Dawn Attack .

The British and their allies are keen on taking revenge on the French after loosing the last battle 
http://tinsoldieringon.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/first-contact-in-40mm-part2.html so they decide to attack a French artillery piece that has been making a nuisance of itself  . The attack will take place just before daybreak .

 

Hmm ! that's realistic but not much good to illustrate the scene of the action .

 

 

That's better . The Allies are on the left and comprise of the Grenadier Company and Lt Grant's Company of the 20th Regt. of Foote. The lead is being taken by Scheither's Jaeger company. The mission is to destroy the gun and set fire to the ammunition store behind it.

 

 

The objective . I cast the three sentry's up especially for this game .(ah ! the joys of home casting) they will move on a random dice throw and alert the camp when the enemy come within 9" of one of them.

 

 

The Allied force is commanded by Gen. H. Von Karlsberg (Col. Barker was wounded in the last game and is indisposed) They also have a Officer and gunner from Scheither's FreiKorps who have a 'Infernal device' to destroy the gun . Too be continued.......

 

 

 

Frei Korp Artillery

 

Have got the artillery section of Scheither's Frei Korps done.

 

 

I decided to use the other gun casting from Prince August , with which the barrel and body are cast as one . Peraphs not as nice a model as the newer one but adds a bit of variety.

 

 

 

Homemade Cavalry

Finished the cavalry contingent of Scheither's Frei Korp.

These are the Karabiniere's and are a type of light cavalry .

As I could find no references to the uniform for musicians I took the liberty of simply reversing the colours . Now the Allies have some cavalry my next casting session will be some Hussars for the French.

Painted Voltaire

Here we have Voltaire and his man servant 'Wee Jocky' (late of the Royal Ecossais)

No many colour illustrations of Voltaire I'm afraid, so had to make a guess at colour scheme .

Voltaire and Wee Jocky watch the Chasseurs De Sombreuil go through their manoeuvres . Voltaire's thoughts on light infantry tactics were not well received in French military circles and copies of his pamphlet ' Mes reflexions sur L'utilisation De L'infanterie Legere' are very hard to come by !.

Chasseurs De Sombreuil

Having not yet got a replacement gas bottle for our camping stove , with which I melt metal to cast, I have been using some ready cast figures I got off EBay . I decided to do a French Light Infantry unit the 'Chasseurs De Sombreuil' .

I got the uniform details from http://www.kronoskaf.com/syw/index.php?title=Main_Page

a brilliant site for all things SYW .

The basic infantry figure is a earlier Holger Erikson figure from Prince August . To my mind the earlier figures have more character than the newer more fully rounded ones that they are now producing and certainly easier to cast .

Modeling Voltaire

In my Imagi-nations or semi Imagi-nations I like to have non military personalities making guest appearances ( ie Kipling in my 54mm FLWs or H.G.Wells in my 40mm Balkans wars) so I was at a loss for who to add to my 40mm SYW games , when reading a biography of Frederick the Great I came across Voltaire , who being quite a character seems to fit the bill.

I was sorting through some miss cast figures when I found a damaged artillery officer, (sword missing) I Googled 'Voltaire' to see what he looked like and found this rather quaint illustration. I then sat down with some 'green stuff' and started fiddling about altering the casting . I also decided to give him a servant using one of the gunner figures as suggested by Mark Dudley of http://ilkleyoldschool.blogspot.co.uk/ 

Here we see Hodge discussing the finer points of 'Candide' with the author who awaits painting.

Wargming Cannibalism

Found a big bag of 20mm SCW figures, mainly Irregular but several other manufacturers as well and melted them all down - now I suspect that there are people out there crying shame ! , but lets face it I was never going to use them . I could have sold them on EBay but could not be bothered and I'm not sure how much they would make , if  I was going to do the SCW in the future I would use some of the newer 28mm figures. So they have been reused into -

These will be the mounted element of Scheither's Frei Korp ,they took quite a bit of casting , cavalry molds need extra vents cutting into the molds, but I'm pleased with the results .

I especially like the trumpeter , have got a couple of Hussar molds as well but being newer more rounded types they are proving harder to get perfect castings from them .