All this and War Wagons Too

I've put the finishing touches to my Hussites after their run out last week, so here's my photo record of them.

Here's the five core travelling circus of the War Wagons (WWg). They now have the flags that the Hussites used to mark the end of their lines/columns. The flags are double sided, which must have been confusing when the wind changed direction. They're mounted on little blooks of mdf so they can be switched between carts to be in the right places. Carts are Museum Miniatures, crew are Essex.

Next we have the halberdiers and flailmen, which are Solid Blade in DBA speak. The figures are Essex. I like the shields on the flailmen (bottom picture) but the halberdiers are better figures overall.

Most of the cavalry arm, such as it is, are these two. On the right is the compulsory mounted crossbows (LH) which are nice little figures. The 3Kn are optional Polish knights. Again all these are Essex.

If five War Wagons weren't enough you can have an artillery piece on a wagon too. I indicated in an earlier post that this caused me some problems. With the length of the axles I found that I couldn't fit the sliding doors as there wasn't enough room 'twixt wheel and cart base. That meant I had to cut down the sloping roof support, which I did with my knock-off ALDI Dremel cutting wheel. Then the gun wouldn't fit sensibly as it was on wheels. I therefore inserted an inner wall between the sliding doors, and mounted it on that. I then added a split trail and curved trajectory adjustment device you can see in the right hand picture. That left enough room to wedge in the two crew, once I'd cut off extraneous equipment, like the ramrod. My guess would be this needs to be a breach loader in any event. The wagon is Museum, gun and crew Essex.

You get three options for the General. Top left is a 3Kn, top right a 4Bd and bottom front and back pictures of a War Wagon. I painted it a different colour because...well, I just felt like it. And it makes it stand out. Wagon is Museum, figures all Essex.

I've trailed my thoughts on some of this - notably the wagons - on earlier posts. Overall I'm pleased with the look, which is close to how it looked in my head when I started out. I'm quite taken with the wagons being off set, although there's no evidence for that, and scant for the painted roofs. I think the grey wagon has come out the best, and if I had my time again I'd probably have done all of them like that. I'd have preferred more crew in the wagons, although I have to chop the bases down to make them fit, and the hand gunners now don't have the sticky out bit of their feet. I have no idea if the Museum crews fit better. Theoretically I could add more at a future date, but I know inside that's never going to happen.

Having got that one out of my system I can get back to painting some more Ottoman cavalry. Because you can never have too much of that.