As mentioned previously the announcement of the release of Maurice by Sam Mustafa (due about March 2012) has got me inspired to finally get started on my WSS Armies, of which I have purchased several packs of Wargames Factory plastics (in fact I now have 15 Infantry & 7 Cavalry boxes, and am waiting for the hinted at Artillery box that is apparently being considered and will hopefully appear in 2012). Further inspiration is coming from several gamers blogs and such working on these same plastic figures, such as Platoon Fire, an Imagi-Nation WSS project. The photo above is from the Platoon Fire blog’s first Wargames Factory units, the author (Aidan) is constrained for space so is doing small 12 fig Infantry Battalions and 5 fig Cavalry Squadrons/Regiments. And there is more inspiration around too with a nice WF WSS Infantry Battalion at Castles of Tin.
In my case (for Maurice or similar rule sets) I am going to be doing Infantry Battalions of 24-figs, and Cavalry Squadrons/Regiments of 8-figs, as these will be based similar to my Lasalle Napoleonics in units of 4 x 50mm square bases (with 6 foot or 2 mounted per base), and my 22 boxes mentioned above (with a few Front Rank Officers & speciality figures added in) should result in 23 Infantry and 11 Cavalry units – allowing for 2 armies of ~17 units each, excluding any Artillery (Maurice is designed around armies averaging about 11-16 units in total of Infantry, Cavalry and Artillery).
There is a nice look at the WF WSS Cavalry at Castles of Tin (see Part 1 and Part 2 of the post), and currently also a good discussion on TMP highlighting a few minor issues with the WF plastic boxes, these include:
The eyes on the Infantry are a bit weird – personally my first impressions of them aren’t that bad – however as the Cavalry box comes with hordes of spare heads it’s easy enough to substitute heads from the cavalry as desired. Personally I may do a bit of a mix – replacing some of the heads in each unit with those from the Cavalry box just to dilute the big eyes effect if needed…
The necks aren’t quite right in some cases – in that they apparently tend to make the scarf’s ‘stick up’ – so need minor filing to adjust the fit – I have yet to do my first few figures so when I do I will investigate in more detail and hopefully post some comparison photos…
The infantry’s swords are modelled incorrectly and have the hand guards on top rather than underneath – this may not bother you but can easily be fixed – for the one-piece marching figure the suggestion is to cut the hilt off the sword and glue the scabbard tucked right up under the back of the left hand sleeve cuff (which then effectively hides the ‘hilt’). For the multi-pose figures the suggested solution is to replace the sword with one of the many spares from the Cavalry box which are the right way around. Obviously if you are posing your Cavalry figures with swords drawn you won’t need any of the sheathed swords and can use these for your Infantry (and can presumably just use the Infantry sword with the hilt removed for the Cavalry’s empty scabbard – but I have yet to look at this more closely).
Basing the horses for the Cavalry can be a little tricky – they don’t feature integral moulded bases so require the horse’s hooves glued to a separate plastic base supplied in the box – It’s recommended to try and get 3 points of contact minimum – so the rearing or galloping horses will need a pin inserted to connect a third hoof to the base (as they typically have only 2 hooves on the ground) to improve their robustness for wargaming handling…
The Cavalry box includes an open hand arm for mounting a standard-bearer’s flag staff, but no flag staff. I will be using wire flag-staffs supplied with Flag Dude flags for my WSS figures, but if you aren’t then the Warlord Games ECW range includes the suitable fluted-lance style flag-staffs used in the WSS era.
Also apparently some of the Warlord Games ECW Swords and such are suitable as well if additional parts are required for Officers and other figures with open hands (as previously posted I have a large set of Warlord ECW figures awaiting building into an army – so I may pillage a part or too from these for the WSS chaps)…
More Blogs with Wargame Factory WSS Figures:
- Turbil Miniatures
- Lead and Cardboard
- Castles of Tin
- Reinforcements at Platoon Fire (Aidan’s latest WF WSS post)
- Wargames Factory WSS Forum
28mm WSS Figure Manufacturers:
- Wargames Factory
- Front Rank Figurines
- Ebor Miniatures
- Reiver Castings (reportedly match the above for size but not quality)
- Wargames Foundry (may be slightly shorter than the other manufacturers)
All going well in the next week or two I will get the first post(s) up with pics of my efforts assembling the first of my WF chaps…
P.S. Some useful WSS flag information (especially for British & French) can be found at War Flags’ Archive of the Colours (not to be confused with War Flag which also has much useful stuff).
I have also bought a box of infantry and one of the cavalry. Being new to this period, I am not sure of which figure tops and bottoms plus heads (and headgear) can be used for which nationality. It would if someone one rhis site or at WF would post the infantry sprues with national boxes (name in a box) with a line going to the correct figure part on a sprue and identify them so that a newbe could buy x-number of boxes and assemble a French (or whom-ever national) unit. As well as the cavalry box set. Many thanks for thinking about this.
By the way your painting skills are very remarkable.
— Don
Hi Don,
Thanks for the post. Yes the uniforms can seem a bit over-whelming, however in fact they are relatively straightforward. For example almost all Infantry except Grenadiers of nearly all nations wore the Tricorne and had essentially identical equipment (at least from a wargaming figure perspective). The only differences are the style of Grenadier headdress between nations and occasionally regiments.
Cavalry is similar – British and much French and some German Cavalry wore the Tricorne, Most German (incl. Prussian & Austrian) Cavalry wore the Lobster Pot Helmet in various varieties, and the French Dragoons wore their stocking hat (that looks a bit like the Grenadier Hat). One head type of the 4 in the WSS box (the odd one with the fur cap) is useful only for a single French Regiment and nothing else (the “Grenadiers à Cheval de la Maison du Roi” of Blenheim fame) – but I believe it’s not quite 100% accurate.
See the photo from Steve Cady in my Maurice – First Game Impressionspost for French Cavalry and the reference to Steve Cady’s blog post at the end.
🙂
The fur cap was worn by many dragoon regiments in this period
Hi Jim,
As I understand it the WF one however isn’t the common type, but in fact closest to the “Grenadiers à Cheval de la Maison du Roi” who’s cap was fairly unique. In reality the WF model is a kind of hybrid and not any specific type, but best used for the above Regiment. See Steve Cady’s Castles of Tin blog for a similar opinion… 🙂
Cheers,
J.