Wooden Flats - Part 2

In the previous post I shared with you my discovery of wooden flats from Russia.  Now we can look at cavalry and artillery as well as further evolution of the designs to include outlining.

These lancers are quite nicely animated.  However, the targeted scale of 45mm to the eyes was overshot as the calculation for the cavalry didn't take into account that a charging rider wouldn't be standing straight in the saddle.  The figures are closer to 1/35 and wouldn't look out of place in a 54mm army.  So I just test painted a figure as the 17th Lancers.

As with the French infantry, the figures are blanks and thus also where and how to paint the details is up to the painter.  In this case I chose to rotate the rider's torso somewhat.

For the next order, I asked Yevgeny if he could add plumes to the lancers for a bit more of a Napoleonic look. He obliged by not only doing that but adding outlines to the figures as well as posing them differently.  And we downsized everything to 42mm in order to match up better with the Nowikoff home casts.

  

The rider has been reduced in size but to my eyes the horse came out a bit elongated. Or perhaps it's the shabraque, or both ?   Regardless, it's still a vigorously posed and pleasing figure.  The outlines definitely simplified the painting (or would have had I not chosen the gaudy Red Lancers) although how much or little detail to give the horse is still up to the painter.

And lastly, Russian styled artillery for the Kingdom of Novgorod.

I quite like the design of this cannon as the three part assembly of gun barrel and wheels adds a surprisingly good illusion of depth relative to a completely flat gun.

Hope you enjoyed viewing these.  The painting has been challenging but quite rewarding.

Semi-Flat Landsknechts - 40mm

Finished painting the first group of  Italian Wars era landsknechts.  The castings are Russian, made by the Three Heroes company.  I bought three sets of 8 each from Soldatikov.net.  One "Swiss" one "Mercenary" with the third being Spaniards.  Prices were quite fair,  ~ 100 rubles a figure works out to $1.50 US, not bad at all for a hefty hunk of metal.  Shipping charges were also reasonable and proprietor Maxim Latsin, very fluent in English, was a pleasure to deal with.  There are also "extra" sets of 4 figures each for these groups, so 36 in all, but none of the latter were in stock.

So let's take a closer look.  Some of the the castings are a little on the rough side, you might even call them crude.

Nominally 40mm scale, they're a bit larger than true 40mm figures.  And you'll notice some size difference in the two figures below, but within the realm of normal human variation I'd say.

Stylistically they match up pretty well with Meisterzinn.  Unfortunately,  I have no direct comparison shots for you.  My sister-in-law was asking for some painted figures and I gave her my painted Meisterzinns. I feel rather like the guy in the insurance commercial who throws his wallet into New York harbor to emphasize a point about wasting money and then says to himself, "Wish I hadn't done that".  But the mold image below at least gives an idea.

How flat are they ?  Pretty darned flat.

"Sire, the enemy advance and we can't hit them !"

And a few more shots of the completed figures.  I painted a mixture of the Swiss and mercenary groups, as unless you take into account the rather high ratio of halbardiers, there's nothing particularly Swiss about any of these. 

Too bad there's no cavalry.  Three Heroes also produced some 30 Years War cavalry in a similar style, so perhaps something could be done there, although the visual gap of 100 years in military evolution would be a little jarring.  And I'm not entirely sure the figures are currently in production although it would be easy enough to find out.

To sum up, I'm pretty pleased with them.  I think anyone wanting to game the early 1500's in 40mm who has been relying primarily on casting and modifying Meisterzinn figures would find these a useful option to pad the ranks of infantry with more variety.

Nowikoff Russian Infantry - 42mm Home Castings

Here we have some examples of the Nowikoff home casting figures. Similar to the Createc Napoleonics ?  Yes, identical in scale and style.  I can find almost nothing about these on the internet although likely there's a connection to sculptor Anatoli Nowikoff.  I welcome comments from any collector who knows more about the rather mysterious Nowikoff line of molds.

So far the only dealer I've been able to find is Berliner Zinnfiguren and although they've discounted the molds somewhat less than the list price for me, no question that at their prices these molds are expensive.  Of course I can always rationalize, there's some economy of scale as - the more you cast the cheaper they get, at least relatively speaking.

No matter, let's take a look.  This blurry photo gives the general idea. The material is somewhat harder than the soft rubbery Createc molds but the casting design is the same, with a simple straight pour into the shako plume and bayonet.  For some reason I haven't been able to get many full casts before the results tail off.  The weakness is incomplete casting to the middle of the musket, as you can see I've cut another channel there and perhaps I'll widen it.  Some experimentation with metal temperature may also yield improved results.

As you might expect, they're thin. Fine by me as it saves lead.  I think at this point it's pretty clear that for better or worse, I'm wed to the flat and semi-flat figure styles.

And as painted.  I do like the Russian uniforms ca. 1812, quite appealing.

I've ordered one more of the marching infantryman pose to speed up the casting process.  I plan to use these for the early 1800's imagi-nations project.  I'm going with historical Napoleonic uniforms to add resale value (when the day comes) but the flags will be imaginary. Next up, the results of my best deal ever on eBay.