Monday, May 16, 2016

The Guns of … April?

While working on my next battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary force for the Great War I happened to finish up a pair of guns…

(April because this is all ostensibly for the battle of Vimy Ridge which was in April)

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version):


These guns are from Renegade Miniatures.


I like renegade miniatures. They’re a tad on the chunky side, but they are solid (and durable!) and easy to paint.



The gun was easy and straightforward to put together.


The Renegade gun kind of dwarfs the other gun I have from Wargames Foundry

I’m not really sure I will make use of these… well… ever… the guns would be located nowhere near the actual area represented on the tabletop. I mostly just picked them up because… well… I got them back when I got the rest of the  Renegade Miniatures stuff – a few years back – back when the pound sterling was still down (relative to the Canadian Dollar) AND they were still doing 5-4-4 deals on the regimental packs! (It looks like they’re still doing 5-4-4 deals, but they’ve done away with the regiment deals…)

I suppose I could set guns out on other tables, but if I wanted to start representing the guns with miniatures I’d need an awful LOT of guns  - and guns ain’t cheap!!! I had it in mind I might just do the guns that were organic to the division and represent each battery with one team… but there were two brigades of Artillery per battalion, each with four batteries. An 18 ponder gun team (with the current exchange and postage rates) costs $16.20CAD from Irregular, $36CAD from Great War Minatures, $32 from Gripping Beast/Woodbine (or $29CAD each – if you buy a battery or two!?), $83.70 from Old Glory (If ordered from Old glory USA - admittedly most of that is shipping!? It looks like if I ordered it from the UK it would only be $25…). Even if I went with the cheapest option (Irregular) for the field batteries (three of the four batteries were field batteries, the other was a howitzer battery), that would be almost $400… just for the field batteries…


Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

One of the last two battalions (58th or 116th) of the 9th Brigade… Then it’ll be on to the first Division… or some Germans!?  







10 comments:

  1. The guns look great and I would not worry about the INTENDED use in war.

    If you've put time and money into making them looking this good, you might as well use it. Surely there were times where guns just so happened to appear on the frontline (a stopped advance of friendlies or perhaps a strong push of the adversaries?).

    Some field guns (at least in Austrian army) would still carry grape shots to defend themselves from a close assault.

    All sorts of anomalies happened in the war, so there is no reason why you could not use them and still be reasonably close to reality!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh, for sure. I wasn't regretting having bought these. I'm even still thinking I might pick up at least one gun and crew from each of the manufacturers represented in the collection. I'm just not sure there's much need for them in my two upcoming projects and I'm realizing it would be ludicrous to try and represent ALL of the batteries in the Canadian Corps. I will likely find use for them when I get to playing games of the 1918 German Offensive - I'm sure there would have been guns that were caught off guard and didn't pull out in time before being overrun by German stormtroopers!

      thanks!

      Delete
  2. What about 1 gun model per Brigade? Esp if they are back on the mantelpiece or something. You could go with a constant figure scale for gunners and infantrymen. At that rate you could perhaps add some howitzers.

    ( and yes my maternal grandfather was a gunner but with the RHA.)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Possibly... I would like some way of showing both the creeping barrage and the counter-battery fire against the Germans. At first I thought it might be better to do it all abstractly - not having any models (as they wouldn't be on the table proper) - but it might be fun to have SOME Canadian guns lined up on a table behind the Canadian lines and some German guns set up on another table behind the Germans lines - every turn the Canadian guns get a crack at taking out German batteries...?

      Delete
  3. Great looking guns and figures, renegade are nice figures but so much bigger than everything else I've got but you've done a lovely job on these
    Best Iain

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, my hope is that when there is 600+ figures on the table... no one will notice that the ones in one brigade are a bit bigger in the next brigade..

      Delete
  4. Great guns and crew. This is becoming a very handsome project.

    ReplyDelete