As part of my 24th Saxon Division, I need two foot artillery batteries as part of the Artillery Brigade von Roth. For the first of these batteries I purchased some very nice Saxon artillery pieces from Calpe – three 6 pdr guns (Code SA1) and one howitzer (Code SA2). I will do a separate review of these guns in the next few weeks.
Although the guns are excellent, Calpe does not currently have any Saxon gun crews or limbers, which presented a problem. My search for a solution led me to Black Hussar Miniatures, who recently bought the figures of Westfalia Miniatures. Black Hussar produce a range of 28mm Saxon figures including artillery pieces, artillery limbers and train horses, artillery officers and artillery crew. In the last few days they also released artillery train drivers (I will be placing an order for these later today). From the pictures on their website, it looked like I had found a solution to my artillery personnel problems.
Ordering process.
The first thing to note is that the company is German and when you go to the website it is in German. However, there is a little button at the top right of the home page that allows you to select English. Even though not everything translates and some of the translations are not perfect, selecting the English language button makes the site easy enough to navigate. I quickly filled my cart with some gun crews, officers and limbers and then went to the checkout. There was a problem with paying through the website which I could not resolve; I don’t know if everyone has this problem or just US shipments or Safari users. To get around the issue, I submitted the order without paying as they suggest – they state that they will not ship the order until they receive payment. I then recorded the amount that I owed and went to paypal and manually sent the amount owed to the paypal address on their payment page. I was a little worried by this process, but it all worked out very well. I have done three orders like this now and each one was received within a couple of weeks.
Review of the figures and the painting of the figures
I was impressed with the Saxon artillery limber and train horses and will review these once I have completed painting them. For now, I will concentrate on reviewing the Saxon Foot Artillery Officers (Code SA017). The pack was 4 Euros for the two figures which seemed a fair price.
The figures all arrived in good condition with minimal flash. I washed the figures and painted them with Vallejo 74.601 grey primer; I use this primer for figures with any significant amount of white or light grey on the uniform and I use the 7 fl oz bottle to save money.
The figures were a joy to paint, even with my modest skills. They have a lot of details clearly defined, are in natural poses and had very open stances which made getting to the details reasonably easy. The figures also fit very well with the Calpe figures in my collection in terms of height and build.
For painting I mainly used Vallejo Model Color paints. I will give the paint numbers below alongside the color description. I did use a few Vallejo Game Color paints, these are indicated with a *
For the jackets I used three greens: 980 Black Green for the base, 970 Deep Green for the main color and 967 Olive Green for the highlights
For the red trim I used three colors: 859 Black Red for the base, 908 Carmine Red for the main color and 957 Flat Red for the highlights
For the white trousers I used: 990 Light Grey followed by a number of thin layers of 72.101* Off White
For the grey trousers I used: 992 Neutral Grey for the base, 991 Dark Grey for the main color and 990 Light Grey for the highlights
The gold was: 72.055* Polished Gold
The face and hands were: 955 Flat Flesh with a very light wash of 73.204* Flesh Wash
I then based the figures on a 50mm x 50mm plywood base from LITKO. I use 50mm x 50mm for my brigade command bases and 100mm x 100mm bases for my divisional command bases. I painted the base brown and then used Woodland Scenics flock (a couple of colors) on the base secured with their scenic cement. I will probably add a few tufts of grass and other details later in the week.
Summary
The ordering process has a few quirks to navigate, but it was not too complicated. The company quickly shipped my figures and they arrived in good condition. I was very happy with the figure quality and they offer an excellent solution to commanding my Saxon Artillery Battery equipped with Calpe guns. My next job is to paint the 16 artillery crew from Black Hussar Miniatures so that my guns can take the field of battle. Once they are painted I will post a review of the gun crews [Foot Artillery Crew 1 (SA011) and Foot Artillery Crew 3 (SA013)].