Small Scale Comparison 3: Artillery and Command

A quick run through of the final part of my look at 2/3/4mm minis, namely the artillery, although in typically idiotic fashion, I forgot to purchase any of the actual guns available from Tumbling Dice in ostensibly 1/600th scale, (British 18pdr, German 77s and Russian 76s are available....) so this is more a look at well.....the limbers and draught horses, than the hardware, as it were.

In the photo above, you can see part of Tumbling D's ISL918, WWI Artillery Limber and Crew; each of the three limbers in the pack is matched by a set of three horses as above, and a further three being ridden by gunners, as below:

Pretty nice, really, the rider's shakos put me in mind of High Victorian, perhaps Crimean era gunners, definitely RHA, I think!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11384742@N06/4115303394/

Peter Pig, range seven, and Irregular, on the other hand, have the cast all-in-one-on-a-base approach, as we can see in the next photo:

(Peter P's Pack 10, 12pdr guns and limbers alongside Irreg's split trail gun from BG6)

I must say that despite it's size, the Irregular gun is excellent, with even some gunnery paraphernalia such as powder barrels, rammers etc visible alongside the gunners themselves:

The Peter P sculpt is rather nice with the gun just unlimbered and being readied for action, unusually for a wargaming piece, perhaps, we see the preparation, with a chap clearing the muzzle - you certainly wouldn't want to be firing with the horse and limbers in such close proximity!

Overall, though, a pretty nice mini, which I think would paint up well, a line of these would give a good sense of a 'battery' on the tabletop, rather than the usual view of the guns themselves in isolation, although of course this wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea, and doesn't have the flexibility of being able to pose the models separately, at your whim, on a base.

A comparison shot of all three types and sizes, then, with perhaps the better choice of Irregular's 2mm BG26, 'limber towing gun' for size:

Finally, a quick and dirty photo of the command stand available from Peter Pig, namely pack 42, which has a nice group of mounted and dismounted men in a huddle, against the classic RBG24 from Irregular:

The huddled effect of the larger group is perhaps somewhat to its detriment, making it hard to differentiate each figure, so this is a bit disappointing given the opportunities for better clarity in a bigger mini, but then as I've said before, these 3 and 4mm lines were never the main, major focus of the two other manufacturers in the first place, so you can't expect too much.

I think that pretty much sums up the differences between the three sizes:

Peter P's Range 7, is a little bit below par, given the dimensions of the castings when compared to their Irregular counterparts, and whilst Tumbling D's efforts definitely punch above their weight if you put them alongside the 6mm of, for instance, Heroics and Ros, they are rather static and limited in range and pose.

I suppose what I am trying to get at is that the ostensible 3 and 4mm minis suffer from falling in between the better balanced and resourced ranges of 2 or 6mm, so probably wouldn't set the world on fire if used in isolation; alongside the range of 'planes and ships from Peter P or Tumbling D that they were designed for: just fine, but not real contenders on their own.

Will either set of minis find their way onto my tabletop? I have a certain hankering after a 'Charge of the Light Brigade' type set-up with the Tumbling D shako-wearers lining up against the Peter P guns deployed in the far distance - a nice vignette, methinks, and that would explain the size difference, anyway!