Hello everyone, I'm here today with some news and some photos of Franco-Prussian figures I converted and painted a little earlier this year. As ever you can click on the pictures to get a proper look.
The Other Partizan 2024
I attended the Autumn Partizan show yesterday, and what a good day out it was. It was great to catch up with so many old friends and nice to see my work forming parts of one or two fine demo games. I'd particularly like to mention a wargamer called John Carpenter who came up to me to say nice things about the blog, as someone who views it keenly but never comments(!) Great to meet you John, and please feel free to make contact if there's anything I can be of help with. The regular comments from some visitors are very much appreciated and help reassure me that all this is actually reaching the outside world, but from the figures Google tell me, there are a lot more who don't say anything but do come back more or less. Between on and two hundred as far as I can tell. So hello to you all, don't be shy to comment on posts, but you could also join those who email me (address in profile).
At any rate this was a vintage Partizan show for demo games. I usually scour the trade stands before getting to the games, but this time made a beeline for the actual wargames. No idea who won the little prize they give out, but the top game for me was The SYW presentation from David Imrie, Simon Chick and others loosely calling themselves the Bodkins. Figures and terrain were crisp and bright rather than dull or gaudy, all handsomely set off by a cloth mat in perfectly verdant shades of green. It's all shown here, and David explains how he did the cloth (1) Facebook I will be looking into this for my own setup, perhaps instead of the faux-fur arrangement I have long contemplated.
Other fine demos were the Marlburian game by Simon Millar, a huge 30 Years War Battle, splendid WWII efforts, quite a showing of paper figures and a British landing in Egypt 1800 by the Perrys. Talking of which:
Perrys Franco-Prussian Bulletin
You heard it first on Hand Built History!😀 You may remember I was previously on about making masters of Bavarian artillery pieces. To move arrangements forward I pinned down Michael Perry for a proper chat. The first news is that the plastic Bavarian infantry were planned to come out by Christmas as I thought, but now it's more likely to be January. Most of the remaining work is on the box and instruction leaflet, where Stefan Huber (of Bavaria Miniatures) is providing generous help.
Some metal packs are in hand and I will be getting masters for the guns into Michael's hands by the end of this year. What guns the Bavarians used in 1870 has long been a bit of a mystery, but my research has got to the bottom of it. It turns out their 4-pounders were the Krupp gun, but on a locally-made carriage. All the corps-level foot artillery was 6-pounders, but each of the two Bavarian army corps used a different model. The I Corps had Krupp 6-pounder pieces on locally-made carriages, where the II Corps had Bavarian-made pieces. These were rifled breech-loaders but, unusually, cast in bronze rather than steel. The upshot is that there were three different guns but all on pretty much the same Bavarian Model 1866 carriage. hence I will be making just one carriage and the bronze 6-pounder barrel, whilst only needing to adapt the existing Prussian barrels for the other two types. You should get a choice of all three barrels in the pack and theoretically Michael could box off the Bavarian artillery with just a single set, although he is inclined to make a couple of crews to give some variety.
He has also completed sculpting a number of metal packs to fill some of the gaps in the FPW French. Apparently there are Gardes Mobiles, Lancers and Cuirassiers, with a start having also been made on Zouaves. I'm not sure when these will be moulded and released, but presumably in the next few months.
You may be aware that Michael hasn't been in altogether good health for some years now, which has had an impact in terms of how slowly the FPW range has come out. I am pleased to say that he is now anticipating a routine operation in a couple of weeks time, which after some physio will see him fighting fit again. He is in good spirits and looking forward to getting this done.
Anyway on to the pretext for all these ramblings. These are heavily-converted French staff figures and some artillery I completed earlier in the year.