Happy New Year everybody! :-)
As I indicated before, I had placed an
order for the new Strelets Prussian Landwehr. Just a week after my
last posting, the package arrived – so far, so good. To be honest,
I was waiting for 1/72 Landwehr in plastic for a very long time. The
ones that HaT recently produces didn't meet my expectations – too
few poses, too much the same poses as in every other HaT set – so I
decided to wait for Strelets to make it's own set.
I know – you can easily get Landwehr
infantry from several metal figure producers, but as I'm up to mix
them with other plastics Prussian regulars sooner or later, you
mostly find metal 1/72 Landwehr that doesn't fit in – either the
metal figures are modelled too rough or don't fit in size.
Well. Okay. Here they are. And well...
I have an issue with them – but let's start from the beginning.
At first – I ordered the figures
directly from Linear-A. Due to christmas time, delivery took a little
bit longer, but as I'm not one of those Amazon-addicted people who
expect a parcel to arrive right after clicking onto the 'order'
button, it didn't bother me too much.
Linear-A delivers figure sets 'unboxed'
in a large envelope. The set boxes are put flattened into the
envelope, together with the figure sprues. This saves shipment costs
– if wanted so, you can reassemble the boxes right at home and put
the figures back into them.
Let's have a look at the sprues.
I ordered both sets – the standing
ones as well as the marchers. Having a look at the different poses, I
found them very convincing. I already enjoyed the standing/marching
Brits'n Scots and if you also do so, the Prussian Landwehr will not
disappoint you.
Technically, I would date these figures
for the period between mid- to late 1813 onwards. Although these
chaps are still not all equipped in a similar way (some have water
bottles, some not, water bottles differ, some have scabbards, some
even the short infantry sabers), all have the same sort of caps, all
have muskets, all have shoes. This means that these Landwehr men do
not represent the very early, quickly conscripted and poorly equipped
troopers of the very early campaign. And another detail – there's a
flagbearer with every set. As by the end of September 1813, carrying
flags was forbidden for Landwehr units, this figure is only suitable
for the battles on German soil – which includes prominent ones like
the battles of Moeckern, Grossgoerschen, Grossbeeren, Katzbach and –
of course – Dresden.
But that's only for history lovers.
Most wargamers won't give a damn about it – they urge to have
Landwehr on the gaming table!
So far, so good. Let's get back to the
figures. As I said, I have an issuue with them. For a long time, the
only Landwehr available on the market were the old Airfix figures.
Not that I'd say they're very bad – in fact, they are quite nice –
but they are very hard to mix with other Prussians just because of
their size. The Airfix Landwehr is far too small, especially when put
aside the MAC-Prussians from HaT, that are a little bit bulky. I
bought Prussians from 1815 and HaT a while ago. I even have some old
Revell-Prussians as well. But as I found them to be too small in
comparizon to the regulars, I never bought any Airfix Landwehr,
instead I waitied for better things to come.
And now... well, look for yourself.
This is a comparizon between old HaT
Prussian reserve infantry, Revell Prussian line infantry, 1815
Prussian line infantry, our Strelets boys and the MAC Prussians from
HaT. You see what I mean? Hell, yeah – the Strelets Landwehr is
rather small. It would fit best with the Revell guys. If you want to
mix them with the HaT MACs, you better leave some distance between
the units, because otherwise the difference in size will be too
obvious. And this, in fact, sucks.
'Well – the difference in height
isn't too much, what's the matter?', some of you might say. There's
one thing about the Strelets Landwehr that is on the one hand really
cool and realistic – on the other way, it makes bad things even
worse: not all men are of the same size. In Strelet's set, you find
men of different body size. Taller guys, smaller guys.
Yeah. Great
idea. But not when it's up to compare sizes with other sets.
Don't get me wrong – I wanted these
figures, I'm still glad to have these figures, but I would have
expected them to match the size of other plastic manufacturer's
products and as they do not, this leaves me a little bit frustrated.
In fact, it was unexpected – I put them besides the Strelets Brits
and see: the Brits are taller. Recognizably taller.
Okay. Enough ranting. Let's get back to
what you get when you buy these figures.
At first – plastic material, thick
sprues and slightly concave figure bases remain the same as ever.
There's little extra plastic on them, but you should trim away the
mould lines because they are considerable.
Here's a primed figure – note the
nice details.
There's not anything dwarfish or bulky about them
anymore – modern Strelets figures are really lightyears away from
their early counterparts. What I really enjoy is that the modeller
seems to have gotten the musket issue under control – while the
British/Scottish soldiers were equipped with somewhat bulky muskets
that rather looked like arquebuses, the Landwehr soldiers carry good
looking muskets. Thumbs up!
And here's the test painting result –
trooper of Kurmark Landwehr on the march.
Took me an evening to paint
– there's not much detail about the uniform and the equipment
doesn't take lots of attention (not many straps, buttons, laces,
whatsoever – simple equip, simple uniform). Apart from the size
issue, I don't think that there's much that you could do wrong with
buying these sets. Just keep 'em away from too large figures and
everything's fine. ;-)
