Austrian Artillery Augmentation

With the recent additions to my Austrian infantry and cavalry, the artillery arm needed some additions. 

Fortunately, there was already a generous supply of guns and crew on hand for just such a long anticipated need. 

First up is a 12  lber battery. 

The Austrians assigned these heavy batteries to serve as the Reserve Artillery of the individual  Corps. However, they never did establish any Army Artillery Reserve.  

A howitzer "battery". In most Napoleonic armies, Howitzers made up anywhere from 1/6 to 1/3 of the total guns available.

It was very rare to see howitzers combined to form separate batteries, so these tubes will actually be distributed among the many Austrian 6 lber foot batteries. 

Delta Ceramcoat Straw was in use once again, here for the gun carriages. 

From a gaming standpoint, the howitzers can be swapped into 6 lber or 12 lber batteries. 

This creates some additional flexibility for different scenarios. 

The first of two new 6 lber foot batteries. 

This gun was certainly the workhorse of the Austrian Artillery arm. 

The Austrians were still using the excellent and standardized artillery system devised by Lichtenstein prior to the start of the 7 years war.

By the Napoleonic wars, the French artillery reforms, first the Gribeauval system, and then the later system of the Year XI, had surpassed the Austrian designs.  

A second Austrian 6 lber battery. The gun carriages were (comparatively) light - perhaps too light, as they were more prone to break down with use than their French counterparts. 

All of the guns and crew figures are Sash and Saber castings.

It is really a shame they don't make the famous Austrian cavalry guns, though!

I painted the jackets Delta ceramcoat Terra Cotta, and then over painted them with Delta CC Burnt Sienna, which is already semi opaque straight out of the bottle. 

When I was organizing the figures for the artillery units, there were a couple of spare figures. 

The officer will work fine as a Grand battery commander. 

The sapper (Zimmermann, which literally means Carpenter) should prove useful for sieges and  assisting in the construction of  bridged and field works.

Group photo!

As always, I don't glue my guns to the bases. This allows a limbered battery to be denoted by turning iot around to face backwards. Someday I will get to painting more actual limbers. But that is for another day...

25/28mm Napoleonic Artillery Models: Side by side Comparisons

    When I finished my Old Glory Prussian Artillery crew (on time for Historicon in July), I didn't have enough artillery pieces in my arsenal to equip all the batteries with guns. About that time, Wargames Foundry was having their sale, and the artillery pieces looked like an especially attractive deal. As I already had a mix of Calpe, Old Glory, and Sash and Saber ordinance in my Prussian 1813 army (scraping together what I could get my hands on at the time, like the real 1813 Prussians!), I figured there wouldn't be any big issue if I added yet another manufacturer!

I just finished painting six of the WF Prussian guns, four 6 lbers and 2 Howitzers. Here are a few shots of them with the Old Glory crew figures:

Prussian 6lber Guns by Wargames Foundry with Old Glory crew.

Another view of the WF pieces. They are perhaps a bit on the smaller side, but certainly look perfectly acceptable with the crew figures.

Here are a pair of Wargames Foundry Prussian howitzers, once again with Old Glory crew figures.

Another view of the Wargames Foundry howitzers.

One interesting thing about the Wargames Foundry Prussian gun packs is that the 6 lber packs also have a howitzer barrel in them, so you make either one from the same pack. This also results in some left over gun barrels, as seen above. One of the howitzer barrels is missing, because I mounted it on an old Minifigs carriage which had somehow lost it's tube some years ago. I was happy to find that it fit the carriage OK (the  WF 6 lber tube just didn't look quite right on the same old Minifigs carriage). Anyway, these barrels might be appearing soon, mounted on fortress carriages, in a defensive works near you!

    OK, so on to some comparison shots of guns from different 25/28mm manufacturers side by side.... 

Left to Right:  Wargames Foundry Prussian 6 lber, Sash and Saber French 6 lber, Old Glory Prussian (?) 6 lber, Old Minifigs French 6 lber carriage (with spare WF Howitzer tube - see above). The Old Glory pieces might even be OG TWELVE pounders, as the Old Glory Napoleonic artillery pieces tend to be seriously undersized!

Near to far 6lbers: Minifigs (w/ howitzer tube - see above), Old Glory, Sash and Saber, Wargames Foundry.

Left to Right: Wargames Foundry, Sash and Saber, Old Glory, Minifigs. The top down view shoes that the Minifigs carriage is easily the smallest, and the Sash and Saber the biggest. The OG piece has a very wide axle length, not seen on any of the other models. Again, I think this may actually be the OG 12 lber model, not their 6 lber!  Czar Barry used some Old Glory Russian 12 pounder models as 6 pounder guns, and they worked just fine as that!

This shows a Calpe Prussian 12 lber left, Sash and Saber French 12 lber right. Note the thickness of the wheels and carriage on the Calpe piece... as well as the relatively long axle dimension of the Calpe gun.

Sash and Saber 12 lber front, Calpe rear. Despite the heavy construction of the Calpe piece, the height of the Sash and Saber 12 lber to the top of the wheel is actually slightly greater. 

Calpe 12 lber left, Sash and Saber right.  The top down view highlights the thickness of the wheels and carriage, and the slightly thicker barrel on the Calpe 12 lber gun; this may in part account for why the Calpe pieces are so much more expensive!

Sash and Saber French Howitzer left, Wargames Foundry Prussian Howitzer right. The wheels can sometimes be a bit difficult to affix straight onto the Sash and Saber models, in part because the wheels often have to be drilled out to fit onto the axle. I use super glue followed by epoxy. This the only criticism I would make of Sash and Saber guns, which remain my favorites (I have some pictures Perry 6 lber guns along with some Sash and Saber artillery  in this post on my French Guard Artillery)

Sash and Saber Howitzer top, Foundry Howitzer bottom.

Foundry Howitzer left, Sash and Saber Right; quite close in size and appearance.

Sash and Saber Howitzer left, Foundry right. The top down view again shows the Sash and Saber piece to be slightly larger. 

    I hope some of you find these comparison shots to be helpful when considering the various 25/28 mm Artillery product offerings  available to us. I have seen many side by side comparisons of infantry figures from various manufacturers, but none of the Artillery. Obviously, the manufacturers mentioned are not the only ones available; particularly notably absent are plastics (which I personally don't happen to care for in general). We are certainly spoiled for choices!

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    Speaking of "Czar" Barry, my wife and I enjoyed the hospitality of Barry and his wife twice in the past month... including their food and wine! Barry's home sits right on Main Street of our small town (population circa 1500 people; four or five decades ago, probably many more cows than that!). The Sunday before Labor Day (the first Monday in September, which is a holiday in the US) sees the annual Bridgewater Tractor parade. This largely unpublicized,  quirky event started as all farm tractors, which still make up the majority of the participants. Over the years, though, the tractors began to pull various "floats", often incorporating patriotic themes and/or commentary on politics, both very local and National. Some of these have become amazingly elaborate and clever, especially for a 30 minute event seen by a few hundred people at most!

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Here is one example. Walter (fiddling away here as Nero) is a local artist with a taste for the macabre and supernatural, and always goes all out for the parade. Yep, that is smoke issuing forth from the broken Roman columns! I am not sure if he intended the float to be allegorical or not!

A home grown Godzilla wannabe belches forth real flames. Watch out for that tree there, Lizard Breath!

    The third weekend in August every year sees the great Bridgewater, Connecticut Country Fair, run by and for the benefit of our local Volunteer Fire Department... with help from the majority of the population of the town - attendance over the three days of the fair can top 30,000 people! The highlight of the Fair for us locals is the Fireman's Parade on Friday evening. Most of the Volunteer Fire departments from our part of the state send trucks and firemen to march, along with two or three pipe bands (one was playing "Minstrel Boy", which I recognized as the tune to which Sean Connery and Michael Caine sing "The Son of God Goes Forth to War" in the movie, The Man Who Would Be King (based upon the story by Rudyard Kipling).. There are also Brass bands and Fife and drum corps, and usually a public official or two as well... but we try to ignore them. Barry's home has a perfect view of the Parade from his front yard (and porch, in case of rain, which has happened more often that we'd like the past few years). 

This year, as every year, the Sandy Hook company from nearby Newtown participated in the Parade. Many of these guys were first responders to the elementary school shooting scene last year. I am sure more than a few of them have PTSD as a result. Not surprisingly, they got the loudest applause this year, and quite a few moist eyes among the crowd... mine included.

Peter