Turkish Crimean infantry

And because I am working always on several projects at the same time, here are some more photos of Turkish Crimean infantry masters. The figures will be available in two weeks.

Tonkin or Sino-French war 1883-85

Last week I was busy sorting in all the uniform-plates I have collected about French colonial troops 1880-1910. As a lot of them were Tirallieurs Tonkinoese and Infanterie coloniale I wanted to know more about this subject. In French of course there is a lot of stuff available. Sadly just a little bit in English or German. An exeption here is Foundry books Indochina. Beside this I found this link which was very useful

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-French_War

Take a look at all the closer descriptions of battles which you find at the end of the main text.

So what do we need for such a colonial army?

Plastics:

French infanterie coloniale - Esci and ACTA British infantry 1879 as well as Redbox French marine infantry Boxer Rebellion

French Foreign Legion - same figures

French Zuaves and Turkos - Redbox French infantry and every available Zouave in Fez or with a headconversion to a tropical helmet.

Artillerie coloniale - HAT British colonial artillery

Tirallieurs Anamite, Tonkinoise - well, none...:-(

Fusilier marines - Redbox Boxer Range

Metals:

Scruby - has everything, even the Tonkinoise:-))
Many manufactors who does British Zulu-war figures (Jacklex, Ral Partha, Qualiticast, Minifigs (old ones) etc.


Vietnamese - no chance, no manufactor so far
Black flag - maybe some Boxers
Chinese regulars - again maybe some Boxers


In the western world a forgotten colonial campaign (ok, not in France), this is a big teaser for me. So I want to try to create some armies in the near future. You have already see my bad try on a Tirallieur. Hopefully the next figures will be better.

If you have any tips how to convert more figures for this war, please make a comment for which I want to thank in advance.

But for now, just a few teasers.

Hastings- how we did it

In this last post of Hastings I want to show you again, how we do this dioramas. You may have seen it at the Aspern diorama too, but better twice than none.

Seeing the figures glued with white glue on plastic plates, sometimes wood. Some action-scenes are already glued and have just to put on the plates. Charging horsemen are glued in pairs and groups and put on the diorama to have a irregular line. Better than glueing them on a big plate. The shieldwall, or better to say the lines of figures on bigger plates. Sadly when we did this in 2006 there were no Strelets Saxon shieldwall available, so we have no real shieldwall with locked shields here. Maybe next time we will form the first rank of the Saxons with this Strelets set. BTW, there will always be a second time to have the diorama on display from time to time. HAstings we had on a special exhibition in a museum in France at Feu from where the Normans started.



,


The most important thing - having something to eat, drinks and a lot of fun.
Here Ingo and Peter (not good to see) tring to make the landscape right that the figures have a good stand. In the meantime Schmitty has to clear up:-)




Here from the other side. We have tables on which we lay wooden boards. On this we put Styropor to form the hills etc. and over this cames our special cloth. On the cloth we have the stands with the figures and then our special mix of grass over it.

To secure the cloth on the boards is long work...



Than painting the missing figures for units already complete up to deep into the night. Here I am painting some more Norman archers etc. For a hobby-tour I am in a good condition, you should see me after five days :-))



My friend John from the UK was with us, enjoying our anual fairs. John I hope you are fine and will come over in October for the next one!

In the meantime we are having fun as the diorama is ready, the show started, all the sellers opened their stands and I spent all the money I had...




Here see the guys who worked on this diorama. From left to right standing:

Peter Herfen Germany
Kai Fuhrmann Germany
Uwe Wild Germany
Peter Johannson Sweden
Andreas Brüggemann Germany
Thomas Schmitt Germany

Kneeling:

Iványi Gábor Hungary
Zsolt Schäfer Hungary
Krisztian Takacs Hungary
Ingo Gohlke Germany

It is always fun to make such a work together!!

HAstings

When the Bretons on the left flank of the Normans broke, a part of the Saxons charged after them.
Not good as the Norman cavalry took them in the flank and completely anihilated them...

This happened three times, first accidently, later planned by the Normans. As we had not enough casualty figures, we show here the first incident.







The figures are mostly Strelets and Tumbling Dice with some old Revell and conversions from other figures.

I think this is the time to thank both Strelets and Tumbling Dice, as they both sponsered the dioorama in their way. Strelets sent some sprues for free and Tumbling Dice sold me six armies for the half price. Really a great help!

Hastings - The shieldwall

Krisztian and his camera. I wish we would have him at all our exhibitions...






Ok, the rest are mine now...




Some times I am asking myself why we don't put black sprayed figures into the ranks, because you can't recognise the single ones from two meters away. But I guess it is because I don't want to have complete painted ones for myself...




Beside the available plastics from Emhar, Revell and Strelets we used all the metals we were able to lay our hands on. For example I bought several armies from Tumbling Dice, which work really great with the plastics.

Fredericksburg the Workshop

Last weekend we had a meeting in Andys home - at the end of the world...
After a seven-hours-drive I was finally there and the others already waited for me. We had three great days, working on the diorama, helping with tips, talking nonsense, having barbeque and beer and of course watched "Gods and Generals" as an inspiration.

See here the process of the work.

First of all the historical research. Reading a lot of books, looking for maps etc.





Especially for the diorama Andy sculpted us several union infantry in greatcoats advancing and a lot of Confederate artillerymen. Really great stuff and these figures are of course for sell. So if you want to help us refund our costs a little bit, you are invited to buy these figures from Andy or contact me.

Ok, here we started painting them





Andy at the rare moments we he stoped serving us beer and painted himself:-)




Ingo (right) and Rainer already discussion the project for 2012 which will be the Saxon attack on the Russians at Borodino 1812.




Peter as our ACW specialist showing a lot of books and maps to Ingo who took over the responsibility for Fredericksburg




After explaining Peter had to work too!



while Andy took the chance to read the books:-)))



Peter and Ingo glueing the units in the correct formations on our stands (no manufactor made good officers in greatcoat....)




And here the first photos of some complete units.








And here see again Ingo's work with houses he did. I am always speechless when I see what he can do.





Take a look at Andy's homepage here where you can see all the stuff he did for Fredericksburg. While we were there his father sent new masters on an ACW field-fork an I have already seen several wagons. We thought about what kind of wagon we miss and decided that a water-wagon would be useful.

If you are interested in this stuff contact Andy and tell him you know me or my blog. Or simply send me a mail under wild-heindl@t-online.de.

2006 - 940 years battle of Hastings

Just a few teasers:-) Tomorrow we will have our anual workshop weekend to complete the diorama. So this weekend it is Fredericksburg pure.... I will post photos next week.

After this I will continue with Hastings from 2006.

cheers
Uwe

French in Indochina

Yesterday I painted some Zulus to reinforce my armies. Esci has this standing shooting guy with the Martini Henry and a captured British coat.

Well, around 30% of the Zulus had firearms. But these were mostly old muzzle-loading rifles and muskets and maybe a few modern ones. After Isandlwhana and Intombe River as well as Hlobane they had captured British stuff too. But if you want to create the battle of Isandlwhana this figure is useless.

So I thought what to do and as I am interested in lesser known colonial wars I thought it could be an idea to try a conversion into a French Tirallieur Anamite or Tonkinoise.

here is the try. Well, could be much better and I hate the Macro of my digicam....







And to show how they really had to look like: