Thursday, March 28, 2013

High Martians

Before I post the AAR from our "France Needs Liftwood" game from Cold Wars, I decided to post pictures of my finished High Martians.



The set above were finished at the end of February of this year, and I'm well pleased with the result.  It might be hard to make out, but the "king" Martian has a bit of a French Tricolor adorning his mace of office.




The next picture shows miniatures I finished back around 1990-ish.  My colour-sense seems to have remained unchanged, but the final effect is "muddier" than my more recent work. Nice to know I've improved a bit over the years.

The gap in painting timelines was remedied by Pat G.'s excellent High Martian rules write-up for Soldier's Companion.  Prior to this, we'd never used high Martians in flight for combat.  For our Cold Wars  game, we adopted Pat's rules "whole cloth", and were well-pleased with the result.

- finis -

Thursday, March 21, 2013

French LaHitolle 95mm Rifled Breechloader

Here's another artillery piece the French introduced after La Catastrophe of 1871 - the Lahitolle 95mm Breechloader.  Like the deBange, these were used well into the Great War and beyond, with many placed on the Maginot line, facing Germany in WWII.


Wikipedia


From what I've read, the French brought a pair of these into action against the Moroccan oasis-town of Figuig in 1903 and after a few hour's bombardment, in which several hundred inhabitants were killed, the town surrendered.

This cannon was superceded in 1877 with the introduction of the deBange, and represents the perfect obsolescent weaponry that might end up in the armory of La Coloniale. It's interesting to note that the model pictured was modernised in 1888.


Wikipedia

Old Glory 25mm Cruesot
No manufacturer makes a 25/28mm copy.  I intend to use either Old Glory's Creusot gun from their Boer War line and try to build up the stepped barrel, or else the Egyptian Krupp gun from their Sudan range.
Old Glory 25mm Krupp

For Soldier's Companion, I'm tempted to rate this as a low-powered 12-pdr breechloader:

Weight: Medium  Pen: 1/1  DV: 1   RoF:1  Crew: 4   Range: 3/6
 
- finis