New Baccus French Artillery Review

First up sorry about the odd image my camera is in desperate need of replacement and in these shots it shows but given that I can use what I have now or wait till Saturday I have gone for today. Fortunately not all the shots are a bit rubbish. These are of course the new Baccus French Napoleonic Artillery. 

Here we have all of them together to give you an idea of the size differences. As you can see the difference is very easy to spot with the bigger guns really being BIGGER. As every girl will tell you, size does matter, especially when it comes to your cannon's.

Bless him, the 4lb is a tiny gun that is more suited to the earlier period as Battalion guns and as such could be included on the infantry bases without much trouble.

I do have a soft spot for the howitzer, and whilst I did rather like the original this one is just that bit (well a fair bit) better and the one cast piece of all the guns makes it even better.

So onto the 6ld gun and now were talking. This will see a lot of service in many a French army and it's big enough to command respect whilst remaining a lovely detailed model.

Now we have the 8ld gun and again the size increase is obvious when sat next to it's 6lb buddy. Though it's fairly easy to tell the difference with a few Battalions between then.

The 12lb gun though is not a similar jump as it's more breadth of barrel than length but along side each other it's clear. When separated though the 12pr still has a presence of it's own. It looks mean and I love it, which is a good job as I have a number of these on order.

So it's all good right? Well almost and like other reviews before I feel a bit like nip picking but having spent some time thinking about this I am not sure I am in this case.

The biggest issue I have is that the original Baccus guns are larger than even the mighty 12pdr though it looks far less mean. This means for the artillery heavy (yes me) well I have to decide if I want to replace the old guns with new (not sure if Peter will allow the purchase of guns without crews but I think he may have said so ages ago when I was talking about it) this is a bit of a pain as it's yet more painting of guns which is not my favourite past time, though if bought with crews E-Bay will cover the cost I am sure.

The other point is the crews. Yes the new crews are much nicer cast figures and another French upgrade but I liked a few of the poses in the old crews and it's a shame these poses did not make it through to the new batch but if they had you would have difficulty seeing the differences.

Neither reason is a spoiler as such and won't stop me has not stopped me buying the new castings and whilst the older larger guns is a bit of a downer I am glad Peter was brave enough to replace with a better scaled set of guns so I forgive him. As for the other crews, well I still have the old ones to play with.

Summing up, these are a very welcome addition to the range and have come at a good point in the process of replacing the whole French force. Not enough can be made out of the single casting technique, the guns, limbers and caissons will all eventually be single cast items. Just a glance at the guns shows the benefits of a single cast item as they look RIGHT. No wonky wheels or poor joints to be seen. I will go as far as saying it's probably the biggest advance in metal figures in the last twenty years, yes I am serious.

Anyway enough grovelling to Sir Berry as I like to call him ;-) 

Couple of final points, I have received some of the Generals and ADC's which I will get painted up soon. I also have received the correct figures for the Hussars and will get them painted up and on the blog as soon as I can. I still have to finish off the Currassiers sometime soon, oh the trials of a figure painter.