I've been slowly expanding my French Imperial Guard forces made with Der Kriegspieler 1/72 scale metal miniatures. Sometimes the Der Kriegspielers can be challenging castings to work with but these turned out to be pretty good quality. In particular the canon and limber set were nicely cast.
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| While I normally just model a four horse limber, for the heavy twelve pounders I felt like I had to go with the full six! |
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| The traces for the horses were made from a spool of twisted wire. I was hoping it would give the traces a rope like look to match the work done by Dick Tennant on the line artillery limbers, but it came out looking more like leather, which is actually fine since that is what was actually used. |
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| In the old school rules I use the gun represents two actual canons and each crew member represents a canon. So here is an eight gun 12 pounder battery deployed for action. As casualties are assessed, the loss of a crew member equates to the loss of a gun. |
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| The 12 pounder French Canon is my favorite of the DK artillery. I added the drag chains to the carriage and the fuse to the slow match of the corporal in charge of firing the canon. |
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| I can't imagine they actually worked the guns in their bearskins, backpacks and slung rifles, but it looks cool! |
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| The Battery commander is a fantastic casting and looks spectacular in his gold aiguilettes and cords. |
Next up - The 2nd Battalion of the Irish Legion. These were originally painted by Dick Tennant. I am just giving the a good cleaning and sprucing them up a bit as a compliment to the 1st battalion currently under way by Wellington Man that can be seen on the Hinton Spieler blog.
Nice work, the limber looks great and the artillery is lovely, super stuff!!
ReplyDeleteThanks Donnie. She certaily took awhile to get completed!
DeleteVery nice. I love seeing the limber and riders on the table. Gives a feel for how cumbersome an eight gun 12 lb battery would be. Well done!
ReplyDeleteUnless driven by the skilled hands of the Imperial Guard artillery train you mean. :)
DeleteGreat paint job, and as you say those DK castings are rather nice. Personally, I'd raise up the gun on its own base as with the crew on double bases they overtop the cannon a bit.
ReplyDeleteI see you added some photos to the Vimeiro post showing the final positions - are you planning to add a narrative? More, importantly, what's the next battle in the Peninsular project?
Rob, the narrative is forthcoming for Vimeiro. I had actually thought the same regarding the height of the canons. Your comment jogged my brain into a eureka moment. I have resisted mounting the canons on bases because I want them to fit on the back of the limbers nicely. I don't know why, but it never occurred to me to just build the base onto the deployed gun stand itself. I'm going to have to try that!
DeleteI don't use limbers so I have the gun on a base that goes on the battery base onto which the figures are mounted (I use casualty markers on the crew as I find single figures fall over too easily).
DeleteVery nice. I love seeing the full limber on the battlefield. Gives a feel for how much space a battery took up.
ReplyDeleteIndeed! They make quite the footprint on the field of miniature battle. And look cool too!
DeleteJust plain lovely!
ReplyDeleteThanks Matt. I was right fond of the way this one came out.
DeleteSplendidly done David…
ReplyDeleteI’ve always liked this uniform… A classic example of style over practicality 😁.
All the best. Aly