While still trying to get the painting mojo back over the holiday I was unfortunately taken ill and ended up spending some time in hospital. All was fine and I had nothing to worry about, except being careful what I eat for the rest of my life, or suffer from stomach issues. But the worst thing was that I lost any painting momentum I had managed to get back, and sitting painting for any length of time still gives me stomach pains.
So I had to start small again. No 32 figure battalions. No cavalry squadrons. Just a couple of guns.
There were bought cheaply off eBay and were listed as Blue Moon 3 pounders. The crew were included, and were as described, but the guns look different to what is shown on the Blue Moon website - mostly the wheels that are not the same. Anyway, they were cheap, so they got painted.
For these I went a bit risky with the crew. Not big risky, just a little bit. I gave some brown trousers!! And I painted an infantry officer as an artillery officer so I had an artillery crewman wearing a helmet!!! Controversial or what? I've always liked the look of the artillery in helmet, and though the helmets probably never made it onto the field, I felt I could get away with it for one officer.
That's me finished 7 artillery bases but I still have to have 23 guns in my army, so loads still to do. The ones that I have already done were from Warmodelling and were 6-pounders pretending to be 3pdrs, so these may be replaced.
I've really enjoyed building my small Venetian force of 18mm figures. Some have been a challenge to source - the Ultramarini needing a bit of conversion work to get suitable figures - but the artillery would have been almost impossible until the lovely Austrian Grenzer artillery became available from Fighting 15s and the AB range.
These are wonderful figures. AB are usually great but the early Austrian range is so well sculpted that nothing can compare. And to make things better these figures paint up really easily as well. I'm painting some other figures now from a different company and the casts are nowhere near as clean and detailed, which makes the figures much harder to finish to a good standard.
The guns were also a challenge to source, basing what I was after from some re-enactment photos. These may not be accurate but finding other reference was going nowhere. Even a trio to Venice failed to turn up anything of use - though the museum that I wanted to visit being closed for refurbishment did not help. As the Venetians only had light artillery, and as they were allied to the Austrians, the choice of using some light 3pdr artillery from AB was the best choice.
So here are the two finished guns...
For reference I used these images that were sourced from pictures of re-enactors in Italy. Hopefully what I have achieved reflects the look and feel of the Artigliere Veneto.
So here is the little army so far. Its one of the most colourful armies I have so far. The next unit will be wearing something different again, and then the cavalry will bring even more colour.
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.
One of the interesting parts of James R Arnold's Marengo and Hohenlinden book that grabbed my imagination was his reference in the Austrian Offensive in Italy chapter of his book to Piedmontese allies who fought alongside the Austrians against the French.
"To supplement the army of Italy, the Austrians hired a substantial Piedmontese force. Some of the soldiers were veterans of the Sardinian Army that had opposed Bonaparte in 1796. Four National and ten Provincial infantry battalions, each with an authorised strength of 876 men, composed the core of the Piedmontese contingent. Along with the cavalry and artillery, there were 14,389 Piedmontese troops in Melas' army."
Although these troops were never anywhere close to being involved in the battle of Marengo I really wanted to include some in my collection. Unfortunately there are no miniature manufacturers producing dedicated figures for this army, so what was I to do?
First off I visited the amazing TMP (The Miniatures Page) website and asked the question in the Napoleonic message board, and the suggestion was to use Saxon infantry from 1806. These were almost perfect compared to the illustrative references I found online - the main difference being the collars, but as I will be using 15/18mm figures then I was happy to forgive the discrepancies.
There were two manufacturers that I found that produced suitable miniatures. The first was Eureka, available from Fighting 15s in the UK. Their Saxon range is great, and although the figures are slightly slim they have a very elegant feel to them, and had everything I needed to make a start.
The other range was Old Glory, which is available from Timecast. Old Glory is one of those ranges that people seem to either love or hate. I've built a few battalions of Austrians using their figures and I'm happy with how those turned out, but there are clearly different sculptors in their ranges. Their Saxons have been sculted by a different person, and are larger figures, closer to the newer 18mm figures in scale. They are also one of the Old Glory ranges that draw criticism for there strange poses, even though they some fantastic detail work.
I decided to go with the Old Glory. This was for two reasons. The main was cost, but the other was that these were to represent Piedmontese soldiers who were of poorer quality, and I kinda felt that the poses looked less disciplined than the elegant figures from Eureka. The other reason was cost. Old Glory figures are quite cheap.
I've painted a few as a start and was happy with how they looked. But something kept distracting me, and that was a question about the artillery. What guns would they have used? Again, TMP was an invaluable resource, with Artillery guru Steven Summerfield being the biggest help.
Again there was no clear miniature suitable for the purpose of showing a Piedmontese artillery piece - which should be a 3 pounder Mountain gun apparently - so I had to make do.
I used a Blue Moon 4-pdr French gun, trimmed some of the carriage, narrowed the axel, and built a basic representation of the quick-fire mechanism using green-stuff.
I've painted and based my first (of two) artillery pieces, along with an artillery gun crew in the lighter artillery uniform which I hope is correct for Piedmont. The gun, and Saxon figures are not perfect but I think it are good enough at this scale. The figures are Eureka, and I can see where I need to do a little bit of touching up on the details. Any comments would be welcome....
Here are some of the Piedmontese infantry that I've started....
I've just seen this image of the new Revolutionary era Austrian Grenz Artillery crew from AB / Eureka, thanks to Dave Hollins who sent a link for the picture. I will definitely be getting some for my collection. Not sure when they'll be getting released yet but hopefully soon.
Getting ready for some more painting, and after a much needed break from masses of white uniforms, I've been picking up some more bits and pieces for my Austrian army.
I came across, and managed to win an opened bag of Old Glory's NAE8 Austrian Caisson.
Popped the bag open this morning and emptied out the parts. Everything was complete and flash free. I separated out the parts and what you get is two caissons, each with four horses and two riders.
The horses are quite small compared to the newer ranges, as are the riders. The riders are also wearing post-1800 shakos, so not really suitable for Marengo, but they are nice little figures with three (maybe four) variants.
I've quickly glued the wheels to the caissons - the rear wheels attach to a separate axle, and the front wheels attach to the from axle (I'm not really sure what the correct name for the front section of a wagon/caisson is). These all fit together easily and cleanly. There's also two small parts that I assume fit to the top/front of the caisson.
All in all, this is a nice little set, though quite small compared to newer figures. Sitting beside my other caisson they seem far to small, but they may look better once painted.
I'm looking forward to the forthcoming Blue Moon wagons and Caissons, which should be the correct size. Hopefully they'll do earlier riders as well as ones in Shako, so that I can have properly uniformed troops for the era.
After a busy week or two preparing for a job interview, its back to some painting. I've been working on a few bits and pieces rather than trying to finish another Austrian battalion, just to break the monotony of the constant white uniforms, and first up is another little ammunition cart from Hallmark/Magister Militum. This one is again being pulled by a Warmodelling horse and the figure leading the horse in from Blue Moon. I have a feeling that maybe the uniforms should have been blue, so maybe some can shed some light.
Here is the two completed carts together. I'm not sure whether these will be used "in game" for anything other than window dressing but the General de Brigade rules to give you the option of using rules for ammunition shortages and replenishing units.
Next up is another 3pdr regimental artillery piece. This one, another Warmodelling gun, is crewed by a Campaign Game Miniatures artillery team. These are really easy little figures to paint, slightly more chunky than my others, but for size they fit really well and can easily mix on the same base with what I already have.
Here is all my artillery together in one large battery. The Austrians rarely seemed to have combined batteries like this, but its nice to see them all together and to see how well the different ranges mix.
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.
Now that I have completed the IR23 Grand Duke of Tuscany Infantry Regiment I thought I would post some pictures of the full Brigade. Three 32 man battalions, two batteries of 3 pounder foot artillery, and GM Knesevich is command.
The figures are mostly 15mm Old Glory, Austrian Infantry in Helmet March Attack, with a couple of Road March thrown in for variety. The Mounted officers in the 2nd and 3rd Battalions are from Old Glory and AB. The Generals are from Old Glory. The artillery crew are from Warmodelling and Blue Moon and the guns from Warmodelling.
Regiment advancing in Massed Column.
Regiment in Line
