From StephanK: 28mm Napoleonic French Sleigh (25 points)

From Stefan:

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.

Lovely work Stefan! I've been mulling over getting one of these from Kawe for quite some time and your excellent efforts here chivvies me along nicely. I really like the special insert you've created for the sleigh - I'll be shamelessly nicking that idea, thank you!

This wonderful vignette will give Stefan 25 points. Well done!