Hi folks!
Let's see if Photobucket works again, eh?
This is the long short story of the probably worst kit I ever bought. Back at last FIGZ, I held a small box in my hands and decided to give it a try - it was Zvezdas French artillery 1812-14. The box contains a gun and six artillerymen and comes for a relatively cheap price (when compared to metal figures).
I thought - well, let's make a little Italian gun crew out of it. That was the first error - but it wasn't caused by me, it was caused by Zvezda. The company used the same picture on the box as it used for the 8028 French artillery set. This means you don't get the officer seen on the box - instead you get a NCO as gun commander. But that wasn't the major surprise to me - the boxart suggests French artillery in Pre-Bardin uniforms... and then you have a closer look to the figures and see that they wear the Post-Bardin uniform with closed breast. Which was the part where all my painting plans went over the brink.
I should have been warned by the years mentioned on the box, yeah. I fell for the picture. Blame me.
No, I didn't want to paint them in French colours. So I went for research and yes, finally I found a unit that wore a uniform similar enough that small differences wouldn't be too much of a problem in that small scale. I took out the stuff and released the figures from sprue. I recognized that all parts fitted together due to pegs and holes. By the first try, I discovered that the parts didn't fit into each other very well. Pegs too long, holes not wide enough... When prepainted, nothing fits anymore. Another layer of paint and... you get the point. Finally, I removed all the pegs. That worked so far with the figures, but not with the cannon.
Assembling the cannon was a mere horror. I painted the gun due to my earlier experience that it's hard to reach specific parts of the cannon with a brunch after assembling the whole thing. That was - in case of this kit - an error, because now it was impossible to get the axis through the side parts and the wheels onto the axis. It was necessary to scratch off all the paint and a thin layer of plastic as well. Then the axis lacked stability - getting the wheels onto it without breaking the whole construcion into half was at the end the result of sweating and swearing. Did I mention that gun and crew only matched into the holes in the base-plate after drilling them a little wider?
So... was it worth the horrible work? Depends. The figures are of good quality, fine details. But they lack a little bit of soul, if you know what I mean. I made some little changes - musket straps (only on two figures - it didn't work out too well), wrapped-in shakos and so on.
However, I don't think I would give these wargaming-artillery sets another go. It's simply too impractical to build. At least, I hope you enjoy the pictures.