French 25mm AT guns

I've had this old 25mm AT gun lying around half assembled for quite a while, as one of the parts was missing and have two complete ones. It was by Miltra so there was no chance of finding the spare part, so I scratched up a repair then added a few figures from the Hat late WW1 French Artillery set. Not quite correct with the position of the gas-mask bags, but they might have put them in the old position if they thought there was a risk of gas attack.

Caesar French Infantry shown for comparison.

Revolutionary French Artillery

If you have a sense of Deja-Vu then yes I have produced some of these before, and you've been following a long time as I produced the last lot in 2007 (link) Ever since Hat brought out some 1805 artillery I've been tempted to upgrade to these figures.

The figures themselves are fine, even though they are still in the odd rubbery plastic (but this batch seemed slightly firmer), but the guns are huge more suitable for 25mm figures. Part of my motivation to get the set was to obtain some more guns I could use for the SYW, but these will go in the for-sale pile unless I can think of an alternative use. The guns shown above are the SYW Austrian ones from Revell.

Off to the big game

Well in about an hour I'll be off to this year's Rapid Fire big game near York. "Aegean Adventure" set in the Dodecanese in 1943. I'm hoping to conduct a successful defence of Leros, but historically the odds are against me.

To cover my absence I've scheduled a couple of updates until I get around to posting pictures of the game

Revolution French Grenadiers

Progress has been a bit slow as I have sorted out various bits and pieces. First off is a couple of French Grenadier Battalions for my Revolutionary era army. I was going to used the Zvezda Old Guard figures, but they were too neat. Someone I traded with over on Benno's Figures suggested the Hat Old Guard Chasseur figures as part of a trade and they looked far more suitable, so here they are.

So the Zvezda figures are now up for trade

Sturmboot 42

The more observant readers of my blog will have notice that it had disappeared off the work list, that was because it was actually finished, but I hadn't had chance to photograph it yet.


It's a SOGGY model by the talented Simon Raines and was produced specially for the big game along with a MFP (Marinefährprahm). Part of my contribution was to paint one and it'll go in the charity auction at the end of the game.

On the workbench - August 2011

Well, I managed to complete everything for July, despite the need to do lots of outside 1:1 painting because the weather remained good for a while. Now I'm looking forward to the SOGGy big game in two weeks, everything is ready (I hope). Now for the next month I'll attempt to catch up with a number of my newer purchases.

• new French Revolutionary Gunners (not sure what to do with the old ones yet?)
• French Revolutionary Grenadiers using Hat Old Guard Chasseurs
• Strelets Bashi-bazouks as generic Ottoman light cavalry (their new Mamelukes look good as well but I'm not waiting till November)
• SYW Frundsberg Artillery Batteries plus Limber Teams (yes, war is likely see Frundsberg blog).
• US paratroop AT battery (2 guns)
• The last US paratroop bn (just keep on with the work!)
• Hat Skoda 75mm Mountain Gun in German use

US Pack Howitzer

Continuing the artillery theme and fitting in neatly with my US Paratroop forces is a pair of 75mm pack howitzers M1 from Waterloo 1815. Three hard plastic sprues are in a box each with a gun and 4 crew. The crew isn't quite correct for Paras, but they are close enough for me. The model is quite simplified, with a number of the cross supports missing, but it's a reasonably representation for the wargames table.

Now need to decide what to do with the spare as I only need two guns and apparently a British paratroop version is going to be produced, so I don't need to hold on to it for when I work on them.