Sikh wars

And as the Sikh wars are still my passion I was very happy to find this photos while searching my archive. I found these figures on a figure fair. As Flats are very popular in Germany I find them very often on figure fairs. For myself, I like figures in all scales and styles as long as they are historical. But for my own collection I am stricktly focused on 1/72.

Please give me some comments if you want to see such photos of flats too or if I should simply focus on 1/72 on this blog.

Maybe Sean from Newline likes the photos and we will see them in "our" scale too very soon:-)))



And here are some great sources for conversion ideas into 1/72. The diorama is titled "Sikh parade in 1835".

Something complete different

Ok this is strange for a 1/72 collector. I am living just 90 minutes away from the battlefield of Blenheim. In 2004 opened a museum in the castle of Höchstädt near by. Some photos I made there I already sent to Ralph's blog.

Beside this big museum there is a small town museum which has a nice flat figure diorama about the battle. With having a lot of figures for the great northern war in 1/72 some of us thought about creating a diorama for this war too.

Ingo promised to send me photos of his Poltava diorama soon, so I will be back in 1/72 next week - I hope...

Wellingtons Sepoys

While searchig the photos for the last post I came over this photos.
Some of you know that I had the idea of an own factory, producing figures of exotic units of which I doubted any manufactor would do them in the future. Well, here I am wrong, GERman did some. But the plastic of GERman is still another problem.

See here photos of my Indian Sepoys, useful from 1780 to 1815. All these figures are available in the four different headgears shown here. Bengal, Madras or Bombay and two versions of Grenadiers.
All in all 8 poses are done now.

These figures are for sell for 80 Eurocent each from me directly. All the profit I make goes into new masters. In the end I hope to be able to offer a complete Sepoy army with all needed poses, maybe the European regiments too and for sure a Mahratta and Mysore  army too.
It depends all on you. For a master I have to pay 130$. So help me buying this stuff to give us - and of course me:-))) - more figures in the future.

the left hand of the firing guy was changed before castings. All this b/w photos were the first try of the sculptor.

And taken from Clive's blog who already got his share:

And here for the guys who already got some but don't know how to paint them some plates from my collection

And if there are still some among you who think that it is not their period, you need some inspiration:-))

Or simply fiction from - in my eyes - one of the best authors of the world

http://bernardcornwellbookgroup.blogspot.com/2010/07/battle-of-assaye.html

Have fun!

Tel El Kebir

Let us stay a little bit with Colonial warfare. Beside increasing the Zulu diorama and working on my French army for Indochina I painted several figures for a Tel El Kebir diorama. This battle has its fascination for me, because it is colonial in one way - but on the other hand the Egyptian army was not this tribal army than others. Modern weapons, uniform etc. made them much more "European" and this is what is interesting for me.  The uniform is easy to paint, so it will make not as much work than for example a 1870 Franco-Prussian war diorama.

See here what I wanted to use as a plan for the diorama.

As for the uniforms see here some plates from my archive:

Figures are available from Waterloo 1815. This set is a mixture of the old 1884 uniform and the later 1890 campaign version. But we don't have many useful poses here.This set has a price wich is still good value for money. As for the latest sets of Waterloo we get less figures from set to set for a higher price. The same policy goes for Caesar and Italeri. Not really funny for a collector...
Ok, back from politics to the fun of the hobby.

We can convert figures like this!








I guess Duncan has something to say to it too:-))  Have a look at his blog and some great postings there http://osborneradloff.blogspot.com/search/label/Egyptian%20and%20Sudanese%20Army%201882%20to1898

Beside plastics there are some metals available from Ral Partha, Scruby and Hinton Hunt. Ral Partha are little bit bigger, more like Zvezda in height, Scruby and Hinton Hunt more on the Airfix-size. The later are more for the nostalgic collector like me too and don't have the standard of todays figures.  Here a photo of a Ral Partha unit (not my collection).

To safe me to convert hundreds of figures I also thought about converting my Turkish Crimean infantry into Egyptians. Remove the coat, sculpting it new and give them gaiters and the right equipment. Beside the loading one, very pose could be useful..

Maybe some of you have other ideas for a conversion. I would be glad to hear them.