Limbering Up

No, this is not a post about Olympic athletes warming up prior to their event but is my solution to a long standing Old School problem.

Many of you will know I have a substantial collection of 30mm Spencer Smith ACW figures. Infantry, cavalry and artillery are all represented in kind drawn from the available figure range offered by Peter Johnstone at http://www.spencersmithminiatures.co.uk/.

There are odd gaps in this range; mounted buglers, guidon bearers, 'empty' horses come to mind but one item eluded my skills with razor saw and superglue namely artillery limbers.

I could not find anything suitable at all to match the semi-round figures so I had to go with plan B.

So here is 3rd Tennessee waiting on 'Plan B' approaching from the rear.

As they draw closer you will see a 4 horse team and limber with towed artillery piece.

Closer inspection will reveal that they are not slim semi-round figures like the Spencer Smith offering but are a little bit chunkier, rounder figures and roughly similar in height.

They are in fact 28mm figures from Irregular Miniatures and once painted in the 'toy soldier' style they don't look too out of place on the 'Old School' battlefield.

http://www.irregularminiatures.co.uk/

A gun and crew is £6.70 and a four horse team and limber is £10.50. I need another seven of these to provide for my existing artillery batteries so I'll have save up a few pennies.

Once the artillery is deployed for firing the Irregular gun is removed from the limber base and a Spencer Smith artillery piece and crew are placed upon the table. The apparant size mismatch is diminished by the short distance between the gun in the firing line and the limber and team in the rear area.

The size mismatch in the artillery pieces is a bit more obvious in this picture but since I never plan to deploy the Irregular gun pieces in a firing position I think I can get away with it. It is a Plan B after all.