Wednesday 21 August 2019

'Can You See What I See?'

Some time ago I made some conversions to create a mounted Prussian and French Officer with binoculars - well what I was prepared to accept looked a bit like them.

I always fancied an infantry officer with binoculars.  Before I got my recent diagnosis, I had started hacking a figure about to try to make one.  For some time now the various bits - arms and bodies have sat on my desk waiting to be put together.  To be honest I couldn't be bothered to complete it.  But in one of my brighter moments I thought 'why not'.

So I set about joining the arms to the body.  Needless to say they broke, fell on the floor and I was left crawling around trying to find the two parts of the arms.  I eventually found them more by luck that judgement.  My big problem now is that I have a cataract in my left eye.  This is the eye I use for close up work.  I do not mention this to solicit yet more sympathy but to explain what happened next.

I set about fixing the arms in place with superglue and green stuff.  Having completed this task which I thought seemed more difficult to line up the arms than before and leaving everything to dry off. I picked up my finished creation only to discover that I had stuck the arms on upside down!  I blame this entirely on my eye! 

Having got this far I really couldn't be bothered to try to undo the fixing or start again so I just proceeded to paint what I had done.  Again painting is a real problem the brush seems to have turned into a broom!  Anyway this is the 'finished article' which just goes to show how wrong you can get it!


'Can You See What I See'
 


Needless to say, I won't be making anymore versions of this particular conversion!

Monday 12 August 2019

Best Guns for FPW Period - follow up


Following on from my blog 'Best Guns for the FPW Period', I decided to buy the Foundry 15cm Krupp Siege Gun FPPG003 to see what it looked like and to get an idea of its scale.  Not because I need any more Prussian artillery!

It has a platform behind the gun which suggests that a gunner or gunners could stand on it at some point in the loading; siting or firing process. To take advantage of this, I cut the the base of one of the Prussian gunners I had converted and struck him on. It also gives an idea of the scale of the gun. I am not convinced this would work with a 28mm figure. It also looks as if the is firing the gun rather like a machine gun!





Surround by a full crew.  I suspect the horse would do a 'runner' rather than wait for the big bang!




Update: Gun size.  The wheels are 20mm high.  the Gun carriage is 50mm.  Including the barrel the overall length of the gun is 60mm.  The height from ground to barrel is 30mm.

The gun itself looks very like the picture from the Minifigs catalogue which shows an S range FPW artillery FPA1 Prussian Siege Gun.



Thanks to the Lone S Ranger blogspot.com for the use of this picture.

Saturday 3 August 2019

Bob's Hungarian Army

Following on from the pictures of Bob's Ottoman Army which generated a lot of interest, he got his Hungarian's out and I took some pictures.  Another army with lots of banners!

Bob tells me that the army is built around HYW French army from Lancashire Games. He also tells me that astute readers will notice that not only is the Royal Standard with Corvinus's Raven present, but so is his Fathers banner, that of Hunyadi Janos. So Hunyadi is dead and his son rules so the army is about 1460 - which just allows it to have a few Hussite/Bohemian mercenaries - the handgunners and others. For those of us not so astute it's a nice bit of history!

  Hungarian army led by Perry WOR infantry
        Hungarian cavalry  French HYW figures by Lancashire Games 

      Bishop Peter of Vas’ religious wagon.
Wagon, banner and oxen and oxen leader by Irregular Miniatures 
Archbishop by E4M 


 Hungarian cavalry by Old Glory

 Infantry mainly by Lancashire games



     The Commander with Royal Standard  Lancashire Games

WoR figures by Perry Bros


      Early handgunners by Kingmaker (1st corps)




     Heavy cavalry by Lancashire Games




      
   Old Glory figures from their 15th century Eastern Europe range





    Frontier fort by Jack used from medieval to Colonial times  
Archers are Alan’s Perry Englishmen. 
 King, queen and Herald are old 30mm figures that don’t seem so tall nowadays




.       Hobilar leads the infantry


Heavy cavalry  livery based on illustration of Sigismund’s troops
     more Perry archers and infantry aid the Hungarian infantry



.      Old Glory 15th century knights


  Hobilars


.      Commander, with Royal Banner with raven of Mattias Corvinus


    Hungarian from TAG



Trumpeter. Standard figure from Lancashire Gamess range 
 Bob saw a 15th century illustration of Hunagrian trumpeter with (green) cap 
and converted his headwear into this cap