Can you ever have enough artillery?

After the last three weeks, my answer is yes, especially if you have to paint them all.

Things have been quiet here on the posting front as I have been conducingd a major audit of my French and British artillery, sorting into crews, allocating guns, and painting and basing the unpainted and unbased. The results are posted below.

I had thought I had finished, but have found one extra painted British gun, for which I will paint up one further RHA crew, and also I need to paint up a small number of extra French artillery drivers.

Though I wouldn't swear to it, I think the final tally is in the region of:

French

23 guns and 3 howitzers
4 caissons
6 limbers
around 30 horses

British

24 guns and three howitzers
Siege train of 2 18 pounders and a 10" howitzer
A rocket troop in light order (pack horses rather than rocket carts)
1 ammunition limber
12 limbers
around 50 horses

Guns are a mixture of Hinchliffe 20mm, Hinton Hunt, Der Kriegspieler and Newline Designs. There are also a couple of Fine Scale factory siege guns

It has to be said that Marcus Hinton was not at his best with artillery guns and equipment - managing to get them looking chunky and underscale at the same time.

The old Hinchliffe 20mm pieces are miniature masterpieces. The best currently available substitute for Hinton Hunt guns and limbers are those from Newline Designs - a big range, and as they are small 20mm pleasingly recall the slightly undersize look of Hinton Hunt ones, while being considerably more detailed.

My French artillery arm suffers from the usual over-representation of Guard units and the absence of line horse artillery from the Hinton Hunt range. I am intending to second some Guard horse artillery units to support of my Grand Duchy of Warsaw forces.

The acquisition of 30 or so Der Kriegspieler Royal Artillery gunners helped achieve a better balance between foot and horse artillery units for the British. I am also pleased with the siege train - I will sort out some trains for these, as I have considerable numbers of Jacklex oxen which serve a bridging train and colonial artillery units, and which can easily do double duty for the Napoleonic period.

Next task is a second (Der Kriegspieler) Hesse Darmstadt battalion. This will leave me with some new Russian and Prussian acquisitions to complete; and audit of my Austrians; and then facing up to around 100 battalions of French and British infantry - and then the cavalry.... I think in the circumstances the approach of completing national contingents has worked quite well

British Artillery - Royal Horse Artillery

Eleven RHA crews, all Hinton Hunt figures, serving a mixture of Hinton Hunt and Newline guns.

British Artillery - Royal Artillery

Thirteen Royal Artillery crews - a mixture of Hinton Hunt and Der Kriegspieler figures - with Newline guns, including 2 howitzers (can you spot the deliberate mistake in the first photograph?)


Finally, a third howitzer crew, this time Alberken/Minifigs 20mm figures, also serving a Newline gun

British Artillery - Royal Artillery siege train

Produced for the siege warfare try out with Tony over at the Prometheus in Aspic blog, the gus are a Hinchliffe 20mm British 10" howitzer and two Fine Scale Factory 18 pounders. The crews are a mixture of Hinton Hunt and Der Kriegspieler figures, and the gun emplacements are from the Italeri plastic artillery sets - these come in both the Napoleonic French and American Civil War large sets.

Bases are some of the emergency MDF sabots I had cut at my local timber merchants for our Command & Colours Napoleonic excursion. I am not sure yet whether to leave these as they are or to try to add some landscaping to the bases. I rather like them as they are.

British Artillery - Rocket troop conversions

Bought on ebay a while ago, I think these may have been from Pete Bateman, but I am not sure

British Artillery - Royal Horse Artillery Limbers

Eleven British Limbers and a single British Ammunition limber (on the left hand side of the front row.

Four of the limbers (two of which are on flocked, two on unflocked bases) are Hinchliffe 20mm models, the rest are Hinton Hunt. I am not sure about the ammunition limber, I suspect it is also the Hinchliffe 20mm one rather than the Hinton Hunt AL2A, as it is a much better and finer model than other Hinton Hunt artillery equipment.

British Artillery - Royal Artillery Limber

A Hinchlifee 20mm limber, ridden by S Range Royal Artillery limber twins (Hinton Hunt didn't do such figures), with a Hinton Hunt driver and horses. As these are my only RA limber riders, I have only one RA limber.

British Artillery - Limbers and horse-saving system

As mentioned elsewhere, because I am better supplied with limbers than horses, I have a modular system designed to stretch a limited number of horses as far as possible. Each limber has a two horse team; I then also have some extra pairs and four horse teams on separate bases, which can be added to limbers as required. My idea is that perhaps when guns are being moved this will be marked by the use of these extra teams.

The two pictures show the modular system with the teams and limbers, first separated and then closed up.

Additionally some of my limbers have longer bases to accommodate guns being towed behind them.

French Artillery - Guard Horse artillery

Eight crews with Hinton Hunt guns

French Artillery - Guard Foot artillery

Six Hinton Hunt crews, with Hinchliffe 20mm guns and a single howitzer, on the extreme left of the line. This crew contains one Minifigs 20mm gunner. The Guard Foot artillery have recived my best gun models, the majority of the long guns are 12 pounders.



An Alberken/Minifigs 20mm crew serving a Newline Gribeuval 8 pounder.

French Artillery - Line Foot artillery

10 French line foot artillery crews mostly with Newline guns, and an 11th crew with a Der Kriegspieler howitzer (this is on the left hand side of the line).



The final picture is of an Alberken/Minifigs 20mm French Line crew, also with a Newline Designs gun

French Artillery - Caissons and Limbers

Horses, drivers, and most of the limbers are Hinton Hunt.

Caissons are Hinton Hunt but are rough castings. Some of the wheels are replacements from Newline. There is also one Hinchliffe 20mm limber.

A couple of the drivers (on the extra teams for the caissons) are Guard, the others are Line. I probably need to paint up a few extra drivers so each caisson has one.

Grand Duchy of Warsaw National Contingent: Artillery

Posted for completeness of the contingent, as there is no Hinton Hunt element here - the gunners are Art Miniaturen and the gun is a Newline Austrian field piece. The Polish artillery (with the exception of the Vistula Legion, with mainly French materiel) was equipped primarily with captured Prussian and Austrian equipment generously sold to the Grand Duchy by the Emperor.

Russian National Contingent reinforcements: artillery team

A bit of a mixture - Newline gun and limber, Hinton Hunt limber horses, Der Kriegspieler or Hinton Hunt artillery drivers. The two part base system accommodates a pair of horses and driver, limber and room for the gun on tow on the main base, with a second pair of horses with driver on a second base. This is the system I adopted for my British artillery, mainly as a way to stretch a limited number of horses further. Here each limber has a pair of horses, while I also have a number of additional 2- and 4- horse bases to add to the teams as required.

I have a few more Russian artillery drivers which I would be happy to swap for Russian gunners, if anyone has any spare - I would like to stretch to a second gun crew for the Russians.

French train

I finished these pieces of French artillery equipment for my Gilders' recent first outing. The horses, limbers, caisson and drivers are Hinton Hunt; the gun is Newline (actually the one from my Spanish "horse" artillery); and the howitzer is a Hinchliffe 20mm model, from the Peter Gilder collection.

They show the technique of leaving enough room on the base to accommodate the gun hitched behind the limber. For my British RHA I have used a variant, with limbers having a two horse team, but then having some extra bases of two- and four horse "add ons". This is partly because basing a six horse team and limber and having space for a limbered gun is unwieldy; partly because I don't have enough horses for all my British limbers at four or six horses each.

I have some Hinchliffe 25mm British baggage wagons I bought from Terry Wise once. These have teams of Jacklex oxen; the wagon is on one base, the team on another, and there is a single long sabot base they can both be placed on. The wagon's base is permanently glued to the sabot, the team is not. This would also give you the option to swap horse for oxen draught if you prefer.

As ever the usual disclainmer - this is not a painting blog, I know I am not a good painter and my style is limited to achieving as neat a block painted finish as I can manage. The idea is just to show the toys....

Spanish Horse Artillery

Long story here - I wanted a Spanish gun crew to support my (growing) Spanish Brigade. I had a spare Minifigs 20mm Austrian gun crew in bicorns and a generic Scruby officer to hand. As the Spanish artillery went over to French-style shakos by regulation of 1812 this seemed the best option - I may cobble together a crew in shakos later - as I aim generally for 1812 as this gives the option of using pre- and post- 1812 uniforms together, allowing for difficulties in supply.

The Austrians have short tailed coats, which make them more suitable as horse rather than foot artillery for the Spanish. However, I wanted a suitably chaotic extemporised limber and team, so have ended up with two Hinton Hunt oxen (H41 Portuguese long horned oxen) pulling a Hinton Hunt French limber AL 3, using a Jacklex oxen yoke. The gun is from Newline (French 6-pdr) and has been done, like the limber, as unpainted wood.The whole thing is topped off by a SN 51 muleteer (the Spanish used civilian drivers). The oxen are David Clayton castings and the muleteer is an original Hinton Hunt one.

The whole set up is a bit impressionistic but I hope is suitably characterful.

Prussian National Contingent: Artillery

These pictures shoe the artillery elements of the contingent, which is very well provided in this respect. The first picture shows a Hinton Hunt Prussian field gun code A4 with a Hinton Hunt crew: and due to a miscalculation when ordering guns from Newline I currently have one crew waiting for a gun.

The second picture shows 6 crews with Newline guns - 4 6 pdrs and 2 howitzers.

The final picture shows 3 limbers. I only have one set of limber riders, both Clayton castings, one of which has lost an arm! I will replace this eventually. I have plenty more limbers but am restricted by the lack of suitable horses. The ones here were very kindly provided (and painted) by Stryker, of the Hinton Hunt Vintage Wargames Figures blog.

My intention with limbers is to provide 2-horse teams on the base, then have a number of 2 and 4 horse additional bases which can be added to limbers on the move.

Artillery digression #1 -ACW project

The Musket Miniatures artillery pieces I ordered on the recommendation of a couple of blog readers are now finished and I am really pleased with how they work with the Hinton Hunt crews. These pieces, officially scaled at 22mm, are very delicate and remind me to some extent of the Hinchliffe 20mm Napoleonic guns, which, as you may remember, Peter Gilder seems to have used with his Napoleonic gun crews.

As the ACW figures I have are mainly, I think, pirates and recasts, the contrast with the delicate Musket Miniatures artillery pieces is greater but still, I think, works. They have a wide range of different artillery pieces, available in packs of four, single types or mixed. I got a pack of four smooth bores (2 Napoleons and 2 6 pounders, and a mixed pack of rifled artillery, including Armstrong, Blakely, Whitworth and Wiard guns.

Artillery digression #2

These pictures are of a Hinchliffe 20mm British Napoleonic 10" howitzer with a Hinton Hunt Royal Artillery crew. They form part of the siege train I am trying to build up. I have two eighteen pounders from Fine Scale factory, but these are 1/72 scale and seem just too big to work with the Hinton Hunt figures. I have more guns than spare crews so at the moment the crews are fixed to bases but not the guns, so they can be mixed and matched.

A 11 Demi-Culverin field gun