And the "Real" Portuguese cavalry command

Well, yesterday was my birthday and as I hoped Pieter asked Massimo to complete the Portuguese range.

So here the photos of the gift I got. Good to have such friends:-)

I put them in the shop at once:-)

Portuguese

Our hobbyfriend Bill painted a little army of our Napoleonic Portuguese. He allowed me to take these photos from Bennos forum (link at the right).

A great paintjob! Hopefully very soon I can round up the range with an official cavalry command group. This here are his own conversions!

More French in Egypt - Sappers

I must say this time Frank surprised me. We haven't talked about such figures before and he sent me the result of his work. Good to see that he is after complete units.

Beside the command-figures we already have in the shop, he now added Sapper in Kleber uniform.
As usual here his text in German and English:

Nach den Chasseriau-Tafeln waren Fellmützen bei den Sapeurs, wie auch in einigen Grenadierkompanien, zusammen mit der neuen Uniform nach dem Reglement von Kleber noch in Gebrauch.
Eine Besonderheit bei diesen Bildtafeln ist, dass gerade die typische Axt und das dazugehörige Bandolier bei den Sapeurs auf drei von vier Tafeln fehlt. Und bei der einen, beim Sapeur der 85e Demi-Brigade das Bandolier über die verkehrte Schulter gelegt ist. Diese Besonderheit habe ich bei der dritten Figur von links so modelliert, technisch war das mit dem Bandolier möglich, und da die kleine Patronentasche a la corse, vor den Bauch geschnallt, getragen wurde, scheint das Axtfutteral noch nach dem Reglement des ancien regime gewesen zu sein; noch ohne die kleine auf dem Futteral angebrachte Patronentasche.

According to the plates of Chasseriau, which Yves Martin has published in his book The French Army of the Orient 1798-1801 , bearsrins were still in use among the sappers, as well as in some grenadier companies, along with the new uniform after the Kleber regulations.
A special feature of these panels is that the typical ax and bandolier are missing with the sappers on three out of four plates. And at this one plate, at the sapper of the 85e Demi Brigade, the bandolier is placed over the “wrong” shoulder. I sculpted this peculiarity on the third figure from the left. Technically this was possible with the bandolier.

The small cartridge pouch was strapped to the stomach, a la corse, the ax-case seems to have still been under the regulations of the ancien regime; without the small cartridge pouch attached to the ax-pouch.

The Duelists

Here the photo from a new set Fank sculpted for our mate Jörg (yogi). It will appear in the shop this weekend.  Frank is always good for special sets:-)

and more Ming generals

The never ending story - What Thomas makes, he makes complete!

I already showed photos of Ming Generals on the blog. Now he sent me photos of more of them....

But to be honest - they are very nice figures and to paint them would be a challenge. So I could live with more of them:-)

Battle of Kassala 1894

This year my anual hobbytour will bring me to Rome where I meet a good hobbyfriend whom I only know through mails so far.

The plan is to visit a lot of museums and see his collection. This brought me again to check my Italian colonial figures.

With Massimo working on a lot of subjects on the Sudan campaign and me always searching for the lesser known subjects I thought the Derwishes fighting Ethiopeans, the Belgian Force Public from the Kongo or the Italians would be something different to the usual Egyptian/British army.

The battle of Kassala was such a battle. You can read more about it at Wikipedia.  

I already asked Massimo to sculpt me a set of Italians which is already in the shop. Now I wanted to show you some photos of painted ones.

And just an idea what we could do next - There are so many great figures in other scales....

Last photos from Fürstenfeldbruck

Maybe you recognize from my daily posts that I am in the holidays:-)

To work up my pile of photos to post I show you here the rest of the interesting photos from the model fair. Of course most in 1/72!

Some Steampunk in between. That is a subject that is teasing me too.

 Moderns come more and more in my focus...

And early WW2 too!

Some had only figures on show.

This thing was funny. Scale 1/87 and it worked with dancing figures etc.

Let's come back to interesting vehicles. Of course there were a lot of Tigers, Panthers etc. to see, but I like the special ones.

OK, not special. But I liked it:-)

Comming back to special. The tanks are too late for Operation Sealion, so I am wondering if this has a historical backround? But the idea is good.

Eagle one is one of my favorite Space-ships since I was a small child and saw the series on TV.

This is 1/72 scale too. I thought it interesting because of the Trucks. If you like airplanes, there were hundreds in all scales on display.

And just another photo from a model-fair in northern Germany. My friend Marcus sent his photos over. these two had a special message