? Obviously these have only put together for the photos, so they don't have the same height advantage of having a base under them, but they look fine beside both AB and Blue Moon's Austrians.
As I said, these will be part of my Vendee collection, and here is one of them alongside some Vendean rebels.
Once I paint these I'll post up the finished pictures, but I'm already confident they will look great alongside my army.
I've not had much chance of getting much painting done over the last few weeks, now that I have a new graphic design job, but I did manage to finish off this general from the Les Carabiniers Cassigue range.
The pack consisted of two generals (one with a flag pole), a figure wearing a shako and another wearing a bearskin.
The two figures on this base are probably the most useful of the pack - I'm not sure what use I'll have of a general carrying a flag - excepting a Napoleon at Arcola of course.
I also wasn't sure as to what the figure wearing the shako should be, but it looked like a chasseur of some sort. I couldn't find any reference, so I just used guesswork and went with a chasseur uniformed Aide-de-camp. Hopefully it looks right, even if its not...
