30 Years War - Part 2: Heinrichsen 40mm Flats

Finished a few more figures. As indicated in the preceding post, these are antique designs, first issued by Ernst Heinrichsen in 1883.  As usual, painted in acrylics.

One challenging aspect of designing/engraving flats is making the figure to appear completely convincing from both sides. Nice as these figures are, they missed the mark a bit with this pikeman, from the back side his smallish helmet riding high on his head like a steel derby.  The pike is short as well but probably done to facilitate the casting process.  I do like the classic "ready to receive cavalry" pose.

Lancers were on the way out by the early 17th Century but not just yet.

Heinrichsen Thirty Years War - Old 40mm Flats

Here's an interesting set of classic Heinrichsen 40mm flats. # 4063 - Der 30-jährige Krieg.  They're somewhat on the smallish side as 40mm go, but usefully bigger than 30mm for painting purposes.  These 33 figures were originally issued in 1883, re-issued in 1989.  There's a complimentary set Wallensteins Lager which preceded it in 1882, executed in the same style.  

The Wallenstein's Camp has some poses of armed soldiers on guard duty and so on, but the set focuses more on scenes of camp life, cooking, eating and of course drinking & carousing. The 30 Years War set contains more fighting poses, about evenly divided between horse & foot. Sadly, the great artillery piece was no longer available as the mold broke, but I have the rest of the castings, plus some badly battered originals which I got cheaply on German eBay.  Of the mounted figures, this set doesn't lack for generals, indeed there are more chiefs than Indians: Gustavus Adolphus, Bernhard von Weimar, Baner, Wallenstein, Tilly, Maximilian of Bavaria, Piccolomini, Pappenheim and the Croat leader Isolani.  All figures are numbered with an identification key.

Without further preamble, let's take a look at a couple sample castings. These represent Bernhard von Weimar and Tilly.

The death of Gustavus Adolphus at Lützen. These are original factory paint jobs.

And the Imperialist field marshal Gottfried Heinrich Graf zu Pappenheim.  I painted in acrylics as usual.

Lastly, a Merry Christmas to all ! 

Peipp Remounts

This is for Brian, Uncle Toby of Vauban & Shandy and others who are embarked upon or contemplating an 18th Century toy soldier project in 54mm. Just a few quick shots here related to the previous post about using Peipp 45mm with 54mm horses. Here's Piepp's 45mm cavalry trooper mounted on the original horse.

And remounted on a 1/32 HaT Roman Cavalry horse. He fits very nicely although no doubt a Napoleonic horse would be more suitable so far as the saddle and accoutrements go.

Would the Peipps sell rider castings without their horses ?  Based on my experience and how the timing of the order processing worked out,  I suspect that Helmut casts on demand, making it seem likely that they would. In any case, wouldn't hurt to ask.

Yes, I'm still painting. Just resumed that is, after another week in New York City tending to cleaning up the estate of my poor deceased sister.  Thankfully New York State has a simplified small estate probate process, there's more to do but I can at least wrap things up without incurring an even worse hit by adding lawyer's fees to the mix. Well, enough of that.  Next up, antique 30 Years War flats.  I think you're going to like these.

Peipp WSS General - 45mm

Here's a Peipp figure which I finally got around to painting last week. He is from Peipp Miniaturen Dresden, part of the 45mm range, Prinz Eugen und seine Zeit - 1703.  This is figure # PE4: General Charles Churchill, although I didn't paint him as such.  Painted in acrylics as usual.

 

 

As I've commented on the Vauban & Shandy blog and elsewhere, I think these figures can be used with 54mm 18th Century projects, strange as that may sound when you consider the "45mm" tag.  Let's see how it looks posed with some HaT 7YW Prussians:

 

 

Not too badly mismatched. I hastily shimmed the base with a piece of 3/16" balsa, but 1/8" or a few millimeters should do it. The general himself is quite large, as are all the Peipp riders. It's the horses which are the problem for upscaling purposes, being noticeably small for their riders. But they're stocky, hence a little thickness added to the base gives the overall illusion of a larger figure.  To my eyes, the biggest mismatch in this photo is our hero's antiquated fashion sense.  But what's a few decades in the world of toy soldiers ?

More Flats

Glorious Empires - 54mm

Something of a mixed bag in this post, finishing up odds and ends in the painting queue. First, Fechner 30mm Renaissance cavalry.  Most of them have shown up in one post or another, but now combined.  Good engravings but not great ones.  To my eyes the lancer is the weakest of the bunch with the strange helmet and the horse's smallish hindquarters.  Nicely animated though.

The TYW musketeer is from Glorious Empires. I liked the look of these and bought of few samples from The Little Tin Soldier. These are 54mm, designs originally 30mm and scaled up.  I have no real aspirations of switching to flats in this larger scale but was curious to see if I could pull off a passable paint job, as the shading comes in for closer scrutiny than what you can get away with in 30mm.  He came out well enough I think and I somewhat regret choosing the faceless guy here for the test paint as the personality is definitely lacking.

Upcoming posts, I've finished a Peipp 45mm general which has been primer coated and ready to go for many months. Just waiting to apply the varnish.  The real exciting thing for me is a set of classic old Heinrichsen Thirty Years War set in 40mm.  These designs date to 1883 !  They arrived from Nürnberg a few days ago and I've started painting some. I really look forward to sharing these with you, masterful designs for the most part with a number of mounted generals and leaders of the TYW.