Monday 21 October 2013

French line foot artillery limber

This is the Perry Miniatures model of a French line artillery 4-horse limber with a 6-pounder gun.  I painted most of this at the beginning of the year, but then rather lost interest in it as I couldn't work out how the limber was supposed to be attached to the horses.  It then occurred to me, after scrutinising photos on the interest that you're not supposed to attach it to the horses without building your own traces etc.  I posted a query on TMP and received some very helpful replies, but which also confirmed my initial thoughts that there's nothing you're supposed to do with the set if you don't want to.  That said, Sada did an amazing job adding traces and ropes, so the effort pays dividends if you put your mind to it.  I decided that in the end I couldn't really be bothered to spend more time on this set and knew that I'd only make a total hash of it if I tried to add fuse wire or whatever to fill in the traces. 

So what you have here is the unaltered Perry set.   I'm not sure it really works without anything being connected to the horses (see photo on left), but I imagine it's completely impractical to sculpt and mould anything else.  Another minor grips I have is the "advancing rapidly" pose of the set.  I suppose in games you do need moving limbers to show guns that are, er, moving.  But personally I prefer standing limbers which I can place behind the firing/loading gun models. Then again, I'm not much practised in Napoleonic games and maybe in 25mm there's just no space; in which case moving limbers are probably best.

I thought it would look nice to paint the horse team in the same colours, so they are bays painted with the Foundry "Bay Brown" palette.  The colours used for the drivers' tunics were Foundry palette "Confederate Grey 117", while the limber and gun were painted with my usual French Napoleonic artillery green combination: base coat of Vallejo "Yellow Green" mixed with plain black, then first highlight of "Yellow Green" and second highlight of "Yellow Green" mixed equally with Vallejo "Dark Yellow".  The whips rather failed me, I'm afraid - I had no idea how to paint them and recall not finding much help via Google.

2 drivers, 4 horses and a limber.  Painted January 2013.



9 comments:

Phil said...

A beautiful unit, your painting style is really excellent!

Silver Whistle said...

A wonderfully painted piece Giles and yes, it would finish it off with the traces added. If you were a modeller rather than a wargamer and just working on the single item, then you would have the time to do this but when it is just a small part of a bigger project I think you have done the right thing by leaving them off. It means we get to see a bigger turn over of your painted work.
Cheers,
Pat.

Silver Whistle said...

A wonderfully painted piece Giles and yes, it would finish it off with the traces added. If you were a modeller rather than a wargamer and just working on the single item, then you would have the time to do this but when it is just a small part of a bigger project I think you have done the right thing by leaving them off. It means we get to see a bigger turn over of your painted work.
Cheers,
Pat.

Christopher(aka Axebreaker) said...

Outstanding work Giles! Great choice of colours! Your not the only one who doesn't have time to worry about the small stuff. Too many figures waiting for paint.

Christopher

Chasseur said...

Beautiful piece, I have a couple of these to do too, and have also been wondering about the traces problem!

Dalauppror said...

Stunning work !

Schrumpfkopf said...

Now that came our really really nice.

Curt said...

Very nice work! SADA's stuff is brilliant but I'm with you in doubting whether I'd be patient enough to see it through.

Doc Smith said...

Beautiful job Giles - had the same dilemma re the traces etc with my recent Perry's Austrian caissons and limbers. Finally figured it out after much pfaffing about. You can add traces or not but they are fed through/attached to the little wooden bars that are positioned just behind the horse's fetlocks. With the lead horses I ended up attaching them to the rear legs so they looked more part of the team. I decided to forego the fine traces as fiddly and just too much work. Perry's limbers and caissons are beautiful BUT they are a challenge to put together!

Cheers,
Doc