Painting Prussian Artillery Crews

 

Prussian artillery battery deploys in front of a popular drinking establishment.

This week's fox is the painting of several sets of SYW Prussian artillery crew and matrosses to fill in some holes in my Prussian artillery park. I often use the Minden Pioneers figures as either the fellows who push and pull the cannons into place or as actual artillery crewmen who have taken off their uniform coat to man the cannon in their waistcoats.

The Prussian artillery deploys in the village square as the locals look on in wonderment.

Take a look and judge for yourselves:

This week's painting production consists of all the crew shown above. The cannons were painted previously.

My new Prussian artillery battery (L to R): 12-pounder, 10-pound howitzer, and 3-pound battalion gun.

Another view of the same artillery battery, but with the addition of a munitions wagon in the background  and some civilians carrying crates of ammo to the cannons.

Both the artillery crew figures and the Pioneer figures come with open hands and an assortment of tools that allow one to customize each figure. In addition, I sometimes give some of the figures a drag rope to hold in their hands - the drag ropes would be attached to the cannon so that the men could pull the piece back in to its firing position.  I make the drag ropes from bits of florists wire that I twist together to make it look like they are holding cabled rope. Other figures get a piece of wire to hold, which represents a wood lever to use to pry the gun trail off of the ground, or to use as one of the poles that slide through a pair of rings on the gun trail, which are then used to left the trail to move it by hand.

Some of the Pioneers in waistcoats are holding artillery tools such as linstocks, rammers, water buckets and worms, etc. This makes them look like crew men who have removed their blue uniform coats so that they can get to work wearing waistcoats.

Each gun model is mounted, unattached, on an MDF base (60mm by 100mm). I glue four crew to all of my medium and heavy guns, but only three crew for light guns. I also place a smaller stand (60mm by 30mm) with two matrosses that is placed behind the gun model stand. This is done mostly for "looks" to indicate some of the depth of "stuff" that is found behind an artillery piece. I would typically include a limber and team of four horses behind each medium (5-8 pounds) and heavy ( > 9 pounds) cannon model. Light cannon (1 to 4 pounds) generally do not get a limber team because I usually attach the light guns to the infantry battalions and so the guns move with the stands of the infantry.

The 3-pound battalion gun is detached from the rest of the battery and
placed by itself on the righthand side of the picture. The Winterfeldt Regiment (IR1) is
 marching down the road to provide support to the artillery.

All of the pictures are set up on a game mat from Cigar Box Battle Mats, which have become one of my favorite mats to use on my game table.  Link to the web site: Cigar Box Battle Mats. This particular mat is the New Europe Plus (6ft by 4ft) and I use it with the New Europe Two mat that creates a table surface of approximately 10ft long by 6ft wide. The width of the mats are closer to 5ft rather than the 4ft Plus advertised. 

All of the buildings shown in my pictures were made by Herb Gundt, who also made the corn fields and trees that you can see in the background.

Nearly all of the miniatures are from the Fife and Drum and Minden Miniatures ranges of figures. There are also several civilians from Perry and Blue Moon.

Next UP:

Prussian Winterfeldt regiment IR1