Sharp Practice at Britcon 2018; Artillery Support

So, with my sappers finished, my schedule indicated that I should work on my Mediterranean style buildings, so without further ado I promptly got distracted and decided to work on my French artillery limber instead.

I had toyed with idea of buying a new one from Perry's but decided to go with what I had already. Unfortunately what I had was not great.

limber set mid repair. I had pretty much thrown these together for a game of Black Powder. The grass had just been thrown on, the limber tree kept falling down so it was propped up with a lump of very natural looking blue tack

the drivers. The fellow on the left was a particularly ugly specimen 

see what I mean! Only a mother could love that face

..so I decided to give him a face lift. This was a spare head from a Victrix sprue. I realise that he has a plume on his shako and the others don't,, I plan to add plumes to their shakos later 

I had also done a wee bit of googling for Napoleonic French Line Artillery and came across these photos from Front Rank's site. Now I really like Perry's and I rate Front Rank's stuff a close second but these chaps look fantastic! I don't know who painted them but they certainly inspired me. 

Now my chaps had an okay paint job applied by yours truly however after seeing the photo above I decided to freshen up their paint jobs, mainly by lightening the blue on their jackets. However, the jackets they were wearing didn't match the uniforms in the Front Rank photo. A further search through their French Artillery Limbers and Caisson section, besides being a treat to the eyes showed me these fellow who had a similar uniform; i.e. one with a waistcoat showing below the jacket. Unfortunately these guys are Guard Artillery Drivers from the period before 1812, my chaps need to be Line Artillery

then I realised I wasn't looking close enough, these were the chaps I was looking for 

so I will need to touch up their jackets and shakos yet again...oh well, no one said this hobby was easy :)

Also, whilst browsing Frank's fabulous artillery limbers and caissons section I came across this photo and realised I needed to add traces to my limbers. I considered using thread but it was a bit finnicky so instead I used sugar craft wire, which comes in a variety of gauges and has a coating or sheath of paper. I twisted a piece of this, cut the lengths to size and super glued it on, in this case to the caisson set and harnessed horses I had bought from Warbases a while back 

love these caisson and limber sets, the painting is so crisp 

sugar craft wire; very useful stuff

the Warbases caisson and team. The traces make a difference, don't you think? As you can probably tell, if you are familiar with Warbases caissons, this is one of their earlier ones. The newer ones have a bit more detail. This will also need repainting as I have got my Olive Drab mixed with my Olive Green. These wont be part of my force for Britcon 

Finally for the moment, I have had to strengthen the bases as they were turning up at the edges. I used a technique I  had picked up from Mel The Terrain Tutor, namely adding a strip of milliput to each side of the base and leet it dry hard, suitably weighed down to keep it flat.

so, inspired by a fellow gunner and hiis artillery I have decided to read up on it a bit more. I'd like to put together some small artillery vignettes for our Black Powder battles. 

That's all for the moment; clear all guns!!! cease firing!

pip pip