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 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.
