One of the reasons of the Opium war

 While searching for some material, I stumbled over Gary Todd's imense collection of photos on Flickr.

The collection helped me a lot to increase my archive on Chinese dress and weapons  in ancient times.

The link opens just one of his many folders, this time it is the museum of Hong Kong history. a great diorama. 

Battle of Tacna 26th May 1880

 It has been a while since my last post.  Korbitz is getting booring, always painting the same figures.

So for having some variety I decided to start with a second project. As I am always after the lesser known subjects, I decided to find some battle to use for all the unpainted ACW figures which are lying around. 

The Pacific war of 1879-1883 between Chile an Peru/Bolivia always interested me. The last push I needed was the excellent book from Helion.

Seeing the Bolivian Cuirassier on the right gives me an option for painting our own Blackwatch French 1870 Cuirassiers:-) 

The book has a complete order of battle and maps, the best I have seen so far. The diorama/landscape is very easy to create - especially or our system of simply pooring sand over the stands. Here a screenshot from Google earth and photos from the museum/monument there.

So Tacna it is. I have already started painting ACW figures with kepi. Here for example some Peruian Cazadores del Desertio. 

These old Airfix with not much details are great for this project. Especially as they have no frock-coat and are useful for both sides.

The Bolivians are a challenge, but one which can be solved. As for the Chilenians I took some help from our new 3D-sculptor. See here some results of our Chilenian infantry which will in short time also hit our shop at Blackwatch miniatures.

Battle of Solferino 1859 - Diorama from the local San Martino museum

 I would suggest with 15mm figures. I took these photos at my visit in 2014. 

Ok, I prefer 1:72, but it is a very nice one - and reminds me, in our range we are missing the Piemotese units.

Hithite Chariots

 I always wanted to work on an early ancient diorama. Siege of Lachish is one idea, but I need hundreds more Assyrians. The other one is the battle of Kadesh.

With the Caeser Hithite chariots I had the problem that this plastic bents too much. My first thought was to cast them in metal. Why I was discussing (ok, drinking beers) with Andy and Jan, the latter simply started drawing on the PC and after 2-3 beers he showed me the result with the comment "Why not Lasertec?"

Hagen miniatures already started producing stuff made with this machine. I am impressed by all this ideas.

So the files already made, I told Jan I would take a whole plate, which in the end are around 50-60 chariots. 

It takes Acryl colors without problem, very easy to paint. The only problem are the axles, they break too easily and I will reinforce them with metal pins. 

Now my Atlantic and Caesar Egyptian Chariot force will have a challenge to deal with:-)