To my pleasure, I found my camels stabled in our mailbox yesterday.
Oddly enough, when I stopped to think about it, if I translate the walking distance to our mailbox and back from metric to imperial............
I did walk a mile for my camel!
How about that?!
Born and raised in the suburbs of Montreal 7 decades ago. Began playing with toy soldiers at 5 years. Started painting & converting at about 12 yrs and wargaming about 15 yrs. Never really stopped.
5 years in the Black Watch of Canada Cadets, 5 years at the Collège militaire royal de Saint-Jean followed by 4 in the navy. 25 years with CPC in IT simultaneous with 23 years running a boarding kennel. Inherited my love of toy soldiers from my mother's father. Married with a pack of litle Italian Greyhounds and a cat. Prematurely retired and enjoying leisure to game, maintaining our 170 yr old farmhouse and just living.
And these lads may have to if those Irregular camels don't get here by mid-May.
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| Dismounted camel corps, dismounted as an escort for the horse artillery. The figures are slightly modified from Prince August's SYW Austrian Pandours with my own bicorne heads. |
I've long had a 'thing' for camel corps. My 15mm Napoleon in Egypt force included a couple of packs but their timing was bad. I picked them up shortly before I got hooked on 40mm and they never got painted.
Initially I was planning to avoid any Egypt only French units, so no camel corps, but I've been thinking about that Turkish camel battery. I've never seen any pictures or description of it, just that unlikely drawing of a Persian one with a swivel popgun. Text sources lead me to believe that the Persian camel guns were probably like jingals, wall guns or similar, heavy muskets if you will. Looking at my Persian crew with a mule bourne mountain gun it struck me that their camel battery might have been the same but using camels instead of mules. That might explain how the French cavalry pursuit rode over them without a shot being fired. They may not have deployed yet. So I decided to go that route with the gun in action and kneeling camel in the rear, waiting for the order to pack up and go.
But.....this would leave me with a spare kneeling camel and a need for some infantry to support the French horse artillery......Ahha!
Finally, a camel corps unit!
Ps apologies to those too young or sheltered to recognize the advertisement catch phrase.
Born and raised in the suburbs of Montreal 7 decades ago. Began playing with toy soldiers at 5 years. Started painting & converting at about 12 yrs and wargaming about 15 yrs. Never really stopped.
5 years in the Black Watch of Canada Cadets, 5 years at the Collège militaire royal de Saint-Jean followed by 4 in the navy. 25 years with CPC in IT simultaneous with 23 years running a boarding kennel. Inherited my love of toy soldiers from my mother's father. Married with a pack of litle Italian Greyhounds and a cat. Prematurely retired and enjoying leisure to game, maintaining our 170 yr old farmhouse and just living.
Ok so that's the Royal Artillery's motto but it'll make sense.
Yesterday I bit the bullet and started working on a Republican horse artillery stand. Finding uniform info was harder than I expected and finding the right bits was initially harder. Early on the horse artillery seems to have worn a tight, long tailed, coat with various headgear from a crested helmet to hussar cap etc. The head was no problem but the body was and it looked like a lot of work ahead of me.
I kept looking. Luckily, when I rechecked a famous painting of the Battle of the Pyramids, there they were, horse artillery in hussar style uniforms with a stovepipe shako. A short lived variant as far as I can see but it was just what I wanted and I could do easily. So original head of 1812 US infantry's stovepipe style shako and my universal gunners.
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| 1798 French Horse Artillery. |
If the gunners look familiar, it's because they're based on the same Zinnbrigade 1900 Prussian molds as I used for the Turkish artillery.
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| From 1918 to 1798 |
This lot aren't quite universal, but they'll be even closer when I get around to converting a Roman onager crew for my Prince Valiant games.
Born and raised in the suburbs of Montreal 7 decades ago. Began playing with toy soldiers at 5 years. Started painting & converting at about 12 yrs and wargaming about 15 yrs. Never really stopped.
5 years in the Black Watch of Canada Cadets, 5 years at the Collège militaire royal de Saint-Jean followed by 4 in the navy. 25 years with CPC in IT simultaneous with 23 years running a boarding kennel. Inherited my love of toy soldiers from my mother's father. Married with a pack of litle Italian Greyhounds and a cat. Prematurely retired and enjoying leisure to game, maintaining our 170 yr old farmhouse and just living.
