BANG! RTW RUSSIAN ARTILLERY DONE

Russian Foot Battery: Outpost Wargame Service Russo Turkish War Figures with Outpost 75mm Krupp gun.

Perhaps at the expense of my readership (I've noticed that I've recently lost two followers), I continue with my singular focus on the RTW Russian Army project. In that regard, I am happy to report the completion of the penultimate stage of this effort: the artillery park. Although not as extensive as some of the other stages, this was the last of the "big" hurdles to get through (made no less so because assembling and painting equipment--in this case guns--is among my least favorite things to do: squeezing out even horses).

Left to right: (new offering) Outpost Wargame Service 60mm Russian RTW Mountain Gun, Foundry Franco Prussian War Prussian Field Gun, and Outpost Wargame Service Krupp RTW 75mm Field Gun (suitable for 60-90mm variants).

I use the Foundry FPW Prussian Field Gun as the standard medium foot gun across all of my post-Napoleonic forces (to include these recently completed Russians). I find that it is a nice mid-sized model that looks the mid-century part and works well with gunner figures from almost any line. Jeff at Outpost Wargame Service brought my attention to a new 60mm Russian Mountain Gun that they were offering (not as yet on their online catalog), which I will use for my Russian Horse Artillery and also to represent light foot guns. I use the larger Outpost Wargame Service 75mm Krupp models for heavy guns (for Russians and Romanians)--I wound up doing a medium and a heavy gun model for each foot battery: double the effort but maximizes flexibility.

Russian 41st Artillery Brigade during Russo Turkish War (Wikimedia Commons).

The Russian artillery of the RTW was not the big-battery, gun-heavy force of earlier periods. Batteries were 8 guns (some sources suggest horse batteries were 6 guns). Each Army Corps had two artillery brigades, each consisting of six batteries: three 9 pounder and three 4 pounder. Each artillery brigade operated in direct support of an infantry division. In addition, each corps had two horse batteries (of 4 pounders) that operated in support of the corps cavalry division. There were no supplemental corps guns or army artillery reserve formations (there were separate siege artillery organizations). So much for my thumbnail lesson on the RTW Russian Artillery. Here is my study of how I rendered my Russian gunners. As usual, you may clix pix for BIG PIX in this post:

I very much like the animation of the Outpost gunners. I went with black facings with red piping.

The Foot Artillery Park, shown with the Foundry Prussian Field guns. For my purposes four batteries will suffice.

Horse Artillery Batteries: the kepi plumes are a conversion...

...for the kepis, I used a by-now familiar routine: I drilled a hole and inserted a bit of florist wire, secured with some J&B Qwik Weld (above left), and then I snipped the wire to length and used green stuff to shape the plume. The kepi plume was part of the Russian uniform, used on dress and parade occasions--so it's not a complete fabrication to show it, and it is, after all, consistent with the "Chocolate Box Soldier" look of the era I'm after.

I ran across an illustration showing Russian horse artillerists wearing the standard blue cavalry trousers, so I added this touch as well (anyone surprised?). The gun model is the small Outpost Russian Mountain gun.