Bronze Age & Gripping Beast Vikings

I was recently asked for some comparison photos of Bronze Age Miniature and Gripping Beast Vikings. Unfortunately this is a little difficult as the I have already based the figures and the bases are of differing heights. Not withstanding this I have taken some photos, and I believe from them you can get a sense of their proportions anyway. The Bronze Age miniatures are in the middle.

French Chefs de bataillon

When I started painting napoleonic figures about 4 years ago, there was little information on the internet, I do not remember seeing any blogs and very few manufacturers had decent web sites. Since then the information growth has been exponential.

Being a solo wargamer, I find having a blog is just great. It keeps me in touch with other wargamers, I see what others are doing and I get all kinds of great ideas on how to do things.

One thing I have tried to do on my site is put up some comparison shots of different manufacturers. Today are some French mounted infantry chefs d'batallion. Here we have five different manufacturers. Please try not to judge their quality by my painting job. These have been painted over a 4 year period with the Perry chef d'bataillon and the Foundry lègere colonel figure being the most recent. They are all nice figures and I have no problems recommending any of them.

I hoping to soon put up some photos of some buildings I have acquired, this is a really tricky area as the different manufacturer described sizes have absolutely nothing to do with their actual sizes.

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Size Comparisons: Cavalry and Artillery

Lee over at Napoleonic Wargames Project has asked me a couple of times how different manufacturers of Cavalry and Artillery compare. I finally had a chance today to take a few snaps, sorry I do not have fancy calibrated back drops, but I believe a sense of the figure size is more important than actual sizes.

I am not as picky as some and I actually like having different manufacturers in my armies, my infantry units have figures from 6 different manufacturers and I am happy in my own way with them all. I find that it is difficult to mix different manufacturers in the same battalion, but in respect to command figures you sometimes have to do this. I also generally like to use the same manufacturer in the same brigade when wargaming, but this is not really for the look, but more a question of easy identification, ie. the Foundry's are the conscript's etc. etc.

Recently Lee has asked me about both artillery and cavalry, he had an attack of the "wobbles" over the Victrix Plastic artillery, and I think I can understand why. The cannon carriages are really quite diminutive, I really can not comment on the figures. Fortunately he seems to have got over it and he recently has done some great work.

Anyway back to the point of the post. I do not have all the manufacturers but I do have some and have taken some photos. Here are some cavalry, I believe that these are all pretty similar in size, aside from the Foundry, which are definitely smaller. I would not mix the other figures in the same unit, but I believe they would be fine in the same brigade. In respect to the Foundry cavalry, I have 2 units and a 3rd unit to paint for Lepic's Imperial Guard Cavalry brigade to add to 2 regiments of Front Rank cavalry. It was clearly a mistake to do it this way and I would avoid using Foundry cavalry unless you plan to do your whole army in Foundry (Front Rank infantry seem to tower over Foundry cavalry). Nothing wrong with Foundry figures, but they do not mix well with some other manufacturers.

The Perry plastic dragoons are to be fine in comparison to the Front Rank, but I would not mix them in the same regiment.

In respect to artillery, the Perry are a little smaller, but again I am happy to have them both in the same army. I would not mix them in the same battery, but otherwise the sense of size is fine.

The overview is more valuable in respect to artillery, unfortunately I am not too sure about the actual sizes of the cannon. I believe the Perry are BH 12 (6pd Hanoverian/British) but can not remember if the Front Rank are 6 or 9 pd. The Austrian gun is a 6pder and the Calpe is also a 6pder.

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A Question of Scale

I have been recently working on adding some buildings to my terrain. After discussion on TMP, I decided that I would go with 15 mm buildings with my 28 mm army. I recently bought and painted a couple of building from Timecast (numbers 1&3 from the left) and yesterday received some building from JR Miniatures (numbers 2,4&5). I am happy with the figure to building look of this size building with my figures (see Perry Plastics Campaign Unit post), but 2 of the JR miniature building seem quite out of scale (unpainted). What do you think?