AWI Painted Artillery Deal

Continental Artillery Battery: French 4-pdr in foreground and Swedish 4-pdr in the background. Click pix to enlarge.

British Artillery Battery with 6-pdr cannon.

For a limited time only, I am offering painted and based Fife & Drum artillery sets (four crew and one cannon) for $55.00 plus shipping.

The British come as either Loading or Firing (both with British 6-pdrs).

The Americans come as either Loading or Firing, but you can select any of the following cannon: Swedish 4-pdr, French long 4-pdr , or British 6-pdr. The French 4-pdrs were often rebored in American  foundries  and converted into 6-pounders, while the Swedish 4-pounder was another French gun of lighter size (a la Suedoise).

I can also offer a Galloper Gun set (four crew, 3-pdr, horse and limber frame) for the same price.

If you are interested in any of these painted and based sets, then drop me an e-mail at:

altefritz1740 (at) yahoo (dot) com -- substitute the "@" and the "." symbols in the e-mail address that I have given you.

The proceeds will be used to fund the next releases of Fife & Drum artillery equipment, which should be available within two weeks.

I thank you in advance for your support.

IR24 von Schwerin Regt. (Minden figures)

Minden Miniatures Prussians, painted by Der Alte Fritz

Here is a short post to show a picture of some commission work that I just finished last weekend. They are Minden Miniatures Prussians painted as IR24 von Schwerin Regiment and the flags are from GMB Designs. The regiment is mounted on 3/4-inch square Litko bases. I just painted the bases dark green as a temporary expedient as the client wishes to finish the terraining of the bases himself. This is a classic Prussian regiment with white small clothes and red facings on the typical Prussian Blue uniform coat.

I am currently working on a British AWI regiment (44th Foot) and should have it completed within a couple more days. Pictures to follow in a few days.

John Ray Book Announcement

18th Century Russian infantry and artillery designed by John Ray.
Photo courtesy of John Rayand copy right by John Ray and family.

I have to say that the news I am reporting "made my day" when I first heard of it. I opened up the Emperor versus Elector blog this afternoon and scrolled down through the list of some of my favorite blogs, when I spied "Classic Wargaming" by Phil Olley. There are a few blogs that I put in my "stop everything and read now" category, and Phil's is one of those. Imagine then my delight when I read Phil's announcement about the pending publication of a book by John Ray. I have been anticipating the publication of John's book, illustrated by pictures of his own unique figures, for some time now so it goes without saying that I am very excited by this news:

Classic Wargaming

A Military Gentleman

If you click on the second link above, to John Ray's new blog site, called "A Military Gentleman", you will have a better idea of what I am talking about. The site is named after the pending book of the same name.

John has been working on this book for about seven years, and every so often he would give us a glimpse of the scope and quality of the project by publishing a few pictures on various internet forums or in some of the wargame publications. I have been looking forward to the publication of the book with a great of anticipation over the years, knowing that it would be illustrated with many pictures of the wargame collection that John has sculpted entirely by himself.

According to the link, the book will have about 300 pages and a gallery of over 100 pages, chock full of the wonderful creations of John Ray. It will have a limited print run of 500 copies, so if you are a kindred spirit with me, i.e. a member of the John Ray Fan Club, then you will want to visit the site and click on the e-mail link to express your interest in purchasing a copy for your own library. 

I have been a long time fan of John Ray's sculpting talents and his ability to focus in on one historical period. John learned his sculpting trade via his friendship with the late Steve Hezzlewood, who many of you know through his work on the RSM Miniatures line of 18th Century figures. I can't recall when I first saw John's work, it was probably in an old issue of Wargames Illustrated when I saw pictures of his Zulu War and AWI collections. When I saw the latter collection, my first thought was "I didn't know that RSM Miniatures made those figures?". It was only later that I learned that John had sculpted the figures for himself and that he was building up a large AWI collection.

Imagine that you have the talent to sculpt wargame figures. Then imagine that you could have any figure that you wanted, just by collecting some copper wire, a soldering iron and some epoxy putty or Milliput. Well, that is what John Ray can do.  One of his trademarks is the vignette. John draws inspiration from historical military art prints and then recreates the scene in 28mm figures which grace his wargame table. Over the years, I have been following his AWI project with great interest and watched as this evolved into a wider hypothetical European war that might have taken place during the 1770-1789 period. John built Hessian, Prussian, French, Spanish, Austrian, Russian, Ottoman Turks and probably a few countries that I have missed. 

AWI Limber Teams

Minden Miniatures SYW Prussian artillery crew

Fife & Drum British Limber Team with 6-pound go into battery. Perry 16th Light Dragoons provide the escort.

Here is a picture showing how I organize my artillery train for my AWI armies. Each cannon model has its own limber with a team of two horses and a driver. The cannon model attaches to the rear, loosely and then is placed on the artillery stand when it goes into battery. Once the gun goes into battery, the gun model is placed on the artillery stand (which includes four crew members permanently attached to the base) and then it is set to fire, as shown below

Fife & Drum Miniatures: British artillery crews firing (left) and loading (right) their 6-pounders.

Some Little Wars Pix

War of 1812 Game - Knuckleduster Figures. Click all pix to enlarge.

I did not have a lot of time to roam through the game area at Little Wars for photo shooting, but here are a few that I snapped before the dealer area opened at 10AM Saturday morning. These were some of the better games that I saw, in terms of either terrain or colorful figures, or guys just having a darn good time of it. Click all pictures once or twice to enlarge the view.

Japanese Samauri game in 28mm

Knuckleduster Figures Booth. Nice laser cut building kits and nice Western and 1812 figures.

A Napoleonic game of sorts, using 15mm figures and nice looking terrain boards.

The Last Square's annual WW2 mega game. 

Napoleonic game featuring nothing but cavalry. Lieberwolkowitz 1813 perhaps? Great concept and I could tell that the players were really enjoying themselves in this one.

Geo Hex Terrain still looks great.

Thoroughbred Figures Booth - some great looking 15mm ship kits.

I did not have much time to do any shopping for myself, but I took advantage of the fact that The Last Square was across the aisle from the Fife & Drum booth, so I picked up a lot of Silfur Tufts to use for my figure bases. I also acquired a copy of Muskets & Tomohawks skirmish rules from Mr. Extra Crispy himself, who read my comment on Face Book that I could not find a copy of the rules in the dealer area. So on Saturday, Mark stopped by my booth and I bought a copy of the rules from him. How's that for personal service? (thumbs up in my book). I also bought a book on Gettysburg that featured drawings by Keith Rocco and pictures of the actual equipment that is at the Gettysburg National Park museum. I can't recall the name of the book right now, but it is a very nice book to have if you are an ACW buff.

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Fife & Drum at Little Wars

Fife & Drum Booth At Little Wars Convention

I have just set up my dealer booth at the Little Wars convention, located next to the Litko Bases booth and across the aisle from The Last Square. Thank go to Karl at the Last Square for lending me a pair of scissors to cut the cord used for attaching the banner to the table, and to Paul at Litko for his knowledge of Boy Scout knots, particularly the Clove Hitch, which he used to help me tie down the banner so that it would not sag. I found all of the dealers to be very helpful to this newbie in the dealer trade. It was much appreciated. And finally, thanks go out to Robert Bowling, the director of the dealer area at Little Wars, for all his help in getting me set up at this very first convention that I attended as a dealer.

I really like the way that the Fife & Drum logo turned out on the banner that I had made at a local FedEx Store (formerly known as Kinkos). My sincere thanks go to Henry Hyde for designing the logo and for also creating the artwork for the cardboard headers that you see on the bags (in Red for British, Blue for Americans, and Green for Artillery Equipment).

Little Wars Convention Preparation

Filling up the carrying boxes with bags of Fife & Drum Miniatures. Click all pix to enlarge the view.

I have spent the past several days bagging Fife & Drum Miniatures into 3" x 5" plastic bags (4 figures per bag) and stapling on the card headers to make it easier to identify what is in each bag. I have placed the Fife & Drum logo onto the headers, and color coded them: Red for British figures; Blue for American figures; and Green for artillery and equipement.

After attending several smaller conventions, I quickly figured out that it was insane to bring 100 different plastic bins full of figures and then try to sell and pick the figures one at a time during the convention. The bins take up too much space in the car, and it takes forever to hand pick individual figures per each customer purchase. Regretfully, I have decided to start selling the figures in bags of 4 figures for $8.00 per bag of infantry. Artillery equipment and mounted officers will continue to be sold as individual models with one per bag.

Using this new system, I am able to carry all of the figures in only six large boxes, while reducing the number of SKUs from 100 to about 32.

Green card headers signify artillery and equipment models.

Blue card headers for American figures, and Red card headers for the British figures.

I will be attending this year's Little Wars convention in DuPage County, Illinois this Friday and Saturday April 26 and 27, respectively. So if you are attending the convention, stop on by at our booth and take a look at the miniatures up close and first hand. 

Take a closer look at the artillery wheels in the green bags. These figures are straight out of the mold and into the bag. You will note that there is absolutely NO FLASH filling up the space between the wheel spokes. No compare these to some of the other brands of AWI figures, particularly the ones made by the Gods, and you will see that they are often full of flash and thin little venting spiders that are really annoying to deal with when you are trying to prep the figures for priming.

At Fife & Drum, we believe that our customers deserve superior casting quality when they purchase our figures. I really hate cutting off bits and pieces of metal flash. It takes a lot of extra time and often I find that I missed a little thread of metal (spider vents, as we call them) only after I have primed the figures and am actually painting them. Oooooh, that really peeves me when that happens. Well guess what, you will never have to deal with irritating metal flash when you buy Fife & Drum Miniatures.

Simply put, you the customer deserve superior casting quality to go along with superb figure sculpts and top notch service. You have my word on that.