Wednesday, February 02, 2011

British Field Artillery Newsletter from Victrix

The Victrix newsletters are fixed (once again) and can be now downloaded!

This month there is a real gem - British Field Artillery Part1, well maybe I am biased because I like Artillery.

From their announcement:

British Field Artillery Newsletter

British Field Artillery Newsletter is now available as a free download. This newsletter covers the equipment, organisation, and uniforms of the British Field Artillery during Napoleonic times.


Please see our Newsletters page for further details, or better still, subscribe to all future Newsletters!

The January Newsletter is the one on Artillery, a nice four page pdf covering organisation, ordnance, officers, gun crew, ammunition and uniforms. There are some nice color pictures of their models and a few nicely done full color uniform plates, well beyond what you would expect in a 'newsletter'.

In addition there is a special offer where they will throw in one extra sprue for each box of Artillery you buy in February, can't complain about that can you!

Well of course I can..... where is the limber team!!!!!! Yes you have heard me complain at least once a month since last May about this, I wont buy a limber if there aren't any horses or at least a release date for the horses otherwise however much I actually like your pieces you are wasting my money!

In my opinion the color used for the British Equipment is too light:
It should be noted that gun carriages and limbers were treated with pitch tar to protect the wood and this would leech out of the wood and cause discolouring to the paintwork.
As you may recall if you have been following this blog for a while Dr. Summerfield confirmed that the actual paint used at the time also reacted with the gases given of when the gun was discharged and therefore would darken considerable with use in the field. The old Humbrol British Equipment Grey being based on tests with paint made to the original recipe is in my view spot on.

Obviously I haven't bought any of these pieces yet, but from the pictures I have seen the Victrix set looks like possibly the finest ever pieces produced in 28mm. The only issue and it is an issue not a fault is that the we are so used to chunky cast metal wheels these scale wheels look very odd and won't match to anything you have, again I repeat they are right we are just used to something wrong. That's what make the issue with the limber team so damn frustrating, I want to buy these but can't.

Anyway these are the newsletters currently available, note they tend to go AWOL from time to time as the links get broken, keep trying if this happens as eventually they fix them:

Newsletters

Victrix will aim to produce a monthly Newsletter as a downloadable PDF. This is the same Newsletter that is sent out to our subscribers.



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