 |
| 2 batteries of cannon, using generic 18th Century figures from warrior miniatures. Painted up as sort-of French. Very speccy ... I love the way these guys turned out. |
 |
| Now, according to my sources ... the French artillery uniforms didn't exactly have prominent lapels .. not sure. The figures do have them though, so I have painted the lapels in a lighter shade of blue, which looks pretty cool on this uniform. |
 |
| Exccellent ! They do look suitably 18th Century. In the rules that I am using, each wing command typically has 0-2 gun batteries for the wing, along with 2-4 line regiments, some cavalry and a couple of distinguised units. So I almost have enough now to put together a wing from a generic 18th Century army. |
 |
| As you can see - the guns themselves are pretty generic. Eureka make a brilliant range of very detailed 18th Century cannon that are a fair bit bigger than these. Worth getting if you want a serious SYW army on the table. I will be getting some of these later to do a proper Russian force, as the Eureka Russians are brilliant. Anyway, you get 4 of these guns (plus crew) in each 18th Century army pack, so I will just paint them up as imagi-nation batteries and get em on the table ! The warrior miniatures packs are brilliant value - highly recommended if you feel like dabbling in this fun period. |
These guns look very nice!
ReplyDeleteMy ignorance of this era shows once again.... were the French gun carriages that... *blue*?!
ReplyDeletePeter
Hi Peter,
ReplyDeleteYes, you are quite right. The French are using predominantly RED gun carriages and artillery equipment .. a sort of muted red-brown by the look of it. Although, there are several plates that show blue-grey equipment as well.
From what little research I have done on this, it seems that the artillery arm during this period was only just at the beginning stages of uniformity. Being a specialist technical arm, it was still partially in the hands of civilian contractors.
It looks like the Austrians led the way in forming a professional well organised and uniform artillery service in the army.
So that should leave a little scope for creative interpretation for forces of this period. Also, the warrior gun models are a little fanciful anyway, so I will use these to play around with and produce semi-historical uniforms.
Having said all that, Eureka has now expanded their SYW line to include the French - along with a tonne of new sculpts and artillery pieces. I have been lucky to have several of these in my workshop as pre-production models for a while now, and they are simply brilliant. The 24pdr is a work of art in itself !
So later on, I should invest a little time and money in some Eureka additions, and get some less speculative forces on the field as well in more correct uniforms and colours.
In the meantime, I still have a tonne of warrior figures and guns for this period, and they are going to be painted up semi-historic as we go. They are a total bargain and highly recommended in this scale (GBP 18 for a whole 18th C army pack - 8 regiments worth of infantry, a bunch of cavalry and 4 guns plus crew in the pack. Bargain !)
Just to add to that, Eureka have a range of SYW teddy bears in 28mm, and they may doing these in 15/18mm soon enough. If so - expect to see a LOT of them joining my SYW imagi-nation armies as well :)
Cheers
From Wiki:
ReplyDeleteAt the beginning of the XVIIIth century, French artillery carriages were probably red as were the gun carriages of the French Marine Royale. However, by the time of the Seven Years' War, gun carriages of the French army were blue to distinguish them from the equipment of the supply train (caissons and carts), painted brick red. Furthermore, canvas used with artillery equipment were usually decorated with a device consisting of two crossed cannon (in saltire) with a crowned "A" or "AA". The change to blue occurred very soon after the Vallière reform of 1732, even though the precise date is unknown. More details are available in the aforementioned.....