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.

Spenkuch French - 35mm Flats

I'd bought this set of Spenkuch French infantry from Berliner Zinnfiguren a couple years back.  As well as pretty much splitting the difference between 30mm & 40mm, they also fall between the two camps of semi-rounds and flats as they're quite flat but retain elements of semi-round style.

My first reaction upon receipt of the figures was disappointment.  Primarily due to even the lowly privates being shod in officer's boots. So they remained in their box until recently when I thought of using them for this possible project for the Italian Wars. Giving them another look, they seemed not so bad as I remembered them, so let's see what can be done about the problem with the high boots.

Yup, green stuff to the rescue.

And these are the test figures I modified first.

The figure with the lowered rifle remained French. The other figure was a test conversion to Piedmontese.  Uniform details have been surprisingly hard to pin down for them but apparently they campaigned in 1859 wearing overcoats even in the summer months.  Thus the conversion wasn't difficult, just a matter of bulking up the kepi into shako form with the green stuff (sorry, the photo of these two figures in pre-painted state came out unacceptably blurry). 

So, I think this now becomes a usable set of figures.

French Infantry of 1845: Old 40mm Flats

 

I'd mentioned in the previous post that this one would cover Spenkuch.  And so I'd intended, only to find the in-progress photo of the castings I'd modified to be unacceptably blurry upon uploading. More about those soon, but in the meantime, here's an interesting small group of antique 40mm flats which I found on the Berliner Zinnfiguren Flohmarkt.

BZ attributed the editor as Ramm of Lüneburg.  This venerable 19th firm seems to have gone under ca. 1904 with the death of Johan Friedrich Heinrich Ramm. While stylistically they seem a bit different than most of the Ramm offerings, there's no reason firm reason to doubt it. 

The section about Ramm on the Zinnfiguren-Bleifiguren site offers this critique: "Alle diese Typen sind ziemlich ungeschickt in der Stellung und zum Teil auch im anatomischen Bau", which Google translates as "All these guys are pretty awkward in the position and to some extent in the anatomical structure."  That nicely sums it up, although I must say these particular castings look good to my eyes.  At a casual glance they appear a bit ungainly and long-waisted, but upon closer examination I think it's due to the long frock coats and quite baggy trousers.

How to paint them ?  One guy had no shako decoration, so why not French infantry ca.1850, he could be a center company figure and then of course we must have voltigeurs and grenadiers to balance it out.  Thanks to Grosser-Generalstab.de the Humbert & Lienhart plates come in handy.

And the painted result:

Not bad. The "eyes right" pose is always a nuisance with flats because painting the faces frontally is harder than the standard profile. I'm afraid I made a mediocre job of the faces here but they're at least tolerable, and if I can copy the figures successfully, I'm sure to pull off at least a few good ones within a battalion.  Other than that, I think they're well-posed and appealing once the paint goes on.  No copyright issues in play so I've reserved the three castings shown above to try making molds of.

Wollner / Sichart: 40mm Bleisoldaten

I hope everyone has emjoyed the holiday season, now winding down towards New Years Day.  For myself, it was great to see the family together again.  I also received something ordered from Berliner Zinnfiguren.  Two sets of 40mm figures: some antique Ramm flat castings (started painting these, more about which in a subsequent post) and the set of (pre-painted !) Wollner Austrian artillery shown here.  It's obvious to anyone following this blog that it's all about painting them myself, but I did think this was a charming set in the old semi-round toy soldier style.

The figures are nominally 40mm but very much on the smallish side of that rather elastic scale.

I also painted the last of the Sichart (except for the bandsmen) Austrian infantry.  I turned back the clock on these to ca. 1860 by cutting off the buttons, converting the tunic to the old double-breasted style and painted on the cross-belts.  Here's an example of one of the figures contrasted with the 1890's style which the figures were intended to be.

The flag is just okay, the raised detail of the Imperial eagle on the casting would have been more worthy of Josef Wagner composing a march "Under the Double Tarantula" as the resemblance to an eagle is approximate at best. I would probably have been better off just filing it off and painting from scratch but it's at least serviceable.

At any rate, this is all I have so any reinforcements will have to be via the mold-making process and I did save one casting for this purpose.  No rush about it though, the figures on parade with their slung rifles are a bit lacking in martial vigor so I think I can do better by the Austrian infantry from some other source.  Nice to have these as a fall-back though.

Next up, Spenkuchs.

Old Heinrichsen French - 28mm Flats

The Risorgimento or Italian wars of 1848-1866 have been of interest to me for several years now, since first reading about these battles of which I had previously known nothing virtually nothing.  I've been looking for flats depicting this era off and on and the pickings seem to be slim when it comes to figures currently in production. However, the antique flats do appear on eBay and the Berliner Zinnfiguren Flea Market from time to time.

That's how I acquired this old set of French infantry.  Actually it took about 3 purchases of smaller groups to scrape together a minimal battalion of 21 foot plus a mounted commander.  As you can see in the first photo, the factory paint has seen better days. As indeed you'd expect given that the figures were probably produced when battles like Solferino were current news.

First of all they are small:

Nor have even the Germans been entirely consistent in scale over the years.  From left to right, old Heinrichsen 28mm & 30mm, Keiler, Rieche Brothers.

 

How do they look when stripped and repainted ?  Not too bad, I think.  Somewhat crude compared to the newer flats but they do appeal.  As you can see, the pose is the same but the men in overcoats are executed in a different style from the guys in tunics.  Judging by the shakos, they predate the Franco-Prussian wars. 2nd Empire experts can help me out here, but I'm guessing ca. 1855-1860 is about right. 

And on the plus side, their simplicity and diminutive size makes them the fairly easy to paint.  I'm painting them five at a time in assembly line fashion and should finish the battalion within three weeks.