Limbering Up

I like the looks of limbers from the Horse and Musket eras... I really do. And yet, they seldom appear on my tabletop. There are a number of reasons for this. First, they take up a lot of space on the tabletop. In some ways, that is an advantage as it better reflects the actual footprint of artillery units in the field (and perhaps even more so, on the march). They also take up quite a bit of space in storage, which has no advantages at all that I can think of!  They are also rather expensive to buy, and something I don't enjoy painting very much, especially the draft horses to pull them. Providing a 1:1 supply of Limbers to artillery units becomes especially demanding of painting time, space, and money as one's collection grows. Some wargamers really especially seem to enjoy collecting these pieces (I'm thinking of you in particular, Joe!).

   In any event, as I was completing my new Wagons (se the previous post) and looking for my od wheeled transport, I re discovered some French Napoleonic limber units that I had largely forgotten about.

A couple of my very old modified Limber units after a stay in Rehab, and with basing upgraded

Here's the rather unloved starting material. Even these pics are a partial upgrade, as I have just painted the edges of their artist's matting board bases a dull green, to eliminate the white edges that show up much more in pictures than they do in actual use. 

 IIRC these are "old" (Pre 1972) Minifigs. To decrease the cost and painting, I had taken the four horse teams and broke them up to form 2 horse teams (Not correct, no gun teams used less than 4 horses, but I think they look fine to me aesthetically), and used some French Chasseur a Cheval castings as limber riders (never mind the lack of proper horse tack on them!). A single one of the set is "new" Minifigs, with the correct horse and rider but still reduced to a pair of horses for the team. Many are just a pair of courses, with plans to add separate limbers to them. However, I could never find any manufacturer that sells limbers without the teams (of 4 or even 6 horses. I have toyed with the idea of scratch building some limbers for them, but always wind up stymied by the wheels. So these limbers have lugubriously languished in limbo for long decades.

As the painting was pretty basic, dating back to my early years in the hobby, I gave them a coat of acrylic varnish followed by a heavy application of acrylic "magic Wash", followed by some touch up of some of the straps, etc, and black lining of some of the white horse tack, followed by an overcoat of acrylic spray varnish. Certainly an improvement over the original paint jobs!

  I then flocked the bases in a fashion similar to that which I had just used on my new wagons - very fine "earth" flock down the center, and fine "soil" flock for the ruts. 

For the edges of the "roads", this time I used my beloved "Alpine Meadow" flocking mix instead of the tufts and grass blend flock that I used on the wagons, mostly because it was cheaper and faster. 

So, here's the lot of the refurbished Limber units - all eight of them. After I took this picture I realized that I hadn't painted the wheel rims brown on any of the limbers, and I liked the look on the sole limber where I had done so years ago, so I went back and painted the remaining rims.

Two of the "limber" units still lack actual Limbers, although your eye misses that pretty easily.  I still like the reduced horse team look... and the reduction in horses to buy and paint! As the "new" Minifigs limber's base was already flocked, I didn't update it; I may rethink that. That's my effort at "Rehabilitating the Past" as Jake calls it on his own blog. 

I will have to see what I can do about finding or scratch building a couple more limbers to complete the unhitched teams. I also have a brand new, unpainted  (4-horse) Limber form Sash and Saber that could be added to these. Regardless, "Wheels" seems to be the theme for the Month of January here on the blog... and I am not nearly finished with it yet!