Wednesday 26 February 2014

Sledge for reatreat from Moscow "1812 - White Death"

As one of the final piece for our participation game at Tactica convention in Hamburg I assembled and painted a sledge. It shall represent a sledge which the Grande Armée seized during their retreat from Moscow in 1812. It’s drawn by a single horse and provides enough space for three or four soldiers or some goods. I decided to put a single French soldier in the sledge who is defending its load against some marauding Cossacks. Luckily he has a second loaded musket at his side…
The sledge model itself is a kit from small but excellent Westfalia Miniatures. Kawe and his fellows offer awesome and unique kits and figures for French, British, Russian and Saxon Napoleonic miniatures as well as some fine vehicle kits. The soldier on the coachman’s seat is a conversion from a Victrix plastic Old Guard grenadier. I removed the epaulettes and changed the had to have him represent a simple soldier from a line infantry regiment. The barrels are actually two halves of a Renedra plastic barrel and the blankets are made of soaked tissues. For painting I used Vallejo model colours as usual and prepared the base with corundum sand, some snow covered grass tufts by Mininatur and some cork bits as rocks. I tried to plough the centre of the base a bit to represent the snow well-trodden by the horse.
As special feature I left the load of the sledge unglued and mounted it on a thin base itself. For the future I’m planning to make some substitute loads: wounded French, seated officers or just goods.
Fortunately at Tactica the sledge performed very well. He was part of the retreat column which played a major roll in the scenario I directed during the convention. I didn't finish looking through all the pictures now but during the next days I'll show you some impressions from this nice event.

15 comments:

  1. Glad the show went well and it looks great

    Ian

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  2. Excellent, very atmospheric!

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  3. Fabulous looking piece; impressive conversion work for the figure in the sled. I'm surprised the kit doesn't come with figures though. Best, Dean

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  4. It looks great and the table at Tactica was superb!

    Christopher

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  5. Greate paint work !

    Most impressive game you have set up ! The home brewed rules sounds interesting.

    Best regards Michael

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  6. Very good details sleigh and horse.
    Same is also winter theme.

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  7. Despite normaly not really beeing drawn to anything napoleonic I have to confess I was pretty amazed by your tables at Tactica. As were the Perrys and Aly Morrison by the look of it.
    Great work on the sledge by the way. I love how you captured this cold feeling.

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  8. One of the highlights of Tactica for me. Impressive table, great miniatures and well presented. Very Inspiring.

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  9. Wonderful looking table. Your sledge came out beautifully as well.

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  10. That is really lovely Stefan, I do like the Westfalia miniatures, they are so unique.

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  11. Really Impressive table and great minis what more could you ask for.

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  12. Hi fellows,

    thanks a lot for your nice comments. I really like the way the sledge came out and I'm glad that you like it.

    Our presentation at Tactica was great. It was really exhausting but great fun anyway. Unfortunately there was not enough time for extensive talk between the games I directed.

    Cheers
    Stefan

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