Tuesday 7 February 2017

AWI: TRAIN!


After a short break while prospecting for contracts and while prepping the next units of Continentals, I spied a small plain box on top of some other boxes and remembered the artillery I'd purchased years ago: it almost screamed 'next project' to me and I caved.

Having read the PSR reviews of IMEX's American and British AWI artillery sets, I decided that I wouldn't use the guns because of their small size and likely inaccuracy - historical that is. I went looking for 20mm AWI or SYW guns on the Interweb and lo and behold, found Lancer Miniatures SYW 20mm range.

British Train: Lancer Miniatures 12pdrs, 6pdrs, and battalion guns (3pdrs).

Mindful of the BP: Rebellion! supplement commentary, regarding the need for only small numbers of artillery necessary for the period, I soundly ignored it and bought twelve British guns of varying size - to be used by the Brits and the Americans.


A veritable tiny artillery park began forming on my coffee table.

Mindful also of the raft of metals that have gone before, I sat down in front of the TV thinking I'd have hours of filing and prepping to do. But Lancer Miniatures, you provided me with some of the best cast and cleaned metal figures I have ever received - including Games Workshop. All's the preparation took was superglue and whisky. Big thumbs up to Lancer.

Really like the detail on these guns and went for a mid-battle/dirty look to them.

Then as I looked at the boxes of plastic artillery I decided to have a peek and see how they compared to Lancer's stuff. Half an hour later I'd prepped the three 3 pounders from Revell Set 02579 Austrian Artillery and the four 'battalion' sized guns from the IMEX Set 554 American Artillery for use in the American camp. Comparing them to the accurate metals, they look more like 4-6 pounders and 3 pounders respectively.

Then I got stuck having bitten off too much to chew and while trying to find another contract, and the minis just sat on the table for a few weeks, the undertaking getting larger and larger in my head until I decided to concentrate on writing some sci fi rules as a mode of further procrastination.

The veritable tiny artillery park got bogged down in procrastination - why did I undercoat them all Olive Drab?

For the paint schemes there was nothing overly clever about them. I stuck to British light grey and American (barn) red, iron for fastenings and brass for barrels. A mix of dry brushing for the wood and washes around the iron and brass work.

American Train: Plastic fantastics from Revell and IMEX, plus Lancer 12pdrs nicked from the British lines.

At a push each side can be fielded with four battalion guns, three or four 6 pdrs, and two 12 pdrs - far too many for a balanced game of BP that doesn't involve an artillery park or fort in the scenario.

Still going for the mid-battle/dirty look, this paint scheme was harder than it looked.

Now I've just got to paint up some crews.


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